Circle View camera going offline
Answered
I have 4 Circle View cameras in my house. They are all setup the same and run off the same wifi network. One of the cameras will run for about 8 hours and then become unavailable. It requires the power to be disconnected and reconnected to get the camera going again. I am running firmware 8.2.64.
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Official comment
Hi Jeff Strout,
Thanks for reaching out and sorry to hear about your experience. We'd love to keep the conversation going directly with the Support Team. So, I will now go ahead and create a new ticket for you. The team will review your case and will be in touch via email as soon as possible. Do not hesitate to let us know if you have any questions as the team follows up or in the meantime as the conversation continues there.
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I have six Circleview cameras three each, at three different locations. My newest cameras at my home, go offline with regularity. The network is solid and I’m not very far maybe 15 feet from my router. I do use eero routers, but for initial set up I simply turn off 5 GHz to allow inclusion to the HomeKit network. The trouble is every few hours two of the cameras go off-line.; independently and not at the same time.. Sometimes they come back online sometimes they do not and I have to unplug them for 30 seconds. When I plug them back in they come back online. These are set up for security purposes but I cannot trust them because sometimes I will wake up in the morning and check if there’s any footage and they will have been off since 10 PM (or whatever time) until I reset them in the morning.
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I have three nest cameras, Starling (which lets Nest play nice with Home Kit), five Arlo cameras and one Logitech Circle View camera running 8.2.64. My home network has fast downlink / uplink internet. The Logitech circle view camera goes offline then online constantly. Daily. The push notifications are super fast telling me this. But it’s not so good when the Circle View camera goes South for several minutes before coming back. The Nests and Arlo cameras are never offline — unless an Arlo camera’s battery dies.
Is a FW update expected for Circle View? Can I push the FW update to this camera?
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I have had this problem ever since I added a Logitech Circle to my HomeKit home. It is the model “Circle View Camera” running firmware 8.2.64 . My router is the Apple AirPort Extreme. I’m /super/ miffed about this as I suspected it was a fringe reception issue - the HomeKit hub was buried in a stack of A/V equipment - so I bought a HomePod Mini for no other reason than to plant the HomePod a few feet away (just inside the outer wall of the house, as close as I can get to the camera - which is on the outside of the same wall). I made the new HomePod my HomeKit hub and moved the old hub to be a Standby. The problem remains. It isn’t a signal strength problem. Wasted a HomePod purchase to find that out. I still get momentary offline-online glitches several times an hour. The false alarms (offline, online) are annoying as can be, but what can be worse than the camera you entrust to watch your front door being offline 5 to 10% of every hour…
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Same problem. Got another mesh access point to put right next to the cameras. Constantly going offline / inaccessible via homekit. Rage inducing. If any logi engineers are reading, it seems like the two cameras I have on the 'main mesh router' are more stable than the other access points. The cameras on the mesh access points are the ones that constantly drop connectivity and require power cycling to temporarily fix. Please, must fix.
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My WLAN is a series of Apple Airports. All are configured by the Apple Airport Utility; nothing complicated is being done. Each has a unique SSID, and each has different SSIDs for the 2.4 and 5GHz ranges. They are not in a range-extending mode. They are all connected by Ethernet using a standard switch. No matter which SSID my iPhone is associated with when I add the Circle View to my Home, I get this problem. As far as range and signal strength go, the house is quite small and the Airports are at each end; the iPhone WiFi icon gets 2 and 3 of 3 bars for all of them, even outside in the very back of the backyard.
I added a Netgear WAP to my network to see if it might be an Apple Airport issue. Same outcome. I configured the Netgear to have dedicated SSIDs for each band (2.4 / 5) and tried both, although only the 2.4GHz needs to be tried. No improvement was seen.
Nothing else in this very gadget-heavy house is having any trouble. And no consumer should have to do a complete root cause analysis, reconfiguring and disrupting their W/LAN for experiment after experiment, to make ANY Homekit-“compatible” product function correctly.
I hope that I am providing enough details to motivate someone at Logitech to investigate this. But I suspect the Circle View Camera has been “sunset” and we will see no more updates for it.
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I want to be optimistic that there will be a fix, but poster Brian C. (see previous replies) said he was running the same firmware I am, and that was nine months ago. A HomeKit device should check for firmware updates automatically every night. Ergo, no new firmware in nearly a year.
I doubt there will be a fix.
That being said, you are right that this product is still current in the stores. Even the Apple Store is still promoting it. So, I conclude the Circle View works for most people.. but Logitech isn’t helping the rest of us determine what we can change to also get ours to work. So I suspect the product is retired, and retailers are just burning through the last of their inventories.
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FWIW in case there is some problem with auto-update, I also tried using the Logi Circle app (iOS) to check for an update. I’m not even sure that app can update firmware, though - because it claims I have never set up my Camera with HomeKit. So, in a word, Logi Circle is also having issues on my WLAN.
Not enough data to go on, but.. i think i am leaning towards my Apple router not supporting whatever needs Logitech Circle View Camera has. I found other Support threads discussing IGMP Proxy needs .. but I am inexperienced with IGMP, so you are on your own, there.
Perhaps the minority of us who use Apple routers have a small configuration issue that is the root of this problem. Apple no longer sells Airport routers, and those of us who depend upon them may be the only ones having this issue.
i hate to buy $400 of new router and mesh WAPs to test this out.. but for many months now I have been feeling like I am on thin ice for trusting an Apple router which is no longer sold. Perhaps ditching Airport is the key, here.. but it is such a high stakes game to play to find out. If only Logitech would help us.
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All of my logi cams are on the same firmware as mentioned above. 8.2.64. I have tp link deco mesh router system, and have disabled the 5ghz antenna to ensure all 'things' use the 2.4 (what the logis demand, which they should use anyway, but trying to rule variables out). No apple router involved. Ive also disabled the ability to quickly switch between routers for these devices, set specific IP address, turned off 'beam forming' (attempting to turn off any 'new fangled stuff' on the routers that might cause problems). And ive added another mesh access point about 6' from the cameras that are the most flaky. No difference.
Mine work 'intermittently'. So, if it was an absolute network problem, it seems like it would be permanent and just never work. Will not speculate beyond that. Just unacceptable for some of the most expensive homekit cameras available. UNACCEPTABLE. google it, there are plenty of people with this problem.
(Ah, as I type, the doorbell has gone offline, how terrific).
I have a few old (big) homepods, and a few new ones (minis), and some newer apple TVs. All acting as hubs. My bandwidth here is pretty limited, but its functional. Should just work, as they say.
Yeah, just not buying more of their stuff. This message is the only kind theyll hear / respond to, i think.
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Out of frustration, i unplugged all of my homepods yesterday. The cameras have been responsive and online since. There may be some issue with the hubs, or in particular, homepods acting as hubs.
If anyone can test / replicate, id love to hear if this is placebo or a bit of fact. all i did was unplug the homepods - didnt even power cycle the cameras.
New homepod software will be out soon - Im on the 'current' software (15.3 i think). will update and reply here with my results after that software rolls out.
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Alright - running with the apple tv as the hub, the cameras are working great.
The 15.4 homepod software came out today. I plugged in my newer pods (the minis), updated them, and then (after they were done updating) power cycled them. They have been acting as the hub for half the day or so, with no camera issues reappearing. snappy thumbnail loading, no 'offline' messages... working great.
Tomorrow, I will plug in the old homepods, update, and power cycle them as i did with the minis. As I am unable to force any particular pod to be the hub, im not sure how thoroughly I can test this... but im hoping one of the old pods picks up hub duties and we can give it another 24 hr check for camera flakyness.
So... maybe with 15.3 homepod software, there is a problem with cameras if the homepod is the hub. (it may only be the old big homepods, unsure - and unsure if 15.4 will mean the big pods are more stable).
Will update again tomorrow or Wednesday.
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Well, with the minis acting as the hub, things were good until about 10 minutes ago. Back to no thumbnail updates and unloadable live views. I restarted my phone (not the cameras nor minis) and the thumbnails are loading again.
Seems like the same symptoms as before the 15.4 update. Homepod as hub is a problem.
I will update the big pods tonight and proceed anyway - will keep this updated.
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The 15.4 update bought me an evening with no dropouts, but by morning the offline-online cycle had resumed. No progress here. Both the AppleTV and the HomePod updated to 15.4, and I removed the Circle View and re-added it from scratch after they had both rebooted.
I had used this same Circle View and AppleTV pair in an apartment for months without having this problem. I had enough trust in it to permanently install the Circle View in a house (drilling through walls, patching, painting) and voila, it turns into a very unreliable accessory.
I have no defensible theories, now. I don’t see what I changed in the move. I was banking on Logitech’s silence as an indication that it was a bug in tvOS. But with a fresh update leaving the problem in place, plus the Circle View being the only, only snag in my entire HomeKit world.. I have no more ideas.
I have turned the Status Change (notify when the camera becomes unreachable) notification off - the constant activation of my smart watch’s vibe alert was draining its battery annoyingly fast. I’ll look for other cameras, and hope I can snake the new camera’s power cord through the wall without redoing all the patchwork over.
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Limited duration review here, but things do seem more stable for me on 15.4, even with the homepods as hubs (mini or old one). Maybe unplugging my homepods for a few days taught them a lesson, idk.
No idea really. Glad they seem more stable. Not without the weirdness where rebooting my phone helped, but way better than it had been.
If thing start acting up again, im going to unplug the homepods again and see if it similarly clears things up for me.
Ward id be interested to hear if unplugging ur homepods for a day helps.
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This morning, I demolished my home network and rebuilt it from scratch, adding in an additional Airport Express that I had in storage. Things have been normal ever since, but I do not want to declare victory until at least 24 hours of uninterrupted camera service go by.
Briefly, the new config: all Apple AirPort products for the WLAN and LAN. Different SSIDs for the bands. More WAPs, hopefully better coverage. All in Wireless Extension mode, a by-the-books AirPort Utility configuration. One HomePod mini and one AppleTV, both tvOS 15.4, as hubs.
This experiment was based on my observation that the Home app could not add the Circle View unless I was literally standing on a chair to keep my iPhone within a half-meter or so of the Circle View (it’s suspended from my entryway ceiling). Home.app would spin for minutes and then abort with “The accessory cannot be found.” My current theory is that the Circle View simply has very, very limited range. Which might make it prone to dropouts, etc. So I rearranged all my WAPs and added an extra (the Express, from storage) to beef up my coverage.
Helluva lot of home reconfiguration to accommodate one “smart” camera. Let’s hope it works.
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I’ve had a day without a loss of camera response. I changed too many things at once to pinpoint a precise problem, but the radio performance of the Circle View seems to be involved. Moving a WAP to have a less obstructed radio path, as well as having a redundant WAP nearby, may have given the camera the coverage it needs.
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