Overview

A Home Assistant integration to communicate with Hikvision smart doorbells and NVR via Hik-Connect cloud.

Maintenance notice

This integration is no longer actively maintained, as I do not own a Hikvision device anymore. I will continue to review and merge pull requests from the community and release new versions, but I cannot provide personal support, implement new features or fix bugs myself. Thank you for your understanding and contributions! – @tomasbedrich

Features

• Unlock a lock connected to Hikvision outdoor station.
• Report call status of an indoor station (idle, ringing, call in progress) + call source (number of building, floor, etc.).
• Arm, arm-silently, or disarm NVR alarm areas (camera groups) via alarm_control_panel entities.

Nothing more yet, sorry. :) Visit an issue tracker to discuss planned features.

Alarm Areas

NVR alarm areas (groups of cameras) are exposed as Home Assistant alarm_control_panel entities.

What you get

HA entity	Description
alarm_control_panel.<area_name>	One entity per area defined on the NVR

Supported states

HA alarm state	Hik-Connect mode	Description
disarmed	mode 0	Area disarmed
armed_away	mode 1	Full arm (all cameras monitored)
armed_home	mode 2	Silent arm (arm without sound alerts)

Supported actions (standard HA alarm services)

# Disarm
action: alarm_control_panel.alarm_disarm
target:
  entity_id: alarm_control_panel.gate

# Arm away
action: alarm_control_panel.alarm_arm_away
target:
  entity_id: alarm_control_panel.gate

# Arm silently (home/stay)
action: alarm_control_panel.alarm_arm_home
target:
  entity_id: alarm_control_panel.gate

Area management actions

Next actions are registered under the hikconnect domain to create, update, and delete areas:

# Create a new area (cameras = resource_ids from entity attributes)
action: hikconnect.create_area
data:
  device_serial: "FK12345678"
  group_name: "Gate"
  resource_ids:
    - "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"

# Update an existing area's cameras (deletes + recreates with new cameras)
action: hikconnect.update_area
data:
  device_serial: "FK12345678"
  group_id: 12345678          # from entity attribute 'group_id'
  group_name: "Gate"      # keep same name or rename
  resource_ids:
    - "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
    - "bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb"

# Delete an area
action: hikconnect.delete_area
data:
  device_serial: "FK12345678"
  group_id: 12345678

# List areas (returns data)
action: hikconnect.list_areas
data:
  device_serial: "FK12345678"

# Get area details (returns data)
action: hikconnect.get_area_details
data:
  device_serial: "FK12345678"
  group_id: 12345678

# List cameras (returns data)
action: hikconnect.list_cameras
data:
  device_serial: "FK12345678"

Area constraints (Hik-Connect API limitation):

• A camera can only belong to one area at a time.
• An area must contain at least one camera.
• update_area works by deleting and recreating the area — the group_id will change.

Viewing cameras in an area

Each alarm_control_panel entity exposes its member cameras in extra_state_attributes:

Attribute	Description
group_id	Numeric area ID (use for update/delete services)
group_name	Area name
mode	Raw API mode (0/1/2)
device_serial	Device serial
cameras	List of {id, name} dicts for each camera in the area
camera_count	Number of cameras in the area

You can read these in Developer Tools → States, or use them in automations/templates:

# Example: template sensor showing camera names in an area
{{ state_attr('alarm_control_panel.gate', 'cameras') | map(attribute='name') | join(', ') }}

To find a camera's resource_id (needed for create_area / update_area), check the cameras attribute of an existing area entity, or call the hikconnect.list_cameras service from Developer Tools.

Configurable scan interval

The poll interval can be changed without restarting Home Assistant:

1. Go to Settings → Devices & Services.
2. Find Hik-Connect and click Configure.
3. Set the Scan interval (minutes) (default: 30, range: 5–1440).
4. Save — the integration reloads automatically.

Limitations

• Area status is polled on the coordinator schedule (default 30 min). It is not updated in real-time.
• After arm/disarm the integration immediately triggers a refresh, so state should update within seconds.
• update_area changes the group_id (delete + recreate). The entity re-appears after the next coordinator refresh.
• Not all NVR firmware versions expose the area API. If no area entities appear, your device may not support area management over the Hik-Connect cloud.
• Recommendation: Because of how area creation and updates work (requiring entity recreation and polling refreshes), it is highly recommended to manage your areas in the official Hik-Connect application, unless you specifically need to automate their creation/modification via Home Assistant.

Warning

If you have direct LAN access to your Hikvision device, you may NOT want to use this integration.

Why? The scope of this project is to mirror functionality available in Hik-Connect mobile application - nothing more. You can usually get more functions, faster responses and more stability by connecting to your device locally, if possible. Please see forum thread about LAN based integration for more info.

The target audience of this integration is people living in block of flats where other Hikvision devices (outdoor stations, recorders) are managed by someone else, and you don't have physical (admin) access to any of these.

To be clear - if you are satisfied with this integration with regard to limited functionality and Hik-Connect cloud dependency, feel free to use it even for LAN connected devices.

Installation

HACS

This installation method is preferred since it allows automatic updates in the future.

Install by searching for Hik-Connect integration in HACS.

Manual

1. Download this integration.
2. Copy the folder custom_components/hikconnect from the zip to your config directory.
3. Restart Home Assistant.

Links

• hikconnect Python library
• forum thread about this integration
• forum thread about LAN based integration