HomeKit Camera Access from MacOS Home App

[Rigby]

I have one of the D-Link Omna 180 Homekit-enabled cameras. I can view the camera's live video stream in the Home app on iOS, but not on MacOS (Mojave). I get still frames that are updated every 10s in the home/room screen, but when I click on them to access the full video stream, the Home app just says "This camera is not responding". The Mac is on the same network as my iOS devices. Any ideas why the Mac Home app acts differently from the iOS version?

 

[cynics]

I have one of the D-Link Omna 180 Homekit-enabled cameras. I can view the camera's live video stream in the Home app on iOS, but not on MacOS (Mojave). I get still frames that are updated every 10s in the home/room screen, but when I click on them to access the full video stream, the Home app just says "This camera is not responding". The Mac is on the same network as my iOS devices. Any ideas why the Mac Home app acts differently from the iOS version?

Devs don't have access to the framework Apple used to port the Home app from iOS to MacOS currently. Its supposed to be available sometime in 2019, I think you'll probably see improvements then.

 

[Rigby]

Resurrecting this zombie thread because I finally, after more than 2 years, found out what caused this.

Turns out that if you use a Mac without a microphone/audio input device (such as a Mac Mini) and a Homekit camera with "talk" function, the Home app may throw the above mentioned error if you try to view the live video stream. Apparently it tries to open a microphone input device to allow the user to "talk" and hangs if there isn't one. I have encountered this issue on Mojave, Catalina and now Big Sur, so it seems to be a long-running bug.

I discovered this accidentally when I plugged in a USB-C audio adapter because I needed to record an analog audio source, and I stopped having the camera problem. It's enough to leave the adapter plugged in (so an audio input device appears in the sound preferences), no need to connect a microphone. It may also be enough to install a virtual audio input device such as BlackHole, but I haven't tried that.