This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/homeassistant by /u/ComputerInaComputer on 2025-12-27 01:38:44+00:00.
Hey everyone,
I wanted to share a solution I built for a common problem: **getting "status" or notification triggers from a locked-down work laptop** that you can't install software on.
I use a PiKVM to access my work machine (keeps it isolated), but that meant my work laptop was basically a "dumb" video feed to the rest of my smart home. I couldn't trigger my "On A Call" light or get notifications on my speakers when I got a ping.
I built a Chrome extension called **PiKVM Watcher** to bridge this gap.
**How it works:**
- It runs in your browser and watches the PiKVM video stream.
- It uses **local OCR** (Tesseract.js) to read the screen in real-time.
- When it detects specific text (like "Incoming Call", "New Message", or a custom keyword), it fires a **Webhook**.
**The Home Assistant Integration:**
You can point that webhook directly to a Home Assistant webhook trigger.
* *Scenario 1:* Detect "Incoming Call" -> Turn office lights Red.
* *Scenario 2:* Detect "New Message" -> TTS announcement on smart speaker.
* *Scenario 3:* Detect "Meeting Started" -> Pause music.
**Privacy/Security:**
This was big for me. The video stream **never** leaves your local network. The OCR processing happens entirely inside your browser instance. It only sends the webhook payload you define.
Ideally, this helps anyone else who is trying to integrate a "black box" work laptop into their HA setup without installing forbidden agents on the machine itself.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/pikvm-watcher/mhkgijhgjafoaifgdgmnfgeacnfnlfmm
https://pikvmwatcher.com/en