I have an Eufy C22 Solo Cam connected through Eufy Security to HAss. One characteristic of that integration is that to access the cam’s livestream or even to take a snapshot, one has to manually call the camera.turn_on service. This puts the camera from the “Idle” to the “Streaming” state. It stays in that state until the camera.turn_off service is (manually) called.
At first, I built my automations around this fact by checking the camera’s state and if needed turning it on. At the end of the automation I turn the camera off.
Unfortunately this adds around 2-4 seconds of delay before I can take a snapshot or start a recording, increased complexity and the inability to use the lookback feature of camera.record.
So my question is, whether it makes sense to just keep the camera in the streaming/turned on state? Does this have any major drawbacks? What are the technical implications of the camera being in the streaming state when the stream is not played back anywhere most of the time?
I can imagine that it adds load to the HAss’ and camera’s CPU. But is it even noticeable when I have only around 3-4 cams connected?
Hi, I have one camera that is connected to my Syno surveillance station and streams continuously so I can review what happened well before motion was detected.
It allows up to 2k but if I use that level there are network issues (2.4Mhz) aside the fact that storage clogs. Setting it to lower level HD was needed and is sort-off OK but I would not be able to add another camera with the same settings. Unfortunately, a even lower resolution makes no sense and for another camera I had in mind I would love to have your on/off switching
Yeah I can imagine that multiple cameras streaming with a high resolution really clogs up the Wifi…
Does anyone know what it means on the technical side of things when the camera entity in HAss is in the streaming state instead of idle? Does it really mean the camera is streaming its live view although the stream is not being accessed by anything 99% of the time?
If the cameras and/or HA are WiFi connected, then I would be hesitant to even try it, because you would lose bandwidth for all your WiFi gear, since the frequency spectrum is shared.
If the cameras AND HA are wired, then the question is if the HA integration process the stream all the time or only when being viewed. This should be quite easy to test, since cameras use a significant amount of bandwidth, so looking at your switch’s or router’s traffic graph with and without a camera turned on should make it visible.