Unofficial UniFi Protect Python API and CLI

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Documentation: https://uiprotect.readthedocs.io

Source Code: https://github.com/uilibs/uiprotect

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Python API for UniFi Protect (Unofficial)

Looking for maintainers

This project is looking for maintainers.

Installation

Install this via pip (or your favorite package manager):

pip install uiprotect

History

This project was split off from pyunifiprotect because that project changed its license to one that would not be accepted in Home Assistant. This project is committed to keeping the MIT license.

Credits

• Bjarne Riis (@briis) for the original pyunifiprotect package
• Christopher Bailey (@AngellusMortis) for the maintaining the pyunifiprotect package

Contributors ✨

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!

uiprotect is an unofficial API for UniFi Protect. There is no affiliation with Ubiquiti.

This module communicates with UniFi Protect surveillance software installed on a UniFi OS Console such as a Ubiquiti CloudKey+ or UniFi Dream Machine Pro.

The API is not documented by Ubiquiti, so there might be misses and/or frequent changes in this module, as Ubiquiti evolves the software.

The module is primarily written for the purpose of being used in Home Assistant core integration for UniFi Protect but might be used for other purposes also.

Smart Detections now Require Remote Access to enable

Smart Detections (person, vehicle, animal, face), a feature that previously could be used with local only console, now requires you to enable remote access to enable.

Enabling Remote Access may grant other users access to your console due to the fact Ubiquiti can reconfigure access controls at any time.

If you are not okay with the feature being locked behind Remote Access, let Ubiquiti know.

Documentation

Full documentation for the project.

Requirements

If you want to install uiprotect natively, the below are the requirements:

• UniFi Protect version 1.20+
  • Latest version of library is generally only tested against the two latest minor version. This is either two latest stable versions (such as 1.21.x and 2.0.x) or the latest EA version and stable version (such as 2.2.x EA and 2.1.x).
• Python 3.10+
• POSIX compatible system
  • Library is only tested on Linux, specifically the latest Debian version available for the official Python Docker images, but there is no reason the library should not work on any Linux distro or macOS.
• ffmpeg
  • ffmpeg is primarily only for streaming audio to Protect cameras, this can be considered a soft requirement

Alternatively you can use the provided Docker container, in which case the only requirement is Docker or another OCI compatible orchestrator (such as Kubernetes or podman).

Windows is not supported. If you need to use uiprotect on Windows, use Docker Desktop and the provided docker container or WSL.

Install

From PyPi

uiprotect is available on PyPi:

pip install uiprotect

From GitHub

pip install git+https://github.com/uilibs/uiprotect.git#egg=uiprotect

Using Docker Container

A Docker container is also provided, so you do not need to install/manage Python as well. You can add the following to your .bashrc or similar.

function uiprotect() {
    docker run --rm -it \
      -e UFP_USERNAME=YOUR_USERNAME_HERE \
      -e UFP_PASSWORD=YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE \
      -e UFP_ADDRESS=YOUR_IP_ADDRESS \
      -e UFP_PORT=443 \
      -e UFP_SSL_VERIFY=True \
      -e TZ=America/New_York \
      -v $PWD:/data ghcr.io/uilibs/uiprotect:latest "$@"
}

Some notes about the Docker version since it is running inside a container:

• You can update at any time using the command docker pull ghcr.io/uilibs/uiprotect:latest
• Your local current working directory ($PWD) will automatically be mounted to /data inside of the container. For commands that output files, this is the only path you can write to and have the file persist.
• The container supports linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 natively. This means it will also work well on macOS or Windows using Docker Desktop.
• TZ should be the Olson timezone name for the timezone your UniFi Protect instance is in.
• For more details on TZ and other environment variables, check the command line docs

Quickstart

CLI

Warning

Ubiquiti SSO accounts are not supported and actively discouraged from being used. There is no option to use MFA. You are expected to use local access user. uiprotect is not designed to allow you to use your owner account to access the console or to be used over the public internet as both pose a security risk.

export UFP_USERNAME=YOUR_USERNAME_HERE
export UFP_PASSWORD=YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE
export UFP_ADDRESS=YOUR_IP_ADDRESS
export UFP_PORT=443
# change to false if you do not have a valid HTTPS certificate for your instance
export UFP_SSL_VERIFY=True

uiprotect --help
uiprotect nvr

Python

UniFi Protect itself is 100% async, so as such this library is primarily designed to be used in an async context.

The main interface for the library is the uiprotect.ProtectApiClient:

from uiprotect import ProtectApiClient

protect = ProtectApiClient(host, port, username, password, verify_ssl=True)

await protect.update() # this will initialize the protect .bootstrap and open a Websocket connection for updates

# get names of your cameras
for camera in protect.bootstrap.cameras.values():
    print(camera.name)

# subscribe to Websocket for updates to UFP
def callback(msg: WSSubscriptionMessage):
    # do stuff

unsub = protect.subscribe_websocket(callback)

# remove subscription
unsub()

TODO / Planned / Not Implemented

Generally any feature missing from the library is planned to be done eventually / nice to have with the following exceptions

UniFi OS Features

Anything that is strictly a UniFi OS feature. If it is ever done, it will be in a separate library that interacts with this one. Examples include:

• Managing RAID and disks
• Creating and managing users

Remote Access / Ubiquiti Cloud Features

Some features that require an Ubiquiti Account or "Remote Access" to be enabled are currently not implemented. Examples include:

• Stream sharing
• Face detection