How‑To: Home Assistant & Blue Iris MQTT Alerts (Push Notification with Alert Image)

This guide shows how to:

Send Blue Iris Motion and AI alerts to Home Assistant via MQTT
Send Android notifications from Home Assistant with:
- A dynamic message
  - An alert image preview (via Home Assistant camera proxy)
  - Tap alert to open image from the Home Assistant stored image.

Prerequisites

Home Assistant MQTT configured
- MQTT broker running (Mosquitto add-on or external)
- Home Assistant connected (Settings → Devices & services → MQTT)
Blue Iris publishing MQTT topics

Typical topics used in this setup:

[On Alert] setup per camera:

- Name: MQTT - On Alert
- MQTT Topic: BlueIris/&CAM/Status
- Payload: { "type": "&TYPE", "trigger": "ON" }
- Name: MQTT - On Alert - JSON Payload
- MQTT Topic: BlueIris/<CameraName>/alert-image
- Payload: { "state":"ON", "camera":"&CAM", "object":"&MEMO", , "name":"&NAME", "type":"&TYPE", "time":"&ALERT_TIME", "id":"&ALERT_DB", "path":"&ALERT_PATH" }
- Name: MQTT - On Alert - B64 (the Raw Base64 Image)
- MQTT Topic: BlueIris/<CameraName>/alert-image-b64
- Payload: &ALERT_JPEG

[On Reset] setup per camera:

- Name: MQTT - On Reset
- MQTT Topic: BlueIris/&CAM/Status
- Payload: { "type": "&TYPE", "trigger": "OFF" }

A Home Assistant Camera entity per alert image Example entities:

camera.cam203_alert
camera.cam201_alert

Make a mqtt.yaml file and reference it in your configuration.yaml:

mqtt: !include mqtt.yaml

mqtt.yaml; customize this for your camera names and needs

 ###############################################################################
 #                                BI & MQTT
 ###############################################################################
 #mqtt:
 camera:
   - topic: BlueIris/Cam200/alert-image-b64
     name: Cam200_Alert
     unique_id: camera.Cam200_alert
     image_encoding: b64

   - topic: BlueIris/Cam201/alert-image-b64
     name: Cam201_Alert
     unique_id: camera.Cam201_alert
     image_encoding: b64

   - topic: BlueIris/Cam202/alert-image-b64
     name: Cam202_Alert
     unique_id: camera.Cam202_alert
     image_encoding: b64

   - topic: BlueIris/Cam203/alert-image-b64
     name: Cam203_Alert
     unique_id: camera.Cam203_alert
     image_encoding: b64

   - topic: BlueIris/Cam205/alert-image-b64
     name: Cam205_Alert
     unique_id: camera.Cam205_alert
     image_encoding: b64

 binary_sensor:
   - state_topic: BlueIris/Cam200/alert-image
     name: Cam200 Alert Details
     default_entity_id: Cam200_Alert_Details
     value_template: "{{ value_json.state }}"
     json_attributes_topic: BlueIris/Cam200/alert-image
     off_delay: 15
     device_class: motion

   - state_topic: BlueIris/Cam201/alert-image
     name: Cam201 Alert Details
     default_entity_id: Cam201_Alert_Details
     value_template: "{{ value_json.state }}"
     json_attributes_topic: BlueIris/Cam201/alert-image0
     off_delay: 15
     device_class: motion

   - state_topic: BlueIris/Cam202/alert-image
     name: Cam202 Alert Details
     default_entity_id: Cam202_Alert_Details
     value_template: "{{ value_json.state }}"
     json_attributes_topic: BlueIris/Cam202/alert-image
     off_delay: 15
     device_class: motion

   - state_topic: BlueIris/Cam203/alert-image
     name: Cam203 Alert Details
     #object_id: Cam203_Alert_Details
     default_entity_id: Cam203_Alert_Details
     value_template: "{{ value_json.state }}"
     json_attributes_topic: BlueIris/Cam203/alert-image
     off_delay: 15
     device_class: motion

   - state_topic: BlueIris/Cam205/alert-image
     name: Cam205 Alert Details
     default_entity_id: Cam204_Alert_Details
     value_template: "{{ value_json.state }}"
     json_attributes_topic: BlueIris/Cam205/alert-image
     off_delay: 15
     device_class: motion

These must exist and display an image in Home Assistant.

A Home Assistant URL reachable by your phone Example:
- https://home.example.com:8123

Step 1 — Verify the MQTT payload

In Home Assistant:

Developer Tools → MQTT → Listen to a topic like: BlueIris/Cam203/alert-image

You can also use MQTT Explorer to capture real time payloads for troubleshooting.

Example payload:

{ "state":"ON", "camera":"Cam203", "object":"person:60%", "name":"Front_Door_203", "type":"Motion_AC", "time":"2026-02-21T22:40:02.763Z", "id":"@...", "path":"Cam203....jpg" }

Common problem: invalid JSON

Some Blue Iris MQTT formats can accidentally produce invalid JSON (for example an extra comma):

{ "object":"dog:85%", , "name":"Front_Door_203" }

If the payload is malformed, trigger.payload_json will fail. This guide uses a safe parse method that “cleans” the known , , pattern and then parses JSON.

Step 2 — Create the automation (UI-style YAML)

Create a new automation in Home Assistant and switch to YAML mode.

Note: Home Assistant may show triggers: / actions: in the UI YAML editor. That format is valid for recent HA versions.

Paste and customize this automation:

alias: BI MQTT - Camera Trigger
description: Blue Iris MQTT notifications with zone decoding + image (Android)

mode: queued
max: 10

triggers:
  - trigger: mqtt
    topic: "BlueIris/+/alert-image"

variables:
  # Extract camera from topic: BlueIris/Cam203/alert-image -> Cam203
  camera_name: "{{ trigger.topic.split('/')[1] }}"

  # Parse payload JSON, with cleanup for the known malformed pattern ", ,"
  bi_payload: >-
    {{ trigger.payload | replace(', ,', ',') | from_json }}

  # Map BI payload camera (e.g. "Cam203") to HA camera entity (e.g. camera.cam203_alert)
  cam_entity: >-
    {{ 'camera.' ~ (bi_payload.camera | lower) ~ '_alert' }}

  # Use a still image endpoint for better Android preview reliability and grabing the token value stored in Home Assistant for access to the image; this gets refreshed with every store of a new image.
  cam_image_url: >-
    https://home.example.com:8123/api/camera_proxy/{{ cam_entity }}?token={{ state_attr(cam_entity, 'access_token') }}

actions:
  - action: notify.user_devices
    data:
      title: "Blue Iris"
      message: >-
        {{ bi_payload.object }} detected on {{ bi_payload.name }}.
        Zones: {{ zone_text }}
      data:
        channel: "BlueIris"
        ttl: 0
        priority: high
        image: "{{ cam_image_url }}"
        clickAction: "{{ cam_image_url }}"

Customize these values

Notify target:
- Replace notify.user_devices with your Android device notify service (or a notify group).
Home Assistant URL:
- Replace https://home.example.com:8123 with your HA URL.
Camera entity naming:
- This template assumes camera.cam203_alert style entities. If your entity IDs differ, adjust the cam_entity variable.

Step 3 — Confirm the camera entity naming

The template assumes:

Blue Iris sends: "camera":"Cam203"
Home Assistant entity is: camera.cam203_alert

If your entity is named differently, either adjust cam_entity or create a manual mapping.

Step 4 — Test the image URL

In Developer Tools → Templates, test:

{% set cam_entity = 'camera.cam203_alert' %}
https://home.example.com:8123/api/camera_proxy/{{ cam_entity }}?token={{ state_attr(cam_entity, 'access_token') }}

Open the rendered URL on your phone. If it loads, Android should be able to show a preview image in the notification.

Troubleshooting

“UndefinedError: bi_payload is undefined”

Common causes:

The automation isn’t actually triggered (templates referencing trigger won’t work when you press “Run” manually).
The automation YAML is invalid.

Fix:

Trigger it by publishing an MQTT message (real event).
Keep bi_payload as a block template (>-), not a quoted string.

Text shows but no image preview