How to stop Amcrest camera from tracking motion while Surveillance Station is in Home Mode

Question

Problem

I have an Amcrest IP camera set up which records to Synology Surveillance Station (SS) when triggered by motion detecting, with motion tracking enabled. I've set up my regular recording profile (record only when motion is detected) and Home Mode (no recording at all).

What I would like to achieve is that when I’m in Home Mode, not only does the camera not record, but it also doesn’t track any motion (i.e. pan or tilt) at all. Ideally, it would be even better if I could tell at a glance whether the camera was currently active or not (mostly for the benefit of house guests).

As a last resort I might buy a smart plug and use IFTTT to trigger it to shut the camera's power off, but I would prefer to avoid adding another device to the mix.

What I've tried

I’ve set up Action Rules in SS where the trigger is entering (or leaving) Home Mode, and the action is to disable (or enable) the camera. When I enter Home Mode I can see that this has the effect of disabling the camera, but this applies on the SS side only - so the camera still actively detects and tracks motion.

Is there a way that I can configure the Action Rule to disable the camera itself (either by disabling motion tracking, or powering it off)?

Answer 1

I’ve pieced together the solution which is fairly straightforward, just poorly documented.

Firstly, I discovered Amcrest's Privacy Mode which is exactly the option that I want to toggle using my Action Rule.

Amcrest has a partially documented API but this doesn’t mention Privacy Mode.

However, the missing piece to the puzzle is this Amcrest user who found the right syntax by trial and error:

http://youramcrestip/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=getConfig&name=LeLensMask
http://youramcrestip/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=setConfig&LeLensMask[0].Enable=true
http://youramcrestip/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=setConfig&LeLensMask[0].Enable=false

Lastly, you can call this using the Webhook option as the Action in the SS Action Rule: