Amcrest camera event stream monitor that publishes motion, doorbell, and connection failure events to MQTT. Designed to work with hms-detection for YOLO-based security notifications.

• Amcrest Event Streams: Long-polls HTTP event streams with libcurl digest auth
• Multi-Camera: Monitor multiple Amcrest cameras with per-camera event filtering
• MQTT Publishing: Motion start/stop, doorbell ring, connection failure alerts
• Motion Dedup: Tracks per-camera motion state to suppress duplicate events
• Connection Alerting: Publishes hms_nvr/alert/camera_down after consecutive failures
• Low Memory: ~230 KB binary, minimal runtime footprint
• YAML Config: Camera credentials, events, and stream settings in one file

┌──────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐
│  Amcrest Camera  │────▶│     HMS-NVR      │────▶│   MQTT Broker    │
│  Event Stream    │     │   C++ Service    │     │   (EMQX)         │
│  (HTTP Digest)   │     │   ~230 KB        │     └────────┬─────────┘
└──────────────────┘     └──────────────────┘              │
         x N cameras                              ┌────────┴─────────┐
                                                  │                  │
                                             ┌────▼─────┐    ┌──────▼──────┐
                                             │ YOLO     │    │    n8n      │
                                             │ Detection│    │  Workflows  │
                                             └──────────┘    └─────────────┘

docker run -d \
  -v ./config/hms-nvr.yaml:/etc/hms-nvr/hms-nvr.yaml:ro \
  -p 8898:8898 \
  ghcr.io/hms-homelab/hms-nvr:latest

Or use Docker Compose - see docker-compose.yml.

# Dependencies (Debian/Ubuntu)
sudo apt install libjsoncpp-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libyaml-cpp-dev \
  libpaho-mqttpp-dev libpaho-mqtt-dev libssl-dev cmake build-essential

# Build
git clone https://github.com/hms-homelab/hms-nvr.git
cd hms-nvr
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make -j$(nproc)

sudo cp build/hms_nvr /usr/local/bin/
sudo mkdir -p /etc/hms-nvr
sudo cp config/hms-nvr.yaml.example /etc/hms-nvr/hms-nvr.yaml
# Edit /etc/hms-nvr/hms-nvr.yaml with your camera credentials

sudo cp hms-nvr.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now hms-nvr

All settings are in hms-nvr.yaml:

cameras:
  - id: "front_door"          # MQTT camera_id
    name: "Front Door"        # Friendly name
    host: "192.168.2.43"      # Camera IP
    username: "admin"          # Camera HTTP user
    password: "password"       # Camera HTTP password
    model: "Amcrest AD410"     # Optional, shown in health
    events:                    # Events to subscribe to
      - VideoMotion
      - PhoneCallDetect
    enabled: true

curl http://localhost:8898/health

{
  "service": "hms-nvr",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "cameras": [
    {
      "id": "front_door",
      "name": "Front Door",
      "model": "Amcrest AD410",
      "connected": true,
      "has_events": true,
      "running": true,
      "failures": 0
    }
  ],
  "mqtt_connected": true
}

hms-nvr/
├── src/
│   ├── main.cpp                # Entry point
│   ├── ConfigLoader.cpp        # YAML config parser
│   ├── HealthEndpoint.cpp      # HTTP health endpoint
│   ├── amcrest/
│   │   ├── AmcrestStream.cpp   # HTTP event stream long-poll
│   │   └── NvrManager.cpp      # Camera manager + MQTT publisher
│   └── mqtt/
│       └── MqttClient.cpp      # Paho MQTT wrapper
├── include/                    # Header files
├── config/
│   ├── hms-nvr.yaml.example    # Example configuration
│   └── hms-nvr.yaml            # Local config (gitignored)
├── CMakeLists.txt
├── Dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yml
├── hms-nvr.service             # Systemd service file
├── CHANGELOG.md
└── README.md

HMS-NVR is designed to feed hms-detection for YOLO-based object detection:

1. HMS-NVR publishes camera/event/motion/start with {"camera_id":"patio"}
2. hms-detection receives it, grabs RTSP frames, runs YOLO inference
3. On detection, publishes yolo_detection/patio/result with snapshot URL
4. n8n workflow downloads snapshot and sends phone notification

Set publish_motion_stop: false when using hms-detection, as it manages its own 30-second recording window.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

If this project is useful to you, consider buying me a coffee!

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

• hms-detection - YOLO object detection for security cameras
• hms-nut - UPS monitoring via NUT
• hms-firetv - Fire TV control service

Part of the HMS Homelab project - lightweight C++ microservices for home automation.