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Security Camera Snapshots in Home App Failing to Refresh for Some Users

Coming up next: Someone will reinvent this gadget and make it restart your cameras automatically when they’re frozen: https://www.404techsupport.com/2016/03/15/smart-outlet-reset-wifi/

(I can see this going into an infinite loop if it’s too picky about internet connection)

Anyway: My 3 circle 2 cameras will sometimes show an old thumbnail, but usually refreshes by it self within a few seconds when opening the home app. It’s been like that since I converted them ~1 year ago.

I am more annoyed by frequent loss of connection (offline/online). Comes in periods. Weeks of stable connection and suddenly it disconnects many times per day. It’s only one camera. Ironically the one that has free line of sight to the wifi router 6 feet away. Tried to swap position with one of the other cams and for now both seems stable. Fingers crossed
 
sodajerk2 said:
Yes, I've noticed this too with my Logitech Circle2 camera. The issue also happened to coincide with all 4 of my Lifx lightbulbs repeated failing to stay connected. Even after uninstalling and re-installing the Lifx bulbs, each of them became disconnected within a couple hours. They still connect to the native Lifx app - just not Homekit. In short, I believe these issues are software issues and not hardware issues.
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Yeah, see my earlier post too about my ikea lights and my Logitech cameras.

The same issue occurs with the home app on Mac. With Mac though you can do much more snooping around in logs and activity monitor to see what’s going on. The problem seems to be with homed (background daemon process) that runs at 100% cpu causing home app to become unresponsive. This lasts for a LONG time (well over 30 mins at a time).

I’ve no idea what the homed process is trying to do but I suspect it is linked to the HKSV cameras. I’ve been having problems with them for well over a year.
 
mark-in-mk said:
I plugged the camera into a Merross Smart plug, and then into the wall - so I can remotely turn the power to the camera on and off when it stops working.
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Ohhhh got it. Very smart. I think I’ll try this setup as well. Thanks!
 
Same issue here in the Home app. The cameras work properly when viewed live, but the thumbnails refresh are not working. This behavior on multiple iOS versions and devices such as iPads, iPhones, Macs. Fully automated house with UniFi Poe cameras (can power cycle remotely) and Homebridge for better integration. Never had an issue before.
 
Complete opposite problem for me. The thumbnail view (used to) refresh in the Mac Home app, but has always failed to stream any live video (using both an Eufy indoor 2K and a Logitech Circle View).

Both work mostly fine when viewed from both the native app and Home app on my iPhone SE. I say mostly because I've also had the same "old thumbnail" problem as some other people mentioned.

At this point, I'm starting to wonder if there's anyone at Apple in charge of HomeKit. All the top people at Apple (Tim Cook, etc) should be using HomeKit in their homes in order to be annoyed by these problems and work on having them fixed.

While the Apple integration should be nice (if it worked all the time without any problems), I'm tired of seeing double-to-quadruple price tags for HomeKit-compatible hardware, I can't wait for Thread/Matter to take over and make the whole smart home market a level playing field.
 
mark-in-mk said:
I plugged the camera into a Merross Smart plug, and then into the wall - so I can remotely turn the power to the camera on and off when it stops working.
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Actually, I am just realizing; is there any way to achieve this setup for my Logitech video doorbell? It doesn’t plug into a regular outlet, it is instead wired to transformer…
 
Dan08 said:
Actually, I am just realizing; is there any way to achieve this setup for my Logitech video doorbell? It doesn’t plug into a regular outlet, it is instead wired to transformer…
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If you plug your transformer into a HomeKit power point, I don't see a reason why not.
You could even set it to turn off in the middle of the night, and back on a minute later.
That's what I do with my camera, so it reboots everyday and stays nice and stable.
Again - I shouldn't have to do any of this - but I do it anyway.
 
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Well my outdated snapshot view is gone, the problem is it’s just a black screen now. Does everyone experiencing this have HomePod minis in their home? I can’t pinpoint exactly when this started happening but I did recently add a couple Minis.
 
This issue persists for us. I take it no one has spoken to Apple about it and gotten any sort of confirmation that this is something they're looking into?

Also, HKSV streaming fails on Mac Minis (Intel and M1) unless you plug in a USB audio input device of some sort. This has been an issue for as long as there has been HKSV.
 
The recent software updates seem to have fixed this and several other HomeKit issues I've been having. I've been in lengthy dialogue with a senior apple support rep for several months who has been in lengthy discussions with apple engineers about these issues. It's nice to see the efforts over a really long time bear fruit finally.
 
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robinp said:
I didn’t know about this. Can you describe it briefly?
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Attempting to watch the live view of a HKSV camera on a mac mini fails immediately with a message that the camera is not available unless some sort of audio input device (like a USB mic or audio interface) is connected. This is almost certainly due to the mac mini not having a built-in microphone with which to talk through the camera.
 
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nsayer said:
Attempting to watch the live view of a HKSV camera on a mac mini fails immediately with a message that the camera is not available unless some sort of audio input device (like a USB mic or audio interface) is connected. This is almost certainly due to the mac mini not having a built-in microphone with which to talk through the camera.
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Ok, thanks. I have a Mac mini although I never use it with home app. I’ll experiment and report on to the apple support rep if I can recreate it.

Edit:
I've just tested and it works fine for me. I wonder if it is specific to the Mac mini model you have or some other software issue? I've got an M1 Mac mini. It does have a webcam connected though so maybe that's suppressing the warning. I'll test without it plugged in but I'm not near it right now (I was testing remotely.)

Edit 2:
Tested again without the webcam connected and therefore without any audio input. All works fine. So I'm afraid I'm not sure I can help with this one. Maybe it is more specific to your installation or setup?
 
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robinp said:
Ok, thanks. I have a Mac mini although I never use it with home app. I’ll experiment and report on to the apple support rep if I can recreate it.

Edit:
I've just tested and it works fine for me. I wonder if it is specific to the Mac mini model you have or some other software issue? I've got an M1 Mac mini. It does have a webcam connected though so maybe that's suppressing the warning. I'll test without it plugged in but I'm not near it right now (I was testing remotely.)

Edit 2:
Tested again without the webcam connected and therefore without any audio input. All works fine. So I'm afraid I'm not sure I can help with this one. Maybe it is more specific to your installation or setup?
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Well, for me, the three cameras that exhibited this problem were/are the Circle View, the Circle doorbell and the Netatmo smart outdoor camera. I've seen this problem with both the M1 mini and the x86 mini that preceded it.

The only other thing I could suggest is visiting the Sound preferences, input tab and make sure it says that you have no input device.
 
nsayer said:
Well, for me, the three cameras that exhibited this problem were/are the Circle View, the Circle doorbell and the Netatmo smart outdoor camera. I've seen this problem with both the M1 mini and the x86 mini that preceded it.

The only other thing I could suggest is visiting the Sound preferences, input tab and make sure it says that you have no input device.
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Yeah, I did check in sound preferences. I have a circle view and a circle 2 camera connected via HKSV. I’ve have almost continuous problems with them for 2-3 years, but now they seem to largely be working well.

I really want to help you but I just cannot reproduce the problem.
 
This has just started happening to my cameras (all Eufy Indoor 2k), I think since the 14.3/17.3 updates last week. Previous to that, I could leave the Home app open on the Security tab on my Mac, and could see the camera thumbnails update about every 10 seconds. If I got a notification of activity on my phone, I could quickly take a look at my Mac and see what was up. Now, the thumbnails never update on any device until I actually view a camera; then, that thumbnail gradually gets further and further out of date, as it never updates on its own.

Anybody else seeing this?
 
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rnb2 said:
This has just started happening to my cameras (all Eufy Indoor 2k), I think since the 14.3/17.3 updates last week. Previous to that, I could leave the Home app open on the Security tab on my Mac, and could see the camera thumbnails update about every 10 seconds. If I got a notification of activity on my phone, I could quickly take a look at my Mac and see what was up. Now, the thumbnails never update on any device until I actually view a camera; then, that thumbnail gradually gets further and further out of date, as it never updates on its own.

Anybody else seeing this?
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Just checked mine and it’s working. Maybe reboot the camera.
 
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rnb2 said:
Thanks - that did the trick. Odd thing was, both cameras had been restarted fairly recently, but not since the OS update.
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Every once in awhile the HomeKit camera will just crap out not sure of the reason but seems like a reboot always solves the issues.
 
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