HomeKit 2 Apple TVs are better than 1?. Need opinions.

[jedimasterkyle]

So I'm needing some outside perspective and opinions on something that I've been toying with for the past day. Let me paint the picture...

My wife and I woke up yesterday morning and I found that our front door Eufy outdoor camera had been listed as "offline" in HomeKit basically all night. Not great so I went through the usual motions. Restarted the camera from the Eufy app. Restarted my Apple TV. Restarted my iPhone. Double and triple checked that my network was alive and everything was working.

Once everything restarted, I noticed that this particular camera was still having a hell of a time just trying to stream the live video feed outside my front door from the home app. So I tried to watch the live stream from the Eufy app and same thing. Just wouldn't work.

Perplexed and outright confused, I started diving deeper. I quadruple checked that the camera had the latest firmware and software updates from Eufy. I verified that where it is located had good wifi reception (it's actually awesome wifi reception) but I still could not get the live stream to work at all.

So I unplugged the cameras cable from power and forced a hard restart. Waited 30 seconds and plugged it back in. Once the camera came back and reconnected to my network, I tested the live feed again. That seemed to fix the issue or so I thought...



A few hours later, we take our dog to the dog park and we're there for maybe an hour, nothing crazy. While there, I took a quick glance at my home app to see if the camera was behaving any better while away from my network. To my surprise, it was listed as offline again but it was responding slightly better in the Eufy app but still not super great.

At this point, the ONLY thing that makes any kind of sense to me as to why the camera would be so glitchy all of the sudden is the insane heat and wildfire smoke that we've had in the area. I have the camera underneath an awning and it's in an enclosure so it's as water/weather proof as it can get.

As the day went on, I was getting notifications that the camera was online, offline, online, offline, online, offline etc... in the home app and it was driving me nuts.

I decided to turn the camera off in both the Eufy app and Home app for the rest of the day to give it a break but I turned it back on before going to sleep.



Woke up this morning and found that the camera is basically working perfectly again in the Home app and Eufy app and I'm at a complete loss. So we decided to go back to the dog park this morning and after bouncing the conundrum off of my wife for a little bit, she came up with a rather obvious, yet ingenious fix.

What if it's NOT the heat (still not totally ruling that out) but rather, I have too many smart devices for just ONE HomeKit hub?

Within my smart home ecosystem, I have the following devices:

• 5 Eufy cameras
• 4 Matter enabled smart plugs
• 12 Philips Hue bulbs
• 1 Apple TV HD connected to my TV downstairs.

Is it possible, even the slightest bit of remotely, that I just have too many devices being funneled into one HomeKit hub?

If so, is what I'm thinking about doing possible?

My wife's idea this morning was to move our Apple TV HD upstairs to my network rack and plug it directly into the network switch via ethernet and then get a newer Apple TV 4K as our main media streamer for our living room TV. By doing this, having an Apple TV connected directly to the network would serve as the main HomeKit hub while the new 4K Apple TV would pick up some of the slack?

I vaguely remember hearing something from this years WWDC that we will be able to designate primary Home Hubs instead of having the system decide. Either way, if that's the case, I'm wondering if splitting up the smart home workload between two Apple TV's instead of just one is the answer to my issues?

I welcome any and all opinions on this.

 

[m.x]

I know I'm a bit late, but that could very well be a technical limitation of the Apple TV HD. Maybe it's the A8 chip inside, it's a nearly 10 year old chip, but I suspect more that the Bluetooth 4.0 is the main culprit. The 4K one has a Bluetooth 5.0 chip which has a much higher range (4x) than the old chip.
That way the connection to the camera should be way more stable. I wouldn't use the Apple TV HD as the main hub as the 4K has the much better chip inside and supports Matter for the future (if you choose the 128GB version).
I would advise you to connect the 4K model also via Ethernet.

The number of devices shouldn't be a problem, 21 smart devices should be no problem for a HomeKit hub.

And if you like to tinker with stuff, you could also buy PoE cameras and put them into HomeKit with HomeAssistant and another program, that way your connection would be much more stable than WiFi/Bluetooth.

 

[erihp]

I know I'm a bit late, but that could very well be a technical limitation of the Apple TV HD. Maybe it's the A8 chip inside, it's a nearly 10 year old chip, but I suspect more that the Bluetooth 4.0 is the main culprit. The 4K one has a Bluetooth 5.0 chip which has a much higher range (4x) than the old chip.
That way the connection to the camera should be way more stable. I wouldn't use the Apple TV HD as the main hub as the 4K has the much better chip inside and supports Matter for the future (if you choose the 128GB version).
I would advise you to connect the 4K model also via Ethernet.

The number of devices shouldn't be a problem, 21 smart devices should be no problem for a HomeKit hub.

And if you like to tinker with stuff, you could also buy PoE cameras and put them into HomeKit with HomeAssistant and another program, that way your connection would be much more stable than WiFi/Bluetooth.

i agree with the last point.

most of the rest is nonsense.
bluetooth?? has nothing to do with it. the cameras dont use bluetooth.
matter?? doesnt matter.

your ATV should be fine with that number of devices and even a few camera feeds.

especially for cameras, hard wire where you can, if it is barely reliable as is, the most basic $10 wifi jammer from aliexpress would cripple it.

having another ATV wouldnt hurt. it would provide some redundancy for your hub should one go/down/start an update, etc etc.

hardwire one of the ATVs, if you can.

 

[AZhappyjack]

Just to add on, I have no experience with Eufy cameras (I have a Ring doorbell/camera and Arlo cameras), but I also live in the Phoenix metro, where the summer high temps often exceed 115º F, so I would seriously doubt that it's a heat issue. Granted we're comparing different product lines from different manufacturers, but I've never had a "heat" related issue with my equipment.

I did have to add a previously unused first gen ATV 4K to to my network and placed it near the front door to keep my Level door lock connected. So adding an additional ATV to your setup may well solve your issue.