I’ve been wondering about this since noticing often my cameras miss the most basic detections. Looks like I need to revamp my system. Thanks for the info!! Great video as always.

Non-native HKSV cameras via Scrypted seems to be the current hot ticket, especially since you can then also use PoE cameras and an NVR, can still record in full resolution (e.g., 4K), and still have HKSV integrations in tvOS for example.

Good video. To me, there are two primary benefits to HomeKit Secure Video - Encryption and tvOS support. I find it difficult to trust anyone else, especially given the recent stories about "encrypted" video from Eufy and others not being encrypted and being uploaded to the cloud without consent.

I totally agree with everything said because I have been experiencing the flaws lately. I was expecting much better from HomeKit secure video but it still doesn’t notify me of some events and the video 1080P when the camera is 4k. As a backup, I use the app for the camera to play back events or receive notifications. I still consider HomeKit secure video good since it allows everything about my smart home to be in one place. If Apple could improve on the following: allow 24/7 recording from the camera instead of cutting clips since it misses most of the events, give the option to pick what resolution (2k, 4k, or 1080P) to use, and improve on events detections, this will make it so much better.

Great explanation. - J

I’m an iCloud + sub, so HKSV was a good fit for me when replacing my Ring system. I’m not having any issues. I ran power to my outdoor cameras to let them ignore any power saving features, so that may help.

Thanks for the video, appreciate the work that went into it. I’m one of those who will only do HomeKit Secure Video cameras. I get what you are saying about other vendors and services and I do load the vendors app on my phone so that I can do firmware updates etc. For me, I need to make it as seamless and simple as possible or my wife will not use it. I’ve installed cameras for home security and a lot for her security if I travel. If she has to open multiple apps, and we have to pay multiple services for the same function, she won’t use it. I realize the irony of have a video recording that is unreliable but the use case is really more of a live stream situation. I have noticed that sometimes video clips don’t get recorded and I have to restart my Apple TV (acting as the home hub) for things to work well. I use the Logitech Doorbell Camera and really like it. It did have connectivity problems when I got it a year ago but it has been very stable for a while. Before I added an additional door lock and a couple of cameras, the recording seemed to be very reliable. Not sure if the number of devices is a factor. Just installed the Eve outdoor camera/light and really like the functionality, though I’m not a fan of the looks .. it’s huge! The other thing that I don’t like about it is that I can’t select which device will act as the home hub, it’s totally up to the apple software. With different versions of Apple TV’s, HomePod, and HomePod Mini’s (yes I’m an Apple fanboy), I would prefer that I could set a pecking order for which device acts as the hub (unless you know something that I don’t!?) All of that being said, every system has its pluses and minuses and I’m quite happy with the Homekit solution overall.

Good stuff. I was one of those a little too obsessed with staying with HomeKit Secure Video for outdoor cameras. I've seen many tempting alternatives from folks like Eufy, and now I'll give them a proper consideration. Thanks for the information!

Thank you for the info! Will doorbell cameras ever support Matter or Thread?

You should also mention that eufy put people’s entire live streams from the camera on the interner without any encryption when mentioning their products and publicly lied about it multiple times.

I was having serious issues when I had XFINITY. My Circleview doorbell cam would lose connection daily. Since I switched to Fidium Fiber along with their supplied router, no issues. I also have a 3 Eufy cams. Really like them.

Unfortunately, the limitations have kept me from going full Homekit. I've been using Nest cams since 2016, and they're still the most reliable AND record 24/7. I hate that they're owned by Google, but until I can get at least the same functionality, I don't see myself changing at least the outdoor ones.

Thanks for the info, bro.

Is there anyway to link the google home hubs with the screens into HomeKit? I use Nest cameras and have yet to switch them over because of the quick view with the screen on the Google Hub.

gave the logi circle view camera's a go last month, and it was absolutely terrible. the connection issues are so bad I don't understand how this product made it to market

Great video. Also, HKSV doesn’t record live view, which is really annoying. My old Ring doorbell would record whenever I did a live view, and that was really nice.

My HSV records events when it feels like it will go days without any recording in the home app it appears to be getting worse it was good when I set it up a year ago

I had a Wye cam and the subscription service wasn’t available in Australia so Apple offers to other countries I don’t use the Wye cam anymore because it doesn’t do anything after it got updated for subscription services to do what it used to do for free

I’m running Ring cameras through Scrypted into HomeKit because of this

I have four HKSV cameras and all of them went from “no response” 50% of the time to now being offline for months. I have reset them, unplugged them, and it doesn’t make a difference. They are Logitech circle view cameras and they are garbage. Yes, all of them are outdoors, but I have mesh WiFi throughout the house and the cameras show up as getting a reliable signal in the WiFi router app. The problem is definitely an Apple or a Logitech issue and not a WiFi issue.

Actually it’s amazing as it is for a single homepod mini to process all the object detection for a dozen cameras. I don’t know how apple does that.

This was very helpful. I was thinking my next doorbell would be homkit video but not now.

What turned me off on SV was that it just killed the battery on my eufy cameras.

Will this doorbell send a notification to apple TV if the doorbell is pressed?

I got the logitech circle view camera and the circle view doorbell. I'm trying to get a third camera and both the eufy camera and the ecobee smart camera seems not to work properly with homekit. The eufy camera desable all activity zones, including the logitech cameras ones. I setup the ecobee smart camera and now it is doing the same. For some reason, it seems that once you get logitechs you can't add a different brand, because the activity zones won't work and you will start getting "motion sensor detected" notifications for stuff outside the activity zone. Does anyone have a solution for this? I have look several videos and I have not been able to find anyone talking anout this.

Really wish the arlo cameras supported HomeKit secure video. Such good cameras. So I’ve never tried the eufy cameras. So with the eufy cameras for example, are you also saying that on secure video, they’ll miss those motion detections? But on their regular eufy plan, they won’t miss them?

I should also say, the Logitech Circle View Doorbell is the BEST of the three Homekit cameras I have and is the ONLY one to always stay connected.

to address some points you mentioned, I needed to switch to AppleTV home hub for better ML performance, and I used recording option whenever any motion detected.

So which camera would you recommend for in door then ? I want to put cameras in my stores and was thinking HomeKit once / matter

In every situation I know where someone has installed cameras in their home, it is because of the need to monitor elderly parents. That's the situation with me - my mom is acting more and more erratic as she approaches 90. She is living with us, and unattended during the day. There are real concerns about her attempting to cook, forgetting she has a pot boiling until all the water is gone, etc. But worse, as OCD and dementia sets in, she is prone to tamper with everything -- sifting and sorting through the garbage, hoarding -- this goes on and on. But to the point - whatever cameras I install will need to be tamper resistant, inconspicuous, and beyond her reach. It truly is like childproofing to live with a 2 year old, only in many ways a lot more capable and dangerous.

Hi Eric, agree that both my Circle View Doorbell as well as the Eve Outdoor randomly seem to miss events like the mailman dropping off letters. Have no idea what the issue is and thereby how to fix it. Is there a known root cause?

My cameras miss stuff all the time and looking through footage is horrible. I feel like Apple should be on top of making this platform way better. It would also be nice to use the 2k cameras to their full capacity instead of downgrading them to 1080p.

I find it curious that the indoor cameras work well, but the outdoor cameras have more issues. I have a feeling that the issues with the outdoor cameras is they tend to be made to run on very little power. Like in this video I fond the cameras that run on 110 power have very little issues, if any. I also was experiencing issues with my Circle View doorbell camera. Lots of Wi-Fi dropouts, missing obvious events, etc. I swapped out the doorbell transformer for a higher voltage one and all, 100% of the issues I was having vanished. The perplexing thing was that the same camera still worked on the lower voltage, but had the issues. This really makes me think a power issues is at least somewhat to blame for the mentioned issues. I know that the manufactures try their hardest to get these outdoor cameras to run on as little power as possible, but are the handicapping things like HomeKit Secure Video?

Hmmmm I was expecting some kind of deeper analysis and maybe some workarounds/solutions but hey....

Anyone seeing issues with facial recognition with iOS 17? It’s broken for me currently

To me it's at least a little bit about normal trade offs. Eufy was caught a year ago? Maybe a little less? Lying about their end-to-end encryption, and it turned out it was VERY easy to infiltrate the video feed of these cameras. This is beyond concerning to me, and something that I'd honestly just... never allow in my home. Features and support are important to me on my cameras as well, and I know HomeKit, secure video enabled cameras aren't that great unless you spend a bunch of money, which is why I don't have any yet lol. I think if I were to do it the way I wanted I'd actually need to go with Ubiquiti, which is just... way more than I want to actually do yet. Eventually I think I'll probably get there, but I'll likely have a whole server rack by that point. I think in less than 5 years time we're going to see more and more home server solutions made more accessible to the pro-sumer market.

My problem is it disconnects all the time but the native app of the cameras still work. almost 50% of the time if i try to live view from my phone it disconnects then i have to switch to the other app. It really sucks cause i love sticking with everything apple.

It’s strange how we keep seeing creators mention eufy after they were caught creating unique ids and attached to all faces and sending them to their servers. This is a huge privacy issue and goes against what they used to claim about their own security. Eufy has created a massive database of all faces ever seen in their cameras. The unique id, in theory will allow them to know when you’re seen at other locations as well.

if you use Real Cameras (POE) with embedded detection and Run them through scypted to make them homekit compatible, Apple's Ai is super impressive. I get Animal alerts, people, if someone steps on the porch I see them on my TV in real time. The detection with the Updated homekit is fantastic. I am comparing to Hikvision acusense, codeproject Ai, BlueIris, Scrypted ai. Wifi Cameras will always be unreliable, what I am trying to figure out and my question would be, Apple Home Kit on apple TV only allows a Single Camera or All of them, no way to do smaller Groups has any one tried that?

Just get POE cameras that support RTSP, a 1liter pc, setup ubuntu or debian, install docker and run scrypted.. not even missing one event 👍🏻benefit: you can choose the camera you want and motion events get triggered via rtsp and this triggers homekit, if no motion detection is happening in the camera you can use plugins that also do it localy. Ran 5cams over scrypted without problems.

Why do people have issues with getting someone to install their Eve web cam? I can't do it I'd have to pay.

Because HKSV is locally processed, if you have more cameras than hubs you will have problems. Each hub can only process one clip at a time, so if it receives more than one clip at a time then it either misses one completely, or notifies you of non-specific motion even when you have set it to only notify for people/vehicles/animals (as a fail safe), so you can spammed with loads of false alerts (which I do as I only have an Apple TV and 9 HKSV capable cameras). So when people like AI say ‘I don’t know how it missed that person’ it is usually because the hub(s) was busy processing another clip, even if the clip end up having nothing of interest in it so it didn’t record/notify making it seem like it is not working.

If you use abode does it use homekit secure video?

My cameras are always going offline.

hmm. homekit secure video being reliant on the cloud, means all intruders need to do is know out your internet or power.

Team1

Hey just to let you know that a channel called MrHomeVideo ripped your video off and substituted a computer voice.

if that's the case then homekit secure video is useless end there is no point on getting apple homekit devices. You can use a different system but you need a hub. Do you see Apple improving this? and, device manufacture expanding to offer homekit secure video?

Horrible Horrible. First, why are they FORCING limited resolution? Then why are the clips so short? Is disk space THAT expensive? Often I get multiple clips with skips in the middle. And I DISAGREE about the EVE camera. I have 3 commercial access points in my home, one within 15 feet of the EVE camera, and signal is POOR. Oh, and its actually my SECOND EVE camera, because for some unknown reason (EVE couldn't figure it out either) my EVE camera no longer could use its QR code to pair it. It said the QR code, on the sticker connected to it, was the wrong code. If starting again, I would NEVER use Apple Secure Video. Today there are many solutions, without a monthly charge. 25 years ago Apple products were the best, but over time, many areas have dropped to the point where Apple solutions are definitely NOT the best in MANY MANY cases.