HomeKit Eufy Cam and HomeKit - Not ready for prime-time?

[Deliro]

I did some research on the matter, and one of the reasons I chose the Eufy cams is their claim of HomeKit integration..

HomeKit so far is a minimized experienced from the Eufy Security app. Lots of features in the app are not available via HomeKit (2 way voice, turning on siren, turning on spotlight, etc) .. Finding events and recordings is a pain on Home app. I don't have a "timeline" on my app after adding the cameras and setting it to record. Not sure if this is a bug. HomeKit also detects motion with nothing there. The Eufy app, when it detects motion, actually does and records it. HomeKit just directs me to a live feed no matter how long ago the event was triggered. Shouldn't it take me to the recording of the motion event?

Battery life is abysmal with HomeKit on. Eufy claims 6 months for this model of charge. Adding HomeKit took it down 4% in a mere 2 hours. I'm assuming because of the false events triggers? At this rate, I'm looking at 10 days of battery.

Anyone with experience on the setup I have? Eufy 1 camera 2C. What am I doing wrong?

 

[d.steve]

I’m not having those issues with eufycam 2, but I do have some issues with the hksv interface...like the linking to live view sometimes. My battery life looks to be some number of months so far. Hard to say, yet. But the 2 is supposed to be 12 months in the first place.

If you like the feature set and UX of eufy more than HKSV, by all means you should just use that (along with basic HomeKit functionality) and not HKSV, unless the value of the security model of hksv trumps the value of the feature set.

Using both systems together will inherently use more battery than one or the other. And hksv will probably use more than eufy.

It also doesn’t really make sense to me to use both because it defeats the basic premise of HomeKit *SECURE* Video.

I plan to re-setup in hksv only and block the homebase from internet access because I want that security model. But hksv does have its issues.

 

[mac.cali]

I’m not having those issues with eufycam 2, but I do have some issues with the hksv interface...like the linking to live view sometimes. My battery life looks to be some number of months so far. Hard to say, yet. But the 2 is supposed to be 12 months in the first place.

If you like the feature set and UX of eufy more than HKSV, by all means you should just use that (along with basic HomeKit functionality) and not HKSV, unless the value of the security model of hksv trumps the value of the feature set.

Using both systems together will inherently use more battery than one or the other. And hksv will probably use more than eufy.

It also doesn’t really make sense to me to use both because it defeats the basic premise of HomeKit *SECURE* Video.

I plan to re-setup in hksv only and block the homebase from internet access because I want that security model. But hksv does have its issues.

I thought the base station needed to work with internet in order to work properly? Someone tested pulling the internet and couldn’t view the camera feeds locally with no internet access. So I don’t believe these are true local connected cameras.

 

[d.steve]

I’ve tested this out myself. HKSV works fine with homebase blocked.

With the eufy app, you can still access live view locally and any previous clips it knew about before it lost internet access. But, i haven’t found a way to discover new clips since blocking access. I think the app gets the clip metadata from the cloud even when local, and then connects locally to fetch them.

 

[mac.cali]

I’ve tested this out myself. HKSV works fine with homebase blocked.

With the eufy app, you can still access live view locally and any previous clips it knew about before it lost internet access. But, i haven’t found a way to discover new clips since blocking access. I think the app gets the clip metadata from the cloud even when local, and then connects locally to fetch them.

Really? What kind of router do you have? I don’t mind using the hksv if I get more privacy. My iCloud plan can handle the cameras I have. Only thing I can think I need the app for is firmware updates, unless I can manually update those for usb?

 

[d.steve]

The router isn’t anything special. It came from my ISP. But it lets me block any device I want.

 

[Deliro]

Thanks for the replies.. There are cool features with HomeKit that are nice to have, but not at the cost of all the false positives and battery drain. When I woke up this morning the Home had 12 notifications of motion, Eufy app had 0. When reviewing the 12 events, nothing was there nor were there any motion/movement that I could detect.

It's apparent that Home doesn't use the AI features of the cam or the motion sensitivity. I can't find any option to increase or decrease sensitivity on the Home App.

It's a shame that I can't use the Eufy app to direct recordings to go to HSV and not the base. Oh well. I'm sure it'll improve in time, but for now I'll stick with just the Eufy app.

 

[d.steve]

Thanks for the replies.. There are cool features with HomeKit that are nice to have, but not at the cost of all the false positives and battery drain. When I woke up this morning the Home had 12 notifications of motion, Eufy app had 0. When reviewing the 12 events, nothing was there nor were there any motion/movement that I could detect.

It's apparent that Home doesn't use the AI features of the cam or the motion sensitivity. I can't find any option to increase or decrease sensitivity on the Home App.

It's a shame that I can't use the Eufy app to direct recordings to go to HSV and not the base. Oh well. I'm sure it'll improve in time, but for now I'll stick with just the Eufy app.

Did you notice that you haven’t been able to access homebase recordings for the last 9+ hrs?

Turns out eufy servers are required for normal (non-hksv) operation of eufycam 2/2c, the new 2k indoor cameras, and their doorbells, and they’ve been mostly down. Crazy that this is a product requirement.

Can’t login in the app

Hello, I’m trying to add my girl in the app, she has made an account, but she can’t login on the app, the message appears “service unavailable (503)” now what?? I don’t know it anymore…

communitysecurity.eufylife.com

 

[GGJstudios]

I've had terrible experiences with eufy, and would not recommend their products to anyone. First, I couldn't connect their Indoor Cam 2K Pan and Tilt to Homekit, so I can't save recordings to iCloud. Before they would answer even general questions about their product, they expected me to send them specific information, including my home address. Of course, that wasn't happening! I was forced to try recording to their own cloud service. Then I learned that there is no way to backup or download the recordings from their cloud. The only option is to use the phone app and save recordings, one at a time, onto the phone. Considering that the motion-detection triggers recordings of no more than 5 minutes each, it records 20 videos per hour. A few weeks of data means having to manually save thousands of videos, one at a time, onto the phone.

This is horribly inefficient technology, coupled with terrible customer support. I caution against anyone buying eufy products. YMMV.

 

[Deliro]

Sounds like a bad experience. That sucks.

Their iCloud integration is bad. But so is Apple's UI and options for it. I won't try HomeKit again until it's revamped. Eufy's app does the job, and they update frequently. Some of the bugs I had are now resolved.

HomeKit lacks more than 50% of the features of this camera. Motion zones, ability to toggle lights and sirens, etc. Their UI to view clips is horrible. So I blame Apple as much as I do Eufy for my issues.

As far as Eufy cloud service, I don't use it. I use my Homebase's 16 GB for local storage and can access it anywhere via their app. You may want to try that.

 

[lostom]

I can see this thread is kind of old, I only just found it.
I've just recently installed the Eufy 2c camera setup and connect with HomeKit Secure video, wow I wish had seen this thread earlier.

I'm still working on my settings, so I might get some better improvement, my front facing driveway cam has decimated by 61% in 11 days ( since my install), I'm horrified.

I have a PI 4 (for other uses), so will probably look at other cams and use homebrige to add those cams to get a better result with HomeKit.

I can see a lot of up ladder action to take the Eufy Cams down for regular recharges, not a massive big deal, but surprising/disappointing.

I'm sure there are battery saving setups, I just haven't got them yet, I'm thinking it's because of my circumstances, I'm in and out of the house regularly, so there are a lot of triggers, probably need to turn off when home, but if I'm out the back, I like to have a notification if there is activity at the front area of my house.

 

[james948]

Homekit Secure Video is a hot mess right now.
Actually, I take that back. It's solid but it's insanely slow and featureless.

I have a few Eufy's and they're good cameras and using their app they're great but i've sacrificed all that to have them on homekit secure video. I'm really hoping it improves soon. Mind you I've been hoping the same thing for siri for years.

 

[lostom]

Homekit Secure Video is a hot mess right now.
Actually, I take that back. It's solid but it's insanely slow and featureless.

I have a few Eufy's and they're good cameras and using their app they're great but i've sacrificed all that to have them on homekit secure video. I'm really hoping it improves soon. Mind you I've been hoping the same thing for siri for years.

Hey James, as a I"m newbie with this, would you mind explaining the sacrifices, I'm prepared to give up HKSV and go with the standard Eufy setup, it's totally opposed to what I purchased the system for, though **** happens, so I'll try and get the best I can with what I've got.
I'm liking the HomeKit setup to be honest, the battery issue is dire though, I also have a iSmartgate garage door setup with cam, though that doesn't work with HomeKit or through Homebridge with Raspberry pi, so I'm using 2 apps for my cam feed unfortunately.

 

[james948]

Sure thing.
Basically at the moment

- going back and watching videos from HomeKit secure video is very very slow and tedious. The interface is poor and scrolling through is a pain.

- you can’t record a 24 hour buffered stream to iCloud. It records when it senses movement only and splits up continuous video into segments.

- you can’t use the micro sd cards you can put in the eufy to do this either because they’re encrypted and bot meant to be removed and transferred like you’d expect. They simply upload to the eufy subscription which you won’t have using HomeKit.

- a bunch of other features eufy has that I can’t remember.


HOWEVER
The eufy cams I’ve discovered to be fairly rock solid and cheap too (in comparison to the Logitech circles I have) so I still think they’re worth it even if you end up waiting for HomeKit to get better.

obviously you can get the eufy cams and not use them on HomeKit or device to go back to the eufy app if you want but you can’t use them both.

tbh if I didn’t have Logitech cams too and want them all in one place I’d probs have stuck with Eufy until I heard HomeKit secure video had improved.

TLR I still think the basic eufy cams are a steal. Dk about the outdoor ones though.
Hope this helps.

 

[lostom]

Sure thing.
Basically at the moment

- going back and watching videos from HomeKit secure video is very very slow and tedious. The interface is poor and scrolling through is a pain.

- you can’t record a 24 hour buffered stream to iCloud. It records when it senses movement only and splits up continuous video into segments.

- you can’t use the micro sd cards you can put in the eufy to do this either because they’re encrypted and bot meant to be removed and transferred like you’d expect. They simply upload to the eufy subscription which you won’t have using HomeKit.

- a bunch of other features eufy has that I can’t remember.


HOWEVER
The eufy cams I’ve discovered to be fairly rock solid and cheap too (in comparison to the Logitech circles I have) so I still think they’re worth it even if you end up waiting for HomeKit to get better.

obviously you can get the eufy cams and not use them on HomeKit or device to go back to the eufy app if you want but you can’t use them both.

tbh if I didn’t have Logitech cams too and want them all in one place I’d probs have stuck with Eufy until I heard HomeKit secure video had improved.

TLR I still think the basic eufy cams are a steal. Dk about the outdoor ones though.
Hope this helps.

Thank you, I appreciate you getting back and providing your input.

It's very helpful, I'll probably stick with the HomeKit option and wait for it to improve.

Just a side note, my first cam's battery expired after 11 days, I'm changing some settings, so things may change.

 

[james948]

Thank you, I appreciate you getting back and providing your input.

It's very helpful, I'll probably stick with the HomeKit option and wait for it to improve.

Just a side note, my first cam's battery expired after 11 days, I'm changing some settings, so things may change.

Do your really need one with a battery? Is there no chance of running one of those outdoor power lines? I hate changing batteries and having to worry about it. Even on my proper camera I have a dummy battery that connects to power. The number of times you're going to have to recharge and worry about the battery getting low and changes in temperature etc. ...

 

[lostom]

Do your really need one with a battery? Is there no chance of running one of those outdoor power lines? I hate changing batteries and having to worry about it. Even on my proper camera I have a dummy battery that connects to power. The number of times you're going to have to recharge and worry about the battery getting low and changes in temperature etc. ...

I think I'll look at solar as an option for battery charging.
I'm fortunate that I have flexibility with my working hours, so charging for 4 hours or so during the day when I'm home is not a big deal.
I've changed some settings now and the battery is lasting a lot longer thus far, seems like getting the settings right in the first place has a major impact on battery life, particularly with HKSV, I'm happy with what I have at present as a first crack at home security video, I'll probably look at other options though for any expansion.

 

[ArtDent]

Which settings have you settled on?

I too bought the 2C cameras for the HKSV integration but I’ve gone back to the Eufy app. I did like that that with HKSV the clips were stored securely in the cloud for no additional cost since I already have a iCloud plan. But the battery hit was ridiculous.

Battery life is definitely better if you stop the camera streaming and recording to the Eufy app/Homebase and iCloud at the same time. But not dramatically. So I’ve switched off the HomeKit link and I just use Eufy.

 

[loopy123]

Another person who bought the Eufy Cams for their HKSV integration only to find HKSV is a hot mess, with motion detection that seems to be random, and drains the batteries like crazy. I ended up deleting the cams from HomeKit and using the Eufy app.

 

[Deliro]

Another person who bought the Eufy Cams for their HKSV integration only to find HKSV is a hot mess, with motion detection that seems to be random, and drains the batteries like crazy. I ended up deleting the cams from HomeKit and using the Eufy app.

Thanks for your reply. I was going to try HK again, but appears I should wait still. I have other issues with Eufy, but overall they're good cameras with decent software. But as this poster said, it's integration with HK is -still- horrible.