Nest has been tweaking things quite a bit lately, so that’s not terribly surprising. They also deprecated the nexusapi*.dropcam.com URLs from your original post if I remember correctly.
Not saying any of this is malicious intent on their part… they just might not realize some people are using their cameras this way.
Based on Keith’s commentary, have you tried using a Hyperlink to the Nest camera directly in one of your dashboards as a utility that way you can open the page and kick start the session as Keith mentioned and then navigate back to SharpTools to view things from there?
All of this may need to be done within the Add to Homescreen browser window as if it opens a separate Safari window then it won’t keep the session data.
It would be more of a utility than anything, so it could be tucked away on a linked dashboard or somewhere out of the way.
Well I have it set up with a very high refresh rate and is actually really cool!
Again, I would feel bad, but how much I pay Nest, until they allow access I don’t mind bogging down their servers…I know people who run live stream on separate monitors, so I imagine my way is way less of a strain.
My only last request (may already be possible) is for me to click on the tile and just have a zoomed up version. No different hyperlink or anything, just a pop up I can click to make large on my tablet, and click again to minimize?
Go to your Nest account → Settings → under “Video” section, enable “Camera Sharing”. In the code snippet, copy the src link, including the “autoplay=1” in the end.
Please note that this url was deprecated by Nest as pointed out by @josh, so it may not work later.
Head to SharpTools Manage Resource page, select “Media” at top, and create a new media using the link from step3 as the url, check “Enable Autorefresh” and set desired refresh rate. So the camera image will be displayed in the tile.
In your dashboard, add a media tile from the media created in step 4. Edit the medial tile to change the dimensions as you want, change Action(Tap) to “Open Hyperlink” and use the same url in step 2 as the hyperlink, change Link Action to “Open in Modal”. Save it.
Now you should see the camera image in the tile, and it will open the video stream page in the modal window and auto play when tapped.
Per Keith’s comment, you may need to “kickoff” the session to access the image by opening the camera’s link (https://video.nest.com/embedded/live/XXX?autoplay=1) directly first. So, as Josh suggested, you can add a Hyperlink tile to open this link in the dashboard, and navigate back to the dashboard to keep the session alive so the media tile can continuously to access the camera image.
Do you mean you receive the 404 error when using the url in Step 2 in the browser? What is the url you used? (Please make sure to remove the “id” part from the url before posting it.) And did you complete step 1 to generate the publicly shared link?
@Keith_Croshaw@Jason_Morris@Laurie_Dale
We’ve added experimental support for Nest Cam public URLs to media tiles in the latest SharpTools.io beta. I’ve added each of you to the beta testers group, so you should have access to the following topic:
If you could give it a try and let us know how it works for you, we would really appreciate it!
The manual approach noted above where you sift through the HTML to find secret URLs provides more control over how things work (eg. media tile click action), but is quite an intimidating and complex process for most users. This new approach should make it much easier for the average user to display their Nest Cam streams in their dashboards.
Hey Josh, Very happy to be able to access my Nest Cam via Sharptools… it’s really a nice addition to my Dashboards!! Any update on being able to access Nest Thermostats and Smoke Detectors via a Shaptools tile? I know Google was working on releasing a new API after they stopped Works With Nest…
If you connect your Thermostats or Smoke Detectors into Hubitat or SmartThings using a community integration, you can authorize them in SharpTools.
From what I understand, these community integrations rely on the Nest API which would have required you register a Nest account before August 31 2019 and not have migrated to a Google account.
We’ll have to wait and see what they release under new APIs. As of this point, they’re moving everything into Google Assistant which is a pretty closed ecosystem. Easy to get things in, but no APIs to get things back out.
I’m setting this up for my dashboard and have a question about the Public access set up within the Nest account. Are you required to leave this as “public” always or is this used just to obtain the URL needed? I’m not sure I would want my cameras to remain “public” viewable. Any way to use the setting to share with a password if this is required to remain in some sort of sharable state?
If there is a beta group or a more current thread on this topic, please point me to the link.
Hi @Jim_Slebodnik, welcome to the community. Unfortunately, it is currently the only way to allow the dashboard to access the Nest cam’s streaming video. I’ve seen users streaming their doorbells and outdoor facing cameras in the dashboards, and I agree I would be cautious for the indoor cameras.