Crow Shepherd Home Assistant Integration

Disclaimer: This is an independent, community-developed custom integration and is not an official product of, endorsed by, or affiliated with The Crow Group. All product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

A Home Assistant custom integration for Crow alarm panels that connects to Crow Cloud using the crow_security_ng Python library.

Features

• Alarm Control Panel — arm/disarm in Away and Home modes; real-time state via WebSocket; one entity per area/partition
• Zone Binary Sensors — open/close state for every zone with motion, tamper, bypass, battery, RSSI and battery voltage as attributes
• Output Switches — turn outputs on/off with tamper, battery, RSSI and battery voltage as attributes
• DECT Measurement Sensors — temperature, humidity, air pressure and gas level sensors for smart devices
• PIR Camera Image Entities — one image.* entity per configured camera zone; automatically pre-populated with the most recent stored snapshot on startup; refresh on demand via the fetch_camera_snapshot action

Requirements

• Home Assistant 2024.11 or newer
• crow_security_ng >= 0.2.1 (installed automatically)

Installation

HACS (Recommended)

1. Open HACS in Home Assistant
2. Click Integrations → three-dot menu → Custom repositories
3. Add https://github.com/tubalainen/crow_security with category Integration
4. Install and restart Home Assistant

Manual

1. Copy the custom_components/crow_shepherd folder to your custom_components directory
2. Restart Home Assistant

Configuration

1. Go to Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration
2. Search for Crow Shepherd
3. Enter your credentials:
   • Email — your Crow Cloud account email
   • Password — your Crow Cloud account password
   • Panel MAC Address — the MAC address of your panel (found in the Crow Cloud app)
   • Panel User Code (optional) — required only if your panel needs a code to arm/disarm

MAC address formats

All of the following are accepted — the integration normalises them automatically:

AABBCCDDEEFF
AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF
AA-BB-CC-DD-EE-FF

Options

After setup, you can adjust:

• Update interval — how often to poll Crow Cloud (10–300 s, default 30 s)
• Panel User Code — update the arm/disarm code without reconfiguring

Entities

Alarm Control Panel

One entity per area/partition:

Entity	Description
alarm_control_panel.<area_name>	Arm Away / Arm Home / Disarm

Attributes: area_id, raw_state, ready_to_arm, ready_to_stay, zone_alarm

Binary Sensors (zones)

One entity per zone:

Entity	Description
binary_sensor.<zone_name>	on = open / triggered

Attributes: zone_id, zone_type, bypassed, tamper, battery_low, battery_voltage, active, rssi

Switches (outputs)

One entity per output:

Entity	Description
switch.<output_name>	Turn output on/off

Attributes: output_id, output_type, tamper, battery_low, battery_voltage, rssi

Sensors (DECT measurements)

One entity per measurement type per smart device:

Entity	Description
sensor.<device_name>_temperature	Temperature (°C)
sensor.<device_name>_humidity	Relative humidity (%)
sensor.<device_name>_air_pressure	Atmospheric pressure (hPa)
sensor.<device_name>_gas_level	Gas level (0–4 scale)

Image Entities (PIR cameras)

One entity per configured camera zone:

Entity	Description
image.<zone_name>_snapshot	Latest JPEG snapshot

Select which zones are PIR cameras via Settings → Devices & Services → Crow Shepherd → Configure (gear icon) under PIR Camera Zones. On every integration startup, each image entity is automatically pre-populated with the most recent stored picture from the panel. Zones that have no pictures yet remain empty without generating log warnings.

To fetch a fresh picture after a PIR trigger, call crow_shepherd.fetch_camera_snapshot.

Attributes: picture_id, picture_type (alarm / manual), panel_time

Actions

crow_shepherd.fetch_camera_snapshot

Fetches the latest snapshot from a PIR camera zone and updates the image entity.

Target: one or more image.* entities from this integration.

action: crow_shepherd.fetch_camera_snapshot
target:
  entity_id: image.hall_cam_snapshot

crow_shepherd.bypass_zone

Bypass or unbypass a zone on the alarm panel.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
zone_id	number	Yes	Numeric zone ID
bypass	boolean	Yes	true to bypass, false to unbypass

action: crow_shepherd.bypass_zone
data:
  zone_id: 3
  bypass: true

State Mappings

Panel state	Home Assistant state
disarmed	disarmed
armed	armed_away
stay_armed	armed_home
arm in progress	arming
stay arm in progress	arming
triggered	triggered
pending	pending

Automation Examples

Notify when alarm is triggered

automation:
  - alias: "Alarm Triggered Notification"
    trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id: alarm_control_panel.home_alarm
        to: triggered
    action:
      - action: notify.mobile_app
        data:
          title: "Alarm Triggered"
          message: "Your alarm has been triggered"

Arm away when leaving home

automation:
  - alias: "Arm Away When Leaving"
    trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id: person.your_name
        to: not_home
    action:
      - action: alarm_control_panel.alarm_arm_away
        target:
          entity_id: alarm_control_panel.home_alarm

Disarm when arriving home

automation:
  - alias: "Disarm When Arriving"
    trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id: person.your_name
        to: home
    action:
      - action: alarm_control_panel.alarm_disarm
        target:
          entity_id: alarm_control_panel.home_alarm

Fetch camera snapshot when motion is detected

automation:
  - alias: "Fetch snapshot on motion"
    trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id: binary_sensor.hall_cam
        to: "on"
    action:
      - action: crow_shepherd.fetch_camera_snapshot
        target:
          entity_id: image.hall_cam_snapshot

Troubleshooting

Authentication issues

• Verify your Crow Cloud email and password
• Try logging in via the Crow Cloud app to confirm your account is active

Panel not found

• Double-check the MAC address in the Crow Cloud app settings
• Ensure the panel is online and connected to the internet

Entities missing

• Check Home Assistant logs for errors
• Try reloading the integration from Settings → Devices & Services
• DECT sensors only appear if your panel has wireless smart devices

Camera image not updating

• The image entity is on-demand only — it does not update automatically
• Call crow_shepherd.fetch_camera_snapshot to retrieve the latest picture

Real-time updates not working

• The integration uses WebSocket for live updates; it reconnects automatically after disruptions
• If updates are delayed, check your Home Assistant's internet connection

Support

For issues and feature requests, open an issue on GitHub.

Credits

• Uses the crow_security_ng Python library by @tubalainen
• Based on research from ha_crow_cloud_security_component by @tubalainen

License

MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.