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Circle View Doorbell - anyone else gotten the run-around?

I wanted a doorbell that supported HKSV and, despite some discouraging reviews, purchased the Logitech Circle View Doorbell. This has been an interesting experience and, as far as I can tell, an exercise in buck-passing. Amongst the issues I've experienced:


(1) The front glass of my first unit delaminated due to sun-exposure

(2) The doorbell gets hot and goes offline (why would you make it black if it had an overheating issue)

(3) The doorbell experiences intermittent connectivity

(4) The doorbell chime stops working until you remove it from its housing and re-install (I bought a HomePod mini primarily to act as a doorbell chime... that was never the intended purpose for the initial designers I am sure).


Obviously (1), (2) and (4) are hardware issues. Issue (3) might be as well. I've done some debugging on this and it looks like my current instability is WiFi related. I have an Orbi WiFi 6E router with two Satellites (one on each level of the house) and a base-station in the basement. Several times a day, the doorbell migrates between the nodes and changes between 2.4 and 5ghz. I noticed this behavior even when the device was mere feet away from a satellite (I hooked it up to a USB power source indoors).


I changed to use my IoT SSID (2.4 Ghz only) and this did little to rectify the situation (it still moseys between the Orbi base and satellites). I also assigned a fixed IP on my home network (this does help for some devices like printers and thought it worth a try as it couldn't hurt anything).


I've used the terminal on my MacBook to ping the doorbell. The response times are between 90ms and 3000ms (three whole seconds) with quite a few ~1000s in there. Now, depending, of course, on how this doorbell is implemented, responding to ICMP packets may be de-prioritized by the kernel, but still!


I've reached out to Logitech on several occasions in regards to this device; my communication is passed to higher-level support who don't respond quickly and are always looking for a way to pass the buck back to Apple. I do have a few of Logitech's Circle View cameras; these work quite well and I have never experienced this sort of instability, so this calls into question how this could be a HomeKit problem. Logitech did request (and receive) logs from me and apparently these were either insufficiently verbose or skimmed such that the WiFi wandering was missed.


Another fun fact: On Amazon, the "Circle View Doorbell" is listed as a 'Style' of the "Circle View Camera" which means that the reviews between the (quite good, in my experience) Camera are aggregated with the execrable Doorbell.


Questions:

(1) Has anyone else had this run-around with Logitech in regards to this doorbell?

(2) Is there a credible HKSV-compatible doorbell out there? Apple (despite its manifold flaws) lists this as the "Featured" doorbell on Smart Home Accessories - All Accessories - Apple.



Posted on Jun 14, 2024 1:04 PM

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Circle View Doorbell - anyone else gotten the run-around?

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