Camera widget not refreshing quickly

yoloitup · July 23, 2022, 9:21am

For the HA app on Android, there’s the camera widget. When I add it for a door bell camera I have, it’s essentially showing a static image that’s not refreshing. When I tap it with my finger, it does a refresh ONCE and then that’s it. Tapping it some more doesn’t refresh it again. It seems that only once some time has passed (30-60 mins?), I can force a refresh again by tapping the widget. But again, only once. Is the refresh rate limited somehow?

If I look into the camera card on my HA dashboard, it’s showing me a live picture and the camera itself is set to live-fresh mode.

dshokouhi · July 23, 2022, 2:38pm

Can you look at the companion app logs when you tap it multiple times to see if there is a failure?

yoloitup · July 24, 2022, 8:06pm

Where should I look for the companion app logs specifically? Just go into HA and Settings->System->Logs?

dshokouhi · July 24, 2022, 9:15pm

Configuration > Companion App > show and share logs

TimErnon · January 22, 2023, 4:03pm

Sorry for bringing up this old thread again.

I have a similar problem, ReoLink Camera in HA app, but the Android widget doesn’t update frequently. If I press on the widget, it refreshes, but then I have to wait for minutes for the next refresh.

If I check the log I see

01-22 16:55:02.995 10430 26881 E BLASTBufferQueue: VRI[SettingsActivity]#62 Faking releaseBufferCallback from transactionCompleteCallback

many many times.

Any idea?

Thanks, T

Edwin_D · January 22, 2023, 4:06pm

I have this behaviour when I connect trough Nabu Casa to a local IP camera at home. I figured Nabu Casa didn’t want to proxy the camera’s streaming data to keep the load down.

dshokouhi · January 22, 2023, 4:17pm

It updates about once an hour

github.com

home-assistant/android/blob/96cf4f82a3d28ce9702fe637a844740385e51162/app/src/main/res/xml/camera_widget_info.xml#L9

    
      
          <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
          <appwidget-provider xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
              android:configure="io.homeassistant.companion.android.widgets.camera.CameraWidgetConfigureActivity"
              android:initialKeyguardLayout="@layout/widget_camera"
              android:initialLayout="@layout/widget_camera"
              android:minWidth="250dp"
              android:minHeight="80dp"
              android:resizeMode="vertical|horizontal"
              android:updatePeriodMillis="3600000"
              android:widgetCategory="home_screen"
              android:widgetFeatures="reconfigurable"
              android:description="@string/camera_widget_desc"
              android:previewImage="@drawable/widget_example_camera" />

Warthog · April 2, 2023, 2:25pm

I appreciate it’s a rather old thread but just to double check - there is no way to adjust it on the user end is there?

dshokouhi · April 2, 2023, 6:43pm

unfortunately no, the value needs to be in the XML configuration file. You can simply tap on the widget to force it to update.

robonode · July 29, 2023, 1:54am

Hi I wanted to share my solution to this issue as this was one of the first threads I found.

Camera streams were smooth when viewing HA dashboards via laptop/browser and on my main Android mobile device. But the streams would not work correctly on a cheap Samsung Android tablet I bought to use for HA.

After extensive troubleshooting I concluded the cheap Samsung tablet just doesn’t have the power and/or memory to stream the full quality “main” stream from my Reolink cameras. Switching to the lower quality “sub” stream allowed the video to work.

TLDR; reduce the quality of the stream or use more powerful hardware.