When the Logitech Cirlce View works, it’s great. When it doesn’t, the experience of troubleshooting it makes me want to pour myself a giant whiskey, all while ripping out my hair.
There are tons of complaints about this thing on reddit, but overall it seems like a solid choice if you’re all in on HomeKit. It doesn’t require a monthly subscription, and instead uses storage from your iCloud+ plan.
The main downsides of this thing are how tempermental it can be wiith the weather. If your doorbell sits in direct sun, it’ll probably end up overheating and shutting down. If you’re in extreme cold like I am right now, a whole slew of different issues can pop up — one being that it loses connection to homekit.
What they tell you to do
If it loses connection to HomeKit, customer service will tell you to do the following.
- Remove the doorbell
- Hold down the power button
- Plug it into USB power
- Continue holding down the power button for 9 seconds
- Let go and listen for the beep
- Re-connect your new factory reset camera to HomeKit.
If you’re like me, this does nothing.
What you should try instead
- Open Homekit
- Tap on the + icon, and select “Add new home”
- Type in a new home name
- Tap the + icon and add a new accessory
- Scan the HomeKit code on the back of your doorbell
- The connection should be working on this new home
- Tap on the 3 dots in the top right
- Select Home settings
- Tap “Remove Home” and the bottom of the list
- On your original home, tap the + icon, and “add accessory”
- Rescan the homekit doorbell code
- It should now be working!
Other things to consider
- Make sure you’re using a decent USB power source (10w) when powering up the camera
- Try disabling your 5ghz wifi setting to see if the camera will get picked up on 2.4ghz instead
- Consider writing down the HomeKit code on the back of the camera before re-mounting it. Getting the camera off the mount can be a painful process, so the less you have to do it, the better.
I have no idea what is happening behind the scenes, but finding this solution took hours out of my week and I just wanted to share it here in hopes it pops up on Google when other people are searching for it.