Ring Plugin continually live streaming Ring Doorbell about ring HOT 23 CLOSED

Rebooting my apple tv seems to have stopped the constant live streaming, for now at least....
If it doesn't stick I'll try setting the Apple TV to not even show the doorbell on the TV, which isn't great as it is very helpful to see who is at the door if i'm watching TV.

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Yes, didn't think about that, have been trying tvOS 17. Hopefully, its this which is causing the issue and will be resolved when the tvOS is released. For the time being, I've set the doorbell camera to hidden and this seems to have stopped the continual battery drain. Will unhide it again in a few days and see what happens.

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Great! I'm guessing the AppleTV is doing something funky causing it to continually request a live stream. I'll close this issue for now, but feel free to provide updates

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I don't think anyone knows, but I'd have to assume it is a bug. If it's a permanent change it's difficult to see how it could be fixed by any update in the plugin as there would be no way for the plugin to tell a legitimate request for a stream from any other request.

At this point I don't think it's worth conjecture. If Homekit changes in a way that it always requests streams then that seems crazy. Perhaps there will be some way to register a device as battery powered or on-demand, vs continuous. Also, has anyone that has experienced this issue checked in Homekit to see if there are new options? Perhaps a preload-stream or "live preview" option that might cause this. This is a pretty common feature of non-Homekit platforms so I thought perhaps Homekit is implementing something similar.

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@dgreif

With tvOS 17 released yesterday, this remains a problem and when the Apple TV is in use, streams are constantly reconnecting for the duration.

I'm sure it's due to the new Home options in the control center re video.

Lots of load on the device, Ring API and a flood of "Live View" entries in the Ring app event history, which makes that feature basically unusable due to all the noise (ex. finding a legit entry).

[9/19/2023, 7:50:15 AM] [Ring] Preparing Live Stream for Entryway Ring Doorbell
[9/19/2023, 7:50:15 AM] [Ring] Stream Prepared for Entryway Ring Doorbell (0.337s)
[9/19/2023, 7:50:15 AM] [Ring] Activating stream for Entryway Ring Doorbell (0.42s)
[9/19/2023, 7:50:16 AM] [Ring] iceConnectionStateChange: completed
[9/19/2023, 7:50:16 AM] [Ring] connectionStateChange: connecting
[9/19/2023, 7:50:16 AM] [Ring] iceConnectionStateChange: new
[9/19/2023, 7:50:16 AM] [Ring] iceConnectionStateChange: checking
[9/19/2023, 7:50:16 AM] [Ring] Activating Session
[9/19/2023, 7:50:16 AM] [Ring] Streaming active for Entryway Ring Doorbell (1.289s)
[9/19/2023, 7:50:16 AM] [Ring] iceConnectionStateChange: new
[9/19/2023, 7:50:16 AM] [Ring] iceConnectionStateChange: connected
[9/19/2023, 7:50:16 AM] [Ring] connectionStateChange: connected
[9/19/2023, 7:50:16 AM] [Ring] Received stream data from Entryway Ring Doorbell (1.764s)
[9/19/2023, 8:02:16 AM] [Ring] Video stream closed
[9/19/2023, 8:02:16 AM] [Ring] {
doorbot_id: [[removed]],
session_id: '[[removed]]',
reason: { code: 10, text: 'answered_timeout' }
}
[9/19/2023, 8:02:16 AM] [Ring] connectionStateChange: closed
[9/19/2023, 8:02:16 AM] [Ring] iceConnectionStateChange: closed
[9/19/2023, 8:02:46 AM] [Ring] Stopped Live Stream for Entryway Ring Doorbell
[9/19/2023, 8:02:47 AM] [Ring] Preparing Live Stream for Entryway Ring Doorbell
[9/19/2023, 8:02:47 AM] [Ring] Stream Prepared for Entryway Ring Doorbell (0.322s)
[9/19/2023, 8:02:48 AM] [Ring] Activating stream for Entryway Ring Doorbell (0.389s)
[9/19/2023, 8:02:48 AM] [Ring] iceConnectionStateChange: completed
[9/19/2023, 8:02:48 AM] [Ring] connectionStateChange: connecting
[9/19/2023, 8:02:48 AM] [Ring] iceConnectionStateChange: new
[9/19/2023, 8:02:48 AM] [Ring] iceConnectionStateChange: checking
[9/19/2023, 8:02:48 AM] [Ring] Activating Session
[9/19/2023, 8:02:48 AM] [Ring] Streaming active for Entryway Ring Doorbell (1.252s)
[9/19/2023, 8:02:48 AM] [Ring] iceConnectionStateChange: new
[9/19/2023, 8:02:48 AM] [Ring] iceConnectionStateChange: connected
[9/19/2023, 8:02:48 AM] [Ring] connectionStateChange: connected
[9/19/2023, 8:02:49 AM] [Ring] Received stream data from Entryway Ring Doorbell (1.422s)

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Control Center no longer has the Homekit tab.

I noticed yesterday it was no longer requesting constant streams. The feature in tvOS has disappeared from Control Center. Guess we shall see!

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I have also noticed this problem since 20:45 last night (15/08/2023. I have the home bridge plugin setup under a separate shared account as I have access to multiple locations on my normal account The plugin was constantly streaming the live feed until it drained the battery completely. I changed the battery at 6am this morning and it is still streaming causing the battery to die again just now (10:45 16/08/2023) I have had to disable the plugin to get it to stop. Please can you look into this? I really enjoy the plugin. Having my cameras and alarm in the home app is a godsend since this is the forefront of all my automation and SH in general. Thanks!

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I'll probably need @dgreif to comment here, but my initial reaction is that there's not much that can be done from the plugin side. As far as I understand the plugin, it simply provides two functions, prepareStream() and handleStreamRequest(). These functions are not called by the plugin, they are called by Homebridge when it receives requests from a Homekit client to start a stream. Based on the logs, these functions are being called, thus something outside of the plugin would appear to triggering them, either a client is requesting a stream (or never ended its request or Homebridge itself is somehow "stuck" and thinks it needs a stream.

At first glance through the code, I personally don't see any possibility how this could be in the plugin itself. The fact that it just randomly started at a specific time also re-enforces this belief as the plugin itself didn't suddenly change behavior at that moment, something external almost certainly is causing the change in behavior.

But, I'm also super new to Homebridge itself, so there could be something I'm overlooking.

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@tsightler is spot on, there isn't anything in the plugin that should cause these methods to get called. It's likely either a bug with homebridge (which hasn't been updated in a while, so unlikely) or with HomeKit (very likely).

For those of you having issues, are you on a beta version of iOS or tvOS? I know a lot of folks are trying out v7 beta, which has caused other issues as well.

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I have been burning through batteries for the last week (every day!), until I got here and think it is definitely to do with Beta 6 and 7 of TVOS17.

It seems a stream is initiated immediately, then never closes.

For now I have disabled the plugin. Do we think this is a permanent change in HomeKit that may need a plugin update or is it something Apple have done (and will fix)?

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I'm sure it's due to the new Home options in the control center re video.

What new options are you referring to? I don't own an Apple TV so I have no idea but it would be nice to understand the details. It's difficult to see how this plugin can address this as it simply responds to request for a stream, that's it, if tvOS is constantly requesting a stream, there's very little the plugin can do with this under the current model.

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tvOS 17 has a new control center, which includes a Homekit tab. If you navigate into this tab, it shows you all your Homekit connected cameras and also allows you to select recommended scenes. It's constantly updating the video and if you tap in, it shows all your cameras on a full screen grid, and moves to live streaming. You can further tap into a specific camera full screen live streaming (and then go PiP mode live streaming as well).

Clearly from the plugin logs, even if you're not actively in the control center viewing the cameras, tvOS 17 is still pulling video the entire time you're using the Apple TV. I agree it's a situation, I'm not sure what the plugin could do either. A defect likely needs to be opened with Apple, repeatedly to get their attention (https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/). I would expect it to only pull video when control center / homekit / camera's are actively viewed.

This will surely be raised by other plugin users as people update to tvOS 17 and it may be worth noting somewhere. Pretty unfortunate for ring battery users and I wonder if we'll hit ring API limits.

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Looks like each Apple TV is streaming 2-3Mbps from Ring, even when they are sitting idle. Multiply this by the number of Apple TV's in the house and it's going to add up.

Looks like Ring closes the connection after ~15min and Apple TV reopens it after a few minutes. I have 7 other cameras that are local (not cloud), they are all streaming full time as well (does not disconnect).

Oh Apple...

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Ring sessions generally timeout around 10-12 minutes, but if Apple TV is constantly requesting a stream, it will of course restart. I don't know anything that can be done from the plugin side at this point. My wifes iPad and phone are both updated to iOS 17 and Home app still seems to work as expected, so far it seems like it's just a tvOS 17 issue, but I'm not 100% sure. There are other reports on other plugins and cameras of constant streaming as well, so I'll assume Apple will have to fix it reasonably soon as the current setup is unworkable even with completely local cameras, as you note.

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Control Center no longer has the Homekit tab.

I noticed yesterday it was no longer requesting constant streams. The feature in tvOS has disappeared from Control Center. Guess we shall see!

Still there for me - not tried the plugin again as the battery lasts about 8 hours tops. Apple need to sort this as I can't see what can be done with the plugin and battery cameras as a whole.

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@dgreif @tsightler -- Is it possible to log the source addr of the device requesting the stream? So that we can identify the device making the requests. Is that information available?

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You can add this line:

(0, util_1.logInfo)(`Received Live Stream request for ${this.ringCamera.name} from ${request.targetAddress}`);

Immediately after async prepareStream(request, callback) { in camera-source-js (at approximately line 410), to log the IP address from the prepare stream request. I think it's reasonable to include this in the debug log output so I'll push a PR that includes this for the next version if @dgreif approves.

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Ok thanks. I've been doing more testing and it'd be helpful to know where the requests are coming from. I think this could be in the regular log output, not just debug (2c, my preference).

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If you add the line I posted above it will be in the regular log output.

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Yeah, just hoping we can get it into a release was all.

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I have the same issue

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