HomeKit secure video not recording

I’m using stream and record both for the “at home” and “away” scenario. And yes I have read the guides.

Anyway the saga continues:

After I posted here yesterday I removed all the cameras again from the home app. I reset them all again and also rebooted my google wifi mesh router.

I unplugged all but one of the cameras and then I tried adding them again one at the time.

Weirdly enough the first camera I tried to add appeared twice during the pairing - popped up with “Circle 2 xxxx” and “Circle 2 yyyy” before the point where you enter the 8 digit code. This was with only one camera being turned on. It took a few attempts to add it. It would time out and give the error “Failed with OSStatus code 5 (EIO)”. But suddenly it was connected. It would not however record. It would only stream regardless of what settings I made for recording/streaming.

But….! Some time during this night it just started recording. This was like 6 hours after I finally managed to add it and set it to “record and stream”.

Sometime during this night we also got a message in the home app that a hub changed status. Don’t know if that’s related at all.

Problem is not really solved yet. I am still unsuccessful in adding the last two cameras. They will time out when I try to add them.

And then I’m still missing a good explanation on why it out of the blue will start or stop recording.

Solved. I think I have reset the cameras ten times or so. The last one keeps appearing twice during setup and would not connect. That it appeared twice let me to think that it might be present on both 2.4 and 5 GHz., but that the camera/HomeKit would only accept 2.4 GHz. However my google mess wifi does not allow me to select only one of them and it might be trying and failing through 5 GHz.

So I shut down my google wifi mess and activated a 2.4 GHz wifi with same name and code from my ISP’s router. Reset and power cycled the camera a couple of times and moved very close to the router. Finally it was able to connect. Now switching back to the google mess and deactivated wifi on my ISP router and it still works.

So I’m guessing that the super automatic google wifi mess was disturbed by another network and changed it settings one week ago. This forced the cameras to a different frequency/channel that was not compatible with HomeKit.

I know Logitech writes that you can press reset for 6-9 s to “optimize” connection. I guess this only works if you have a connection to the camera.

And Apple, google and the rest of all those smart home makers should really coordinate this 2.4 vs 5GHz thing better.

Makers of routers should ensure a separate 2.4 network dedicated for smart devices and phone/Apple TV’s/hubs etc should allow communication with these even though they are on the regular network. Or at least the devices should provide some meaningful error codes allowing the user to do more efficient troubleshooting.

So my wifi actually follow these guidelines including having the same name for 2.4 and 5 GHz, but the issue is that 1) I cannot select if the devices connects to 2.4 or 5 GHz and 2) the google wifi “mess” router will not let me select to only activate one of the bands.

My system is already set up like that - ISP router/modem in bridge mode and the google mess handling everything in automatic mode.

The connection was stable for 2 days.

Last evening one camera dropped connection for 2 minutes.

Then during the night another one (located 3 m in free line of sight from the google wifi) dropped connection for 6 hours until I did the “optimize connection” thing on it again. Didn’t get a notification on my phone - it just went offline and stopped recording.

This is seriously still in beta!

… and can’t really mark it as unsolved again