Homebase2: all cameras stopped working / not found

Queries
,
1

All camera’s on the homebase2 had been working well for a few weeks. Yesterday they all stopped working. The battery doorbell give message “Cannot connect to the doorbell (-106)”. The Eufycam 2 Pros give message “Please add camera or sensor.”

No cameras have been moved. Battery levels on all cameras were 100% to 98%.

I tried restarting the homebase2, unplugging the homebase2, switching the homebase2 from ethernet to wireless, and then back to ethernet. I manually turned off the eufycam 2 pro cameras by pressing the sync button 5 times, and then turned them back on. Internet is working. Wireless range on the cameras said “great.”

The two indoor pan & tilt cameras continue to work normally (probably bc they dont use the homebase2).

I hope I dont have to take every camera down, remove them and re-sync them to the system. Thst would be a big hassle if that needs to be done frequently. Any ideas why all homebase2 paired cameras would stop working?

3 Likes
2

Welcome to the club. I have to keep a ladder close by. When my cameras stop working most of the time I have to take them down and re-sync them. What a great system! This has been a ongoing problem.

1 Like
3

Same thing happened to me this morning. I had to run around and delete and re-sync them all before leaving for work. Not a great way to start the day.

1 Like
4

Just happend to me aswell, homebase was talking at 5 a.m. waking the whole house up. If you are away from house not really a security… if you need to re-add the cameras

3 Likes
5

Same thing happened to me today, all 8 cameras dropped, had to resync them all, won’t be getting that hour of my life back.
HomeBase 2
Eufy 2C cams

3 Likes
6

Glad to hear that I am not alone as Eufy Support claims that my problems are very unusual.
And honestly I’ve had it with this system… I regret spending 2K USD on it!

For anyone interested this is how I experienced my one and half week of owning a Eufy system…
And same as you guys, constantly have to get my ladder out to take camera’s off, reconfigure them, reconfigure Google Assistant, reconfigure IFTTT, etc. A fucking nightmare it is!

I’ve escalated my case with Eufy, but apart from apologizing nothing seems to happen. And the only poor troubleshooting step they took was the following;
So sorry for your wait! After a double-check with our tech team, we notice that your home base is online now and we are wondering if your issue has been resolved or not? If the issue persists, please try to update the latest app version to see if it will help to resolve your issue? Also, please help to confirm if you have connected many cameras to your Homebase? If yes, we suspected there is some stability issue with your home base when it was connected with many cameras.

My horror setup:
1 HomeBase 2
9 2C Camera’s
6 Doorsensors
2 Keypads

Problem Log
• Friday 10/07
o Geofencing stopped working when we arrived at home, as it didn’t switch to “Home”
o Unable to view camera’s, get a black screen with a message (translated from dutch ‘Voeg camera of sensor toe.’): Add camera or sensor + Refresh button
o One of the camera’s (named “Keuken”) was offline
o Removing and adding the “Keuken” camera again makes it available again.
o None of the camera’s (excl. “Keuken”) are available on any of the mobile devices or via your MySecurity Web Portal
o We’ve rebooted the HomeBase twice for testing purposes
• Saturday 11/07
o Camera’s “Zijdeur” and “Keuken” both started showing the same image, the one from camera “Zijdeur”
o Had to reinstall camera’s “Zijdeur” and “Keuken” to fix the issue
• Sunday 12/07
o 2 doorsensors dissappeared from the application
• Monday 13/07
o 4 Camera’s became unavailable again (same as 10/07) “**** Slaapkamer”, “Oprit”, “Inkom”, “Gang Boven”. Unable to view camera’s, get a black screen with a message (translated from dutch ‘Voeg camera of sensor toe.’): Add camera or sensor + Refresh button
• Tuesday 14/07
o Replied to your e-mail to get better support
• Wednesday 15/07
o 5 doorsensors stayed offline and had to be synchronized again; “Garage Poort”, “Deur Keuken”, “Slaapkamer Linkerraam”, “Slaapkamer Rechterraam”, “Badkamer”
o Had to reinstall camera’s “**** Slaapkamer”, “Oprit”, “Inkom”, “Gang Boven” to fix the issue as I couldn’t wait any longer for your “troubleshooting”
o 2 keypads arrived from your official store, added and configured them to the HomeBase
• Thursday 16/07
o Switching between Home and Away using the keypad doesn’t work verry smooth
o Added 2 extra PIN codes for users on the keypad
o Keypads “Voordeur”, “Keuken” are reporting that they aren’t configured anymore and when clicking them start the installation procedure
• Friday 17/07 (Today)
o Keypads “Voordeur”, “Keuken” are reporting that they aren’t configured anymore and when clicking them start the installation procedure
• Saturday
o Keypads “Voordeur”, “Keuken” are reporting that they aren’t configured anymore and when clicking them start the installation procedure
o 8 out of 9 Camera’s became unavailable again (same as 10/07) “**** Slaapkamer”, “Bureau”, “Woonkamer”, “Keuken”, “Inkom”, “Gang Boven”, “Terras”, “Oprit”; . Unable to view camera’s, get a black screen with a message (translated from dutch ‘Voeg camera of sensor toe.’): Add camera or sensor + Refresh button
o Doorsensors not connected anymore and not reporting status

1 Like
7

I get that they are blaming this on poor connection stability… Which might of course always be the case due to environmental issues. Can fully understand that with wireless connections.
But this should never cause stored data to disappear. A configured door camera, sensor, PIN code, etc. to me is “stored data”. It’s not because you might have an unstable Wi-Fi/wired connection that data disappears from your HomeBase/Eufy Cloud/Eufy Android App or whatever…

Either they are having issues in the backend, which shouldn’t be the case as they claim everything is locally stored. Or there is data corruption on the devices itself, who knows… But any Support Engineer should be able to troubleshoot these sort of issues.
But I’m starting to believe they just aren’t able to remotely troubleshoot the devices.

8

Bad customer service. They just don’t care. This is nothing new. These same problems have been around for a few years without a fix or a apology but they continue to bring out new products with the same problems.

2 Likes
9

Their support email suggested updating to the latest version of the eufy security app on my phone (it already was on the latest version) and disabling the firewall on my router (not the issue at all). So no real fix to the original issue. I removed and re-synced the homebase2 and every camera on it, and had to redo all their settings, activity zones, and schedule (6 eufycam2 pro and one battery doorbell in wired config). Re-syncing a wire powered doorbell is a pain in the a$$.

Edit: I also needed to use a paperclip to reset the homebase2 before it would properly accept re-syncing the cameras.

They are working again for now. The indoor cams that do not connect through the homebase never went offline. I have noticed that after removing and re-syncing none of the cameras are recognized by their cloud backup service for a few days, and then all of a sudden new recordings will start going to cloud backup.

For the most part they work pretty well for me. They pick up most motion events. My furthest camera can be slow to start up and record, possibly due to distance from homebase. Currently one is picking up every car that drives by, even though it is out of th activity zones, but it didn’t before and I suspect I need to adjust the cameras angle closer to what it was before.

For me they’re 90% of the way towards me being okay with them. They just need to not go offline due to eufy server issues, and they need to not lose their pairing with the base station. Access to local storage and settings while on the same network seems like an obvious must have feature.

Something I do really like: I have the homebase2, router and modem on a UPS backup battery. I tested a power-outage and internet outage at the same time by unplugging the UPS and disconnecting the internet from the wall. All cameras still recorded the motion tests I put them through. Nothing was visible via the app, but once internet was restored the videos became viewable and started their cloud backup. That is what I want it to be capable of. Unfortunately it is unreliable with server problems and cameras losing their sync.

10

Happened to me too today. I was wondering why the cameras did not send notifications when entering the driveway and found out all cameras Said something about “please add Camera or sensor” when i tried to view them. Im on 10 devices now and it seems its getting worse the more i add. I had more Strange errors lately.

I hope they can fix it with patches to the hardware.

-Friis

13

I had this issue after installing it for the first time. I was about to give up and return the whole damn kit. Then I found out that I had not set up an active zone for each camera and the motion detection was set on. Once I set up the active zones the “camera stopped working / not found / offline / add camera” had disappeared and has become stable. It’s been two days and I’ve not had the problem again whereas before I would have lost 1 or 2 cameras over a 6 hour period.

Having said the above after resolving one issue I then encounter another problem where I would experience the home base being offline. After searching the internet I found a possible solution. Set the home base as a wifi extender. The home base is working again and I have even found the eufy 2C cameras being more responsive. If you don’t hear from me then this has worked.

For reference I have a 10 eufy 2C cameras.

I hope people find this helpful and a word to Ankers please fix these bugs that people are experiencing and also have a section on this community to capture outstanding issues so you can keep track of it and fix them. It will help others to know what these issues are and you can tell people how to work around them until you fix them. This will save your customers from pulling their hair out and getting frustrated and return the product. If you fix these issues you will have a great product. I use to be a Arlo fan but I love the quality of these Eufy cameras and the price but I hate these issues that you have. Just remember one thing the customer is always right and you should listen to us. Good luck Ankers and I hope you listen.

5 Likes
14

At least on my end it probably has nothing to do with the activity zones because I’ve had those turned on since I first set up the cameras. I’ll try switching it to wifi again. I had tried that before but don’t believe I noticed much difference or I would not have switched it back to ethernet. I’ll give it another try. Thanks

15

Same thing has happened or is happening to me.

I tried many things without much luck and then I realised perhaps its because I had too many devices connected to HomeBase 2.

I had 10 cameras, 5 door sensors all hooked up to the HomeBase 2.

Instead, I used 2 X HomeBase 2, and only connected 8 or less per HomeBase. I did the test where I connected more than 8, and surely the cameras failed/offline.

I am not sure if this is an undocumented issue, but the whole system becomes incredibly unstable when you connect more than 8.

Give it a go, and I hope Eufy notices this issue and fix it. At least since this new 2 HomeBase setup, I didn’t need to use the ladders to remove and reconnect. What a pain that was!

2 Likes
16

I hear you and felt your pain. It’s been 5 days now and still ok. Looking good so far. The home base 2 still hang up and you have to do the retry three times before it starts playing camera. This occurs when after you view 4 cameras consecutively. The funny thing is that this has only occurred when viewing using the iPad. When I use the iPhone it doesn’t hang up. Oh well at least I haven’t had to reboot the home base and neither had the offline and lost the cameras like I did before. I hope I don’t jinx myself after saying that. :sweat_smile:

17

@chlau70, is your system still working?

18

Funny I was about to go online to report that today one of the camera went off line. And I couldn’t get it to work unless I resynched it. So I have made up my mind and decided to box it all up and return it. I’m going to wait for the new wifi camera, I believe it called solo’ to come out that doesn’t rely on the homebase. I have the pan tilt camera that doesn’t use the home base and that’s amazing. So im keeping that. There is something seriously Wrong with the homebase and it seems that it’s been like this for years and Ankers is not going to do anything about it as they would have done by now. So I’m going to return it whilst I can. It’s a shame. I like it but it’s not reliable.

2 Likes
19

Good for you that you still got time to return the system. I think this wireless security have not been perfected yet but it would help to have a company who was upfront about the problems and their attempts to solve them. Lol as I am typing this I see someone from my window at my front door and guess what the cam didn’t detect him.:roll_eyes:

1 Like
20

i have rougly the same config and had the same problem. It seems that one homebase was not enough for servicing all devices. Installing a second homebase was the solution. System is now stable and working fine.

regards, Marcel

21

2 more weeks since my last report. No issues yet with the 2 HomeBase setup. The base does go offline every now and then briefly but they quickly come back and reconnect within minutes.

22

I only wish I had read of these issues prior to making my purchase. My cameras were put in place after having my vehicle stolen from my driveway. Unfortunately their installation was a waste of money and time as you never know if they are working or not.
Yesterday I had two deliveries to my front door and no notifications, alarms, video or anything recording these events.
Absolute waste of money.

And yes, I have excellent and reliable WiFi. Even the cameras think so…they just don’t want to work with it. Then to add insult to injury all I read is complaints of these issues over and over with no response from the manufacturer.

1 Like