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Camera Troubleshooting

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Dusty Greif edited this page May 3, 2020 · 24 revisions

Live Stream Troubleshooting

Live streams in the homebridge-ring plugin work out of the box for most users, but sometimes require some troubleshooting. They do not require any additional configuration beyond what is required to use the plugin in general. The requests and data for the live streams flow through many network devices along their path to screen so problems can pop up anywhere along the way. If you are having issues with your live streams, please follow these steps. You can try live streaming after each step to see if your issue has been fixed.

  1. Make sure you are on the latest version of the homebridge-ring plugin
  2. Verify that your Ring subscription is active. The live feeds go through the Ring servers and require an active subscription to function.
  3. Restart the following devices
    • Your phone/tablet/mac that you are trying to view the live stream on
    • Your hombridge server (raspberry pi or whatever you are running it on)
    • Your HomeKit hub. This is an Apple TV, iPad or HomePod that your HomeKit data passes through to get from your network to the cloud.
  4. Ensure that your homebridge server and your HomeKit hub are on the same network.
  5. Remove the camera from HomeKit via the Home app, then add it back. If you don't see the camera as an option to add back, follow the steps below.
  6. Check your logs in homebridge

If you are still unable to use live streams after these steps, it is most likely an issue with your network or with your ISP. Unfortunately these issues are beyond the scope of this plugin and I probably will not be able to help you. Please note, reinstalling homebridge/hoobs will most likely not fix any issues with this plugin. It's a drastic move and will probably just be a waste of your time.

Check your logs in homebridge

A proper live stream should look like this:

[Ring] Preparing Live Stream for [Camera Name]
[Ring] Waiting for stream data from [Camera Name]
[Ring] Received stream data from [Camera Name]
[Ring] Streaming active for [Camera Name]
[Ring] Stopped Live Stream for [Camera Name]

If you do not see Preparing Live Stream logged at all, then HomeKit/homebridge are not properly relaying the live stream request to the homebridge-ring plugin. Follow the troubleshooting steps above (particularly rebooting all your devices) which normally fix this issue.

If you do not see Waiting for stream data or if it's shown only after the video stream already timed out on your phone, then make sure your homebridge host is able to dispatch DNS requests (UDP port 53) to the public internet. Resolving names using local network DNS is not sufficient.

If you see Failed to retrieve public ip address, then your IP address is not externally discoverable with any of the methods that we currently use to get your external IP address. This is likely something odd that your ISP is doing and not an issue that we can fix with the plugin.

If you see Waiting for stream data followed by Stopped Live Stream, it is a network issue. Your router is not allowing the ring plugin to open the ports that it needs for stream data to flow in. Check your router to see if it has UPnP or NAT-PMP features that you can enable. If those settings aren't available or don't fix the issue, there isn't much I can do for you. If you are a developer and are able to find a code solution to the problem, I would be happy to take a PR to help others having similar network issues.

Snapshot Issues

Users occasionally see an error like Snapshot failed to refresh after 60 attempts or Failed to retrieve snapshot for Front Door (50.634s). The camera currently reports that is it online. These message means that the plugin tried to request a new snapshot from your camera, but the Ring servers did not have an updated snapshot after ~50-60 seconds. There are a few things to check when this happens:

  1. Ensure the camera has internet connection. You can check this by opening the Ring app and starting a live stream
  2. Try getting a snapshot via the Ring app. Every time you open the app it requests a snapshot and shows the latest snapshot for each camera. If the camera does not show a new snapshot in the Ring app after a minute or two, then the camera is probably in a bad state and needs to be restarted. To restart the camera, you must remove power from the camera and then power it back up. For battery cameras, this means physically removing the battery and putting it back in. For hardwired cameras, you will need to turn off the circuit breaker that powers that camera.
  3. If you have power cycled the camera and still cannot get snapshot updates within the Ring app, double check you WiFi strength for the camera and your internet upload speed. If both of those are good, then your last hope is to reach out to Ring support and inform them that you are not getting snapshot updates in the Ring app (don't mention the homebridge plugin as they don't provide support for it). Please do not open an issue on this Repo as I will not be able to give you any further guidance than what you see here.
  4. Ensure you do not have the Modes feature set to block live view of the camera. If this is active, snapshots cannot be retrieved.

Cannot add Camera from Home

Cameras are no longer registered as external accessories, and instead are provided through the normal homebridge Bridge accessory. Please update to homebridge 1+ and homebridge-ring 8+ to use bridged cameras.

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