From 00f61d5acd73153519143ecf6b81542545ed99e9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: starkillerOG Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2025 11:05:42 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 1/3] Add Reolink battery draining troubleshooting step --- source/_integrations/reolink.markdown | 10 ++++++++++ 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+) diff --git a/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown b/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown index 4022ad2cfe8..7c2c3ef93b5 100644 --- a/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown +++ b/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown @@ -740,6 +740,16 @@ Prerequisites: - Reolink cameras can support a limited amount of simultaneous connections. Therefore using third-party software like Frigate, Blue Iris, or Scrypted, or using the ONVIF integration at the same time can cause the camera to drop connections. This results in short unavailabilities of the Reolink entities in Home Assistant. Especially when the connections are coming from the same device (IP) where Home Assistant is running, the Reolink cameras can get confused, dropping one connection in favor of the other originating from the same host IP. If you experience disconnections/unavailabilities of the entities, please first temporarily shut down the other connections (like Frigate) to diagnose if that is the problem. If that is indeed the problem, you could try moving the third-party software to a different host (IP address) since that is known to solve the problem most of the time. You could also try switching the protocol to FLV on Home Assistant and/or the third-party software, as that is known to be less resource-intensive on the camera. - If the Reolink entities go to unavailable for short periods, the camera may be overloaded with requests resulting in short connection drops. To resolve this, first, check if the integration is using `ONVIF push` instead of `ONVIF long polling` (resource intensive) or `Fast polling` (very resource intensive), see the [Reducing latency of motion events](#reducing-latency-of-motion-events) section. Moreover, try switching to the FLV streaming protocol which is the least resource-intensive for the camera, see the [options](#options) section. +### Battery drains fast + +The Reolink Home Assistant integration is supposed to only wake battery cameras once per hour for about 10 seconds, which should not have a big impact on battery life. However there are several things that can influence battery life significantly: + +- Make sure the **Preload camera stream** option is turned off for all battery camera entities under {% my integrations title="**Settings** > **Devices & services**" %} > Reolink integration card > **x devices** > select the battery camera > select the camera stream (do this for all enabled streams) > Gear icon {% icon "mdi:cog-outline" %}. The Preload camera stream will keep a active stream open, keeping the camera awake. This will drain the battery. +- Make sure the **Manual Record** switch is turned off. While this switch is on, the camera will be awake and recording. Excessive use of this entity will drain the battery. +- **Automations** which use entities from a Reolink battery camera can wake up the camera. Changing settings or requesting a snapshot will wake the battery camera for 10-30 seconds. When automations trigger very often, this can cause excessive battery use. +- Some **Custom cards** that can be used to view the camera in a dashboard are known to keep a battery camera constantly awake, draining its battery. +- Viewing a **dashboard** with a picture-entity card of a Reolink battery camera, will wake that camera to show the latest snapshot and/or stream. Therefore it is recommended to place the picture-entity cards in a separate dashboard/tab which is only accessed when actually wanting to view the battery camera stream(s). + ### Streams or recordings not playing - Most Reolink cameras use h265 encoding for the high resolution recording and clear stream to save storage space and bandwidth. Playback of this h265 encoding is not supported by all browsers or apps. Therefore, the high-resolution recording and/or clear stream may not function on all your devices from which you acces Home Assistant. To see if a Reolink camera is using h264 or h265 encoding, [download the diagnostics text file](/docs/configuration/troubleshooting/#download-diagnostics) and find the `"encoding main": "h265"\"h264"` in the txt file. The low-resolution recording and fluent stream always use h264 encoding and, therefore, do not suffer from this issue. From 6633e00c0a3ed2d194f01f99819c54a281156653 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: starkillerOG Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2025 11:08:59 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 2/3] Update reolink.markdown --- source/_integrations/reolink.markdown | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown b/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown index 7c2c3ef93b5..05366c47cc3 100644 --- a/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown +++ b/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown @@ -742,7 +742,7 @@ Prerequisites: ### Battery drains fast -The Reolink Home Assistant integration is supposed to only wake battery cameras once per hour for about 10 seconds, which should not have a big impact on battery life. However there are several things that can influence battery life significantly: +The Reolink Home Assistant integration is supposed to only wake battery cameras once per hour for about 10 seconds, which should not have a big impact on battery life. You can check this using the **Sleep status** entity. However there are several things that can influence battery life significantly: - Make sure the **Preload camera stream** option is turned off for all battery camera entities under {% my integrations title="**Settings** > **Devices & services**" %} > Reolink integration card > **x devices** > select the battery camera > select the camera stream (do this for all enabled streams) > Gear icon {% icon "mdi:cog-outline" %}. The Preload camera stream will keep a active stream open, keeping the camera awake. This will drain the battery. - Make sure the **Manual Record** switch is turned off. While this switch is on, the camera will be awake and recording. Excessive use of this entity will drain the battery. From bbb6be4f766471eac6c4d2291d37ee86377c8389 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: c0ffeeca7 <38767475+c0ffeeca7@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2025 06:48:43 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 3/3] tiny tweaks --- source/_integrations/reolink.markdown | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown b/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown index 05366c47cc3..f53685a5ec5 100644 --- a/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown +++ b/source/_integrations/reolink.markdown @@ -742,13 +742,13 @@ Prerequisites: ### Battery drains fast -The Reolink Home Assistant integration is supposed to only wake battery cameras once per hour for about 10 seconds, which should not have a big impact on battery life. You can check this using the **Sleep status** entity. However there are several things that can influence battery life significantly: +The Reolink Home Assistant integration is supposed to only wake battery cameras once per hour for about 10 seconds, which should not have a big impact on battery life. You can check this using the **Sleep status** entity. However, there are several factors that can have significant impact on battery life: - Make sure the **Preload camera stream** option is turned off for all battery camera entities under {% my integrations title="**Settings** > **Devices & services**" %} > Reolink integration card > **x devices** > select the battery camera > select the camera stream (do this for all enabled streams) > Gear icon {% icon "mdi:cog-outline" %}. The Preload camera stream will keep a active stream open, keeping the camera awake. This will drain the battery. - Make sure the **Manual Record** switch is turned off. While this switch is on, the camera will be awake and recording. Excessive use of this entity will drain the battery. - **Automations** which use entities from a Reolink battery camera can wake up the camera. Changing settings or requesting a snapshot will wake the battery camera for 10-30 seconds. When automations trigger very often, this can cause excessive battery use. - Some **Custom cards** that can be used to view the camera in a dashboard are known to keep a battery camera constantly awake, draining its battery. -- Viewing a **dashboard** with a picture-entity card of a Reolink battery camera, will wake that camera to show the latest snapshot and/or stream. Therefore it is recommended to place the picture-entity cards in a separate dashboard/tab which is only accessed when actually wanting to view the battery camera stream(s). +- Viewing a **dashboard** with a picture-entity card of a Reolink battery camera, will wake that camera to show the latest snapshot and/or stream. Therefore, it is recommended to place the picture-entity cards in a separate dashboard/tab, which is only accessed when actually wanting to view the battery camera streams. ### Streams or recordings not playing