Home Assistant Sensor Streamer (ha-sensor-streamer)

ha-sensor-streamer is a lightweight, high-performance Rust application that fetches sensor data from Home Assistant and overlays it onto a generated video stream (MJPEG or RTSP).

This is ideal for integrating non-video data (temperature, power usage, weather, time) into NVR systems like Frigate, Blue Iris, or Synology Surveillance Station that expect video feeds.

Features

• Protocol Support: Streams via MJPEG (HTTP) or RTSP (TCP).
• Customizable Overlay: Configure up to 4 lines of text using templates.
• Multiple Sensors: Display data from multiple Home Assistant sensors on a single screen.
• Template System: Mix static text, time/date placeholders, and sensor values.
• Locale Awareness: Automatically formats numbers (e.g., decimal commas) based on locale settings.
• Efficient: Written in Rust using tokio, gstreamer (RTSP), and axum (MJPEG) for low resource usage.

Configuration

Configuration is handled entirely via environment variables.

Connection

Variable	Description	Required	Default
HA_BASE_URL	URL to your Home Assistant instance (e.g., http://192.168.1.50:8123)	Yes	-
HA_LONG_LIVED_TOKEN	Long-lived access token from Home Assistant	Yes	-
PORT	Port to listen on (HTTP or RTSP)	No	8080

Video & Display

Variable	Description	Default
STREAM_FORMAT	mjpeg or rtsp	mjpeg
VIDEO_WIDTH	Width of the generated video	640
VIDEO_HEIGHT	Height of the generated video	360
VIDEO_FPS	Frames per second	5
FONT_SIZE	Font size for text	48.0
LOCALE	Locale for number formatting (e.g., sv_SE for commas)	en_US

Content Templates (LINE_1 to LINE_4)

You can configure up to 4 lines of text. If not set, a default layout (Date, Time, Sensor) is used.

Placeholders:

• {sensor.entity_id}: Replaced with the state of the specified sensor.
• {time:FORMAT}: Replaced with the current time formatted according to strftime.

Examples:

# Example 1: Simple Status
LINE_1="Living Room"
LINE_2="Temp: {sensor.temp_sensor}°C"
LINE_3="Hum: {sensor.humidity_sensor}%"
LINE_4="{time:%H:%M}"

# Example 2: Weather & Time
LINE_1="{time:%A, %d %B}"
LINE_2="{time:%H:%M:%S}"
LINE_3="Outdoor: {sensor.outdoor_temp}"
LOCALE="sv_SE" # Will display decimals as "22,5"

Docker Compose

services:
  ha-sensor-streamer:
    image: ghcr.io/tuomaz/ha-sensor-streamer:main
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:8080" # MJPEG
      - "8554:8554" # RTSP
    environment:
      - HA_BASE_URL=http://192.168.1.50:8123
      - HA_LONG_LIVED_TOKEN=your_long_token_here
      
      # Video Settings
      - STREAM_FORMAT=rtsp
      - VIDEO_WIDTH=1280
      - VIDEO_HEIGHT=720
      - VIDEO_FPS=5
      
      # Display
      - FONT_SIZE=64.0
      - LOCALE=sv_SE
      
      # Lines
      - LINE_1={time:%Y-%m-%d}
      - LINE_2={time:%H:%M}
      - LINE_3=Temp: {sensor.ute_kombinerad}°C

Running Locally

1. Prerequisites:

   • Rust toolchain
   • GStreamer development libraries (for RTSP support)
     • Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-dev

2. Run:

   # Create a .env file with the variables above, or export them
   export HA_BASE_URL="http://localhost:8123"
   export HA_LONG_LIVED_TOKEN="..."
   
   cargo run

License

MIT