If you have a multi camera installation, it is quite cumbersome to change security modes from HOME to AWAY to DISARM.
As with a real alarm security system this should be n intuitive and easy step, so that you do it naturally and often… Every time you step out of the house, it should go to AWAY, every time you come back, it should go to HOME, every time you have guests, should go to GUEST custom mode, every time you go to sleep, it should go to NIGHT custom mode.
The reality is different. You have to open the eufy app, log in, select the location, select every camera individually, for each camera open the security settings nd then select the security modes, where, in addition to the manual modes you can also set it to Geofencing and/or schedule mode. For my 7 camera installation this takes close to one minute and 32 clicks. It’s both complicated and confusing exercise. and in practice you will do this once or twice and then not do it anymore.
Please forsee an easy way, to switch all cameras/homebases of the account or of one location of the account between security modes
This page controls all devices on a click of a button. The cogwheel also allow some individual device configuration. I posted a screenshot below. What cameras did you have?
Hi, @mar10279,
I have the page you show as well, but one per camera or homebase. Yes I can switch all cameras linked to a single homebase together. But not all cameras/homebases of an account.
Before I get to the page you were showing, I have a page with all cameras per location like so:
Even though the standalone cameras are connected to the Homebase. Homebase can only control outdoor cameras. The indoor cameras has to be scheduled or disarmed individually in your case. But you can schedule all the cameras in the settings according to a specific time. Eg activate away at 8:00am and activate home at 5:30pm
Look, let’s not water down a reasonable feature request in the way eufy support does it during the rare moments when they bother to reply at all.
The fact is that eufy churns out an unreasonable number of camera models that alhave good video quality on a standalone basis, but zero thought put into user friendliness or integration.
There is absolutely no support for multi cam applications, let alone multi cam environment with different eufy models.
The only spot, where this is brought together is the eufy app and that seems to follow the logic of the Chinese communist party… As long as it’s not fully broken, it’s acceptable… So sorry we aren’t perfect yet. But we struggle to improve and a solution is foreseen for Q4/2020… Oops it’s already 2022… So sorry we aren’t perfect.
You are supporting a multi cam app, you have defined (debatably) sensible security modes across all cam models. You have defined the possibility to manually switch between those modes for all cameras individually. You are offering the possibility to group cameras by location. Now do the logical thing: allow group operations by location for camera groups… For example setting cams into one and the same security mode.
And no, @mar10279, paraphrasing the problem as a solution as @sky218 does, is not a reasonable recommendation.
I did. Holding my breath for a constructive and speedy reply.
And here it is:
“We have recorded your needs internally and will statistically assess them anonymously for future decisions. We apologize for not being able to confirm to you now if this is possible in the future.”
If I understand correctly, it means… Unless another million users were stupid enough to buy more than one of our cameras AND all of them complain about them not having this sensible and basic feature, we will not do anything about it. Please, in the future, only buy a single camera from us or put up with whatever our engineers think is best for you.
Super good feature idea. Was looking on how to do that (via automations). But alas. The triggers are limited and no interaction between same home home bases.
All these options are available with Arlo not Eufy and when I see all the posts in here without answers from Eufy support I am really worry about my new Eufy Floodlight …
Martin,
You are absolutely right, automation between several home bases (often required due to range issues) or ‘solo’ cameras (their new!!! products) are absolutely appaling. You cannot, for example, start recording all cameras, in case there is an alarm on one. And, as you point out, you cannot switch all cameras to ‘Home’, in case one cam/homebase is switched to ‘Home’.
While these features are basic with other suppliers, I wasn’t hoping for anything like that to be realized, as it admittedly requires a change of the way cameras interact with each other etc.
But the basic feature of manually switching all cameras together to the same security mode… Come on guys!
Yup, they churn out new cameras at neckbreaking speed that admittedly work well standalone… They put a completely user unfriendly app on top of it, then they block the API (or don’t even have one despite their promises since 18months) and when you make a feature suggestion here, it’s ignored. When you make the suggestion at online support, it’s ignored, too, but you are entitled to a useless ‘copy&paste’ text the likes of ‘your feedback is very important to us, but our engineers are so busy, they don’t care to read it, so we reject it on their behalf’
Come on eufy.
This is what’s holding me back on getting more cameras.
I did have geo fencing working pretty well but lately that has been in reliable. But what’s worse is that solo cams don’t have geo fencing function! What’s up with that??
New cameras aren’t able to be grouped together for easy mode switching and they don’t have geofencing.
1 step forward 2 steps back
I’ve just bought 3 indoor Cam pan & tile cameras, in addition to the existing two video doorbells and indoor Cam 2K. Geofencing doesn’t work very well, and having to turn each camera on & off individually is crazy.
My thinking is that the Eufy staff that design these cameras and Apps, all live in small apartments or gated communities and probably have at most one video doorbell & one indoor camera. They probably don’t have much real life experience of western style houses with multiple entry doors & lots of rooms.
In my case, I’ve just had a robbery & the two video door bells gave really good videos of the two thieves & this allowed the police to arrest them. I was impressed, so bought the 3 indoor cameras without realising what a pain it was to arm & disarm them is.
It looks like there are some open source projects that can help with this issue: this (over two years old) reddit thread mentions eufy-node-client, which is now maintained under the name eufy-security-client. The GitHub page mentions some projects using the library so there might be something useful to you. I haven’t tried to setup any of those but I will try ASAP as this simple issue is driving me nuts.
