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IMOU Plugin

The IMOU plugin controls your IMOU cameras from Jeedom via the IMOU Open API (cloud), in native PHP (no daemon, no Python). Depending on each camera's capabilities: on/off, monitoring, PTZ, spotlight/siren, night vision, image settings, live stream, thumbnail, restart, battery, doorbell & door opening, alarm reporting, SD card and cloud subscription status, supervision.

The IMOU API does not offer real-time notifications: the camera state is refreshed by periodic polling. A change made from the IMOU application may therefore take a few minutes to appear in Jeedom.

Requirements

  • An IMOU developer account on open.imoulife.com.
  • An application created in the developer console, providing an appId and an appSecret, with the integration mode accessType = PaaS (required to control devices).
  • Your cameras already linked to this account via the IMOU Life application.
  • ffmpeg: installed automatically by Jeedom when the plugin is activated (tab "Dependencies"). It is used to extract frames from the live stream. On a Docker installation, verify that ffmpeg is available in the image.

ℹ️ Number of controllable devices (free tier). In theory, the free IMOU developer account is limited to ~5 devices: beyond that, commands should fail with a licence error returned by IMOU (this is not a plugin limitation). In practice, IMOU appears to allow controlling more cameras on the free tier — in our tests, everything works normally beyond 5. This behaviour depends on IMOU and may change without notice: if a command eventually returns a licence error, this limit is what applies, and an appropriate IMOU plan is then required. Either way, the cameras are still discovered and displayed; only their commands would be affected.

Plugin configuration

  1. Enable the plugin (Plugins → Plugin management → IMOU) and let Jeedom install the dependencies.
  2. In the plugin configuration, fill in:
  3. App ID: the identifier of your IMOU application;
  4. App Secret: the associated secret (stored encrypted, never displayed in plain text);
  5. Datacenter: the region of your account (Europe by default).
  6. Click Test connection to validate your credentials.

Advanced settings (optional)

  • API call quota: quotaMensuel (monthly API call limit, ~30,000 on the free tier), alert threshold. The quota resets on the 1st of each month. The plugin counts its calls and alerts you when approaching the limit.
  • Automatic rate regulation: refreshIntervalMin/refreshIntervalMax bounds. The plugin automatically adjusts the refresh frequency to stay within the monthly call budget.
  • Concurrent live streams: liveMaxConcurrent (number of live streams displayed simultaneously).
  • Data consumption estimate: dataQuotaGo / dataBitrateKbps (see "Quota & supervision").

Adding cameras

  • Click Synchronize: the plugin retrieves the account's cameras and creates one device per camera (one per channel for multi-channel devices).
  • Rename and organize the devices in your objects as usual: your customizations are preserved during subsequent synchronizations.
  • Selective synchronization: each status command can be excluded from automatic refresh (checkbox "Exclude from automatic refresh"), to save calls on what you do not need.

💡 Commands are conditional on the camera's capabilities. The plugin only creates commands actually supported by each model. If a command (PTZ, siren, night vision, SD card…) does not appear, it means your camera does not declare that capability — this is normal, not a bug.

Available commands (depending on the camera)

  • On / Off the camera.
  • Monitoring (motion detection): enable / disable.
  • Spotlight / light and siren (on compatible models, via the IoT "Things" model).
  • PTZ: directional pad (up/down/left/right) and zoom on motorized cameras.
  • Night vision: mode (auto / infrared / colour depending on the model).
  • Image settings: flip, WDR, date/time overlay (OSD), LED indicator…
  • Live stream: refreshed live image, viewable fullscreen with a click.
  • Thumbnail of the camera (source of your choice: live snapshot or cover image).
  • Model (code): technical code of the camera, displayed as a read-only field in the device configuration (next to the identifier), not as a command.
  • Restart the device (action protected by confirmation).
  • Battery & wake-up: battery level (reported in Jeedom's Health supervision); dormant devices are woken up to read their state.
  • Video doorbell & door opening (on compatible locks/doorbells; opening protected by confirmation).
  • Alarms & detection: last event (motion/human), detection sensitivity, arming plans (day/night/always-on presets), human / AI detection.
  • SD card: presence, usage, capacity, and formatting (action protected by confirmation).
  • Cloud recording: subscription status (active, expiry, plan). Disabled by default (option to enable if you have a subscription — see below).
  • Online (state): camera reachability, also used to save calls (an offline camera is not polled).

Enabling cloud subscription monitoring

The cloud commands are created hidden and not polled by default (most accounts have no subscription). If you have a cloud subscription: make the Cloud active command visible and uncheck its "Exclude from automatic refresh" box to enable monitoring (checked once per hour).

The "camera wall" panel

The plugin adds a dedicated page to the Jeedom menu displaying a grid of live streams from your cameras (with PTZ, siren, spotlight depending on the models). Enable it in plugin management (checkbox "Display desktop panel"), then choose per camera whether it appears on the wall (checkbox "Visible on camera panel" of the device).

Refresh, quota & supervision

The plugin periodically polls the IMOU cloud (cron). Two separate budgets to be aware of:

  • API CALL quota (~30,000/month on the free tier): counted exactly by the plugin. The refresh rate is automatically regulated to stay within this budget, and an alert is raised when approaching the limit. "Slow" states (SD card, cloud subscription) are refreshed at low frequency (once per hour) — and cloud subscription is only polled if you have enabled it (see "Enabling cloud subscription monitoring").
  • DATA quota (live stream volume, ~3 GB/month on the free tier): the plugin provides an estimate (viewing time × configured bitrate dataBitrateKbps, compared against dataQuotaGo). This is an informational indicator: the actual value is shown in the IMOU developer portal, which is the authoritative source. The IMOU API does not expose actual data consumption.

The plugin's Health screen summarizes camera reachability, the call quota, the regulated refresh rate, and the data consumption estimate.

Privacy & data location

Video streams and commands transit through IMOU cloud servers (datacenter according to your region — choose "Europe" for France). No video transits through Jeedom: the plugin sends control commands and receives state metadata as well as frames extracted from the live stream.

Troubleshooting

  • Synchronization finds no cameras → check appId/appSecret/Datacenter, the Test connection button, and that your cameras are properly linked to the account in the IMOU Life application.
  • A command does not exist on my camera → the capability is not supported by this model. This is normal.
  • The live stream is not displayed → check that the plugin dependencies are installed (ffmpeg), that the camera is online, then consult the imou logs at debug level.
  • Commands fail with a licence error → you may be reaching the controllable-device limit of the IMOU free tier (in theory ~5, though IMOU often allows more in practice; see Requirements). An appropriate IMOU plan is then required — this is not a plugin limitation.
  • "Clock out of sync" / signature error → synchronize the Jeedom server clock (NTP): a drift of more than 5 minutes causes IMOU to reject requests.
  • A change made in the IMOU app does not appear immediately → normal, refresh is periodic (no real-time notification).

Known limitations

  • No real-time alarms (push): events are reported by periodic polling, not by instant notification.
  • No recording playback: the IMOU API does not expose playback URLs for recorded videos (SD or cloud); playback is done in the IMOU application.
  • No commercial model name: only the technical model code is displayed (there is no reliable code → commercial name mapping database).
  • Detection zones, firmware updates, device association/renaming on the IMOU side: not managed.

Uninstalling

Disabling then removing the plugin in Jeedom removes the devices and their commands. Your IMOU credentials (appId/appSecret) remain valid on your IMOU developer account and can be reused; they are not deleted on the IMOU side by this operation.