HomeKit keeps saying "Not Available"
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I've given up hope on getting logi circle 2 wired power to function correctly with homekit. It's fine on it's own so I'm not taking it back, however the process of adding the device to homekit (apple home) is by far the worst experience out of the 5 manufacturers I have linked in my apple homekit. I have successfully added iHome plugs, Philips Hue, Sensi thermostats, and switches/dimmers by Leviton. The only items which consistently failed to stay responding are these circle 2 units and after my 5th "full reset-lose all data", I'm done resetting my zone editor and I'm done resetting and re-pairing smart home "apple homekit ready to pair". This is exactly what happens when strict R/D gets lifted.. it turns into android/jellybean/whatever user experience and consumers are expected to outsmart the flaws and bugs. The logi circle 2 app and smartzones are great, the rest has wasted hours of my time.
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@Logi_Aron, no unfortunetly that does not work, i mean it does work briefly again after going into the circle app and disabling and enabling the camera, but after a short time, it becomes unavailable again in homekit!
I first bought the wireless, it didnt work with homekit so i sent it back to amazon, i then purchased the wired one as it was homekit compatible, now thats not working either?! How many chances would you like me to give to you Logitech? or are all your products fail?!
To your question yes i use both the circle and homekit app.
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So, it's March 7 and this seems like still a problem...? Just installed and set up a wired Circle 2 in my front window (Worst install and set up experience ever) and in the Home App, it says "accessory not responding"
Will give a day or two to figure out, then it's back to Amazon. :(
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I removed both my cams from HomeKit, then turned off HomeKit support in the Logi App. I then powered off both cams for 10 seconds. Plugged them back in. Opened the Logi app turned on home kit support. Then completely closed the Logi app on my phone. Went into home app and added the cameras again. All works great in HomeKit now. It also works great on my Apple TV with homecam app. Just remember when you power down your cameras to get the HomeKit setup numbers off the cameras again. Lol -
Out of curiosity, have all of you changed the streaming settings and increased the resolution to 1080p (it defaults to 720p). I was having major HomeKit problems at 1080p and when I undid my change and set it back to the default, things got better. Now of course I wish I had all 1080p worth of resolution, but its a tradeoff for now.
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For those with Netgear Orbi WiFi routers, they have a fix for the Not Responding issue. https://9to5mac.com/2018/05/08/netgear-orbi-homekit-error-no-response/
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Still having the same issue. I've been working with Logitech support but nothing has resolved the issue. However, today I tried turning the camera off from the Logi Circle app. Even though the camera is supposed to be off, I can still access a streaming feed from the iOS Home app which doesn't seem right but more interestingly, I have yet to get a "Not Available". I'm wondering if the issue is when the Logi Circle 2 is recording and you try to access the live feed from HomeKit.
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@[shred86]?,
The reason the issue goes away when you "turn off" via the Circle app is that you are releasing the hardware resources that the Circle stream uses and freeing those up for the HomeKit stack to use. The core underlying issue is that Circle has to adapt to the Apple Home App resource allocation within the camera. HomeKit requires two separate dedicated hardware encoded streams. We can't send the Home App the same stream that we use for recording footage because the Home App takes over bitrate and framerate control and uses a lossy network protocol. The HomeKit protocol currently has two "active" call slots available in it. Think Slot A and Slot B. Within the protocol, Slot A has some characteristics and Slot B has others. Slot A must always contain the largest supported resolution of all Slots. The Circle 2 hardware is capable of producing multiple simultaneous video streams, but due to hardware limitations, it can't produce two 1080p streams at the same time. It is capable of producing two 720p streams and the 1080p+720p combination. HomeKit also requires that the capabilities of Slot A and Slot B never ever change. A camera can mark Slot A and B as available / unavailable based on the current conditions on the camera.
So, what does this mean. Slot A is the one that has 1080p, 720p and other smaller resolutions as an option. Slot B just has 720p (but no 1080p) and other smaller resolutions.
When Circle recording mode is active, Slot A is always marked as busy since Circle is using the hardware resources that can supply the 1080p stream. Slot B is marked as available until one iOS device connects to the live stream, then it is marked as busy. This is where iOS starts to get confused. When you finish the HomeKit live stream, Slot B is marked as not-busy again. We are working with Apple to figure out where the actual issue occurs.
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Thanks for the detailed post. Two follow up questions:
1) If I'm understanding your explanation, the Circle 2 camera should never be able to record at 1080p while viewing a live feed through HomeKit at 1080p. However, I'm able to do this, just not consistently or reliably. For example, right now my Circle 2 camera is recording because we're moving around in front of it (I can see the motion trigger in the iOS Home app and also view the recording after the fact in the Logi Circle app) and I can also view the live stream through the iOS Home app. Again, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
2) It sounds like you guys know what the issue is. If that's the case, how come we're not hearing about this until just now? Looking at these forums, it's been an issue for nearly 6 months now and I've gone through multiple emails over several weeks/months with Logitech support trying to troubleshoot the issue.
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@Jamie M?,
If Circle is set to 1080p mode, you can never watch a 1080p stream in HomeKit, the most you will see is a 720p stream. The HomeKit stack Slot A is always marked busy. If Circle is set to 720p, I don't think you can get a 1080p stream in HomeKit either, but you will still get a 720p stream.
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Well, I have my Circle 2 set to 1080p and I can view a live video stream in HomeKit. Are you saying that it's actually a 720p feed even though I have it set to 1080p? The live streaming video looks nearly identical in the Circle app and Home app, so I was under the impression it was 1080p. I have tried setting the Circle 2 to 720p and still get the same "No Response" issue when trying to view the camera in the iOS Home app, but I'm now aware that's based on the issue you mentioned above:
"This is where iOS starts to get confused. When you finish the HomeKit live stream, Slot B is marked as not-busy again. There is some issue in the Home App that doesn't check Slot B after it becomes available again and only looks at Slot A. This has nothing to do with the camera, but the logic on Apple's end in their app"
As for this being "very clear in the forums since the beginning that the issue was on the Apple side", I'd have to disagree. Just read through this thread...
I'm not sure if it's even clear to the Logitech support team as I've gone in circles (as others have if you read this thread) about this exact issue... I appreciate you taking the time to respond though. I've had this camera for several months now and this is the first I'm learning it's actually an issue with HomeKit and not the Circle 2 camera. I'm assuming this is the same issue on other HomeKit compatible cameras (there's only one other one I think right now).
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Yes, if you have Circle set to 1080p mode, then you are seeing a 720p max stream in HomeKit live view, whereas the Circle live view will show you the 1080p steam. This is because Circle can piggyback live view on its own recorded content stream.
I can't really speak for all other HomeKit cameras, but the ones I have disassembled use other video encoding solutions than we do.
We hope that with the HomeKit SDK updates coming soon, we will be able to fix this issue for good. I will post back here when we have a beta firmware available if you are interested in testing it.
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So 5 months passed. We are now on iOS12 and the problem remains. The Circle 2 can't stream 1080 in Home as promised in the product sheet.
So what happens now? Are you going to wait forever until every Circle 2 customers die and everyone forget about your product? Can't anybody at Logitech pick his phone and have a chat with Apple engineers to fix this issue? It's not like there was 20 HomeKit cameras and they can't talk to each vendor. There are only two.
BTW For those foolish customers that are thinking of buying the Circle 2 for it's HomeKit compatibility, I highly recommend getting the D-Link Omna 180 Cam HD, which streams flawlessly in beautiful 1080 in Home and send alerts as a motion detector, as promise in the product sheet. Storage is on SD-Card so no subscription needed.
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