Log tells bridged camera support is discontinued, does this effect Ring Door Bell cameras?

[woccam]

The log tells: "Bridged camera support will be removed in the next major release of homebridge-ring. Please enable the unbridgeCameras option in your configuration and add the individual cameras to HomeKit to prepare for this change." Does this affect Ring Door cameras? Does this mean they will no longer be supported at all or how do I integrate them directly?

[tsightler]

A Ring doorbell is a camera, so yes, they are impacted. The unbridgeCameras option is not new, it's just that, in a future version, that will be the only option, so we are suggesting users go through the steps now. It just means that, instead of adding the bridge once, and all the cameras show up, the cameras must be added as an individual accessories to Homekit. The process of adding an individual camera is not really different than adding a bridge and is already discussed here in multiple threads.

Note that this is not something unique, if you purchased individual Homekit compatible cameras, you'd have to add those as individual cameras as well. With this setting, each camera is treated as an individual camera which, underneath, has many benefits which impact maintainability and, in certain cases, usability, especially cases where a user has a large number of cameras. Yes, it's somewhat of a pain to go through and add 8 individual cameras, but, overall, the cameras will likely work far better after this.

[dscheck]

@tsightler I changed my setting to "unbridgeCameras": true and I was able to add back my various Ring flood lights and a Ring doorbell that is shared to me from my son's Ring doorbell at his school, but my front door Ring doorbell keeps taking a long time and then eventually says "Unable to Add Accessory, Accessory is not reachable". Any ideas what I can do?

[dscheck]

It seems that completely shutting down my phone and restarting and then trying again in the home app to add the Ring doorbell now immediately worked. I tried it like 20 times force quitting the Home app and restarting home bridge and nothing worked but restarting the phone did it.

[gdavids57]

Just to add to the instructions... While adding the camera accessory in the Home app, the app will prompt for a Setup Code. Use the Homebridge setup QR code on the Status page. After completing the setup and seeing the camera in the Home app, I'm still seeing a message in the Homebridge log calling for a manual setup of the camera. Is this normal.

[tsightler]

I wouldn't say the message is calling for anything to be done, the message is simply providing the information on how to add cameras (the message is unchanged for years). The plugin doesn't have any way to know if you've already added the devices already or not. Is there some other wording for that informational message that would make that more clear?

[gdavids57]

I think a clause like, "if you've made the changes, ignore the following..." would be helpful.

[tsightler]

I don't think that really statement really fits though as it's not always changes that need to be made, it could be initial setup for example and it needs to be on the same line as sometimes log messages are not in strict order. Maybe it could just be reworded to sounds less like a request? Homebridge logs the steps for adding itself to Homekit on every boot, regardless of whether it was already added or not, and somehow that doesn't seem to confuse people so it's not really clear to me why these log lines are unclear. I think about possible tweaks to the phrasing.

[searls]

In response to this deprecation warning, I've tried taking my two Spotlight cameras onto unbridged mode, but HomeKit times out after adding either of them. Running on Node v20 with the latest version of the plugin, have rebooted Homebridge, my iPhone, and the cameras half a dozen times, but each time I eventually get Unable to Add Accessory:

[searls]

Thanks again for the help in chasing this down. Unfortunately I had to travel unexpectedly so may not be able to follow up on this for a few weeks--will try all this when I get back!

[tsightler]

OK, let us know if you still need help when you get back to it, happy to continue to dig into it. Save travels!

[Falter]

I'm in a similar boat. Thought I would 'Unbridge' and prep for the future release while I had some downtime and while the devices show up in Home to be added, I was getting the same "unable to connect error" when I try to add them. I'm running HomeBridge 1.8.5 (UI 4.65.1) with Node.js version 18.20.5 in a Rocky Linux 9.5 VM on ProxMox 8.3.1 (all patched current to today). There are no firewall rules set up for the VM in ProxMox, only 1 networking interface, and my phone is on the same Wifi network (Unifi, of course?) and neither device is locked to a specific AP or on different VLANs or subnets. I tried switching from Bonjour to Avahi (not supported errors) and then to Ciao with the same error persisting.

So, I upgraded to Node.js version v22.12.0 using the "sudo hb-service update-node" command. Now, the devices come up in logs saying they need to be setup - and they show in the Home App on my phone to add - but when I try any of the I get a "Connection Lost" error and they all disappear from the Discovery app linked above (with Ciao enabled). With Bonjour re-enabled, I am back to the original timeout error and things are no longer disappearing in Discovery when I try to add them.

Fortunately, when I re-enable bridging, everything pops right back up in Home.
Any suggestions on what stupid mistake I have made, by chance? Thank you!

[tsightler]

The troubleshooting steps are the same,:

1. Use some tool to verify that the services are advertised with correct IP/port (i.e. match what is in the Homebridge logs)
2. Verify that some device on the wireless network can connect to those ports with a TCP port test

You said "There are no firewall rules set up for the VM in ProxMox" but Rocky Linux installs and configures a firewall (firewalld) by default, so are you saying you disabled it? Running sudo systemctl status firewalld shows the local OS firewall is inactive?

[Falter]

Thank you for your help!
It was Rocky's firewall. Dagnabbit!

systemctl stop firewalld
systemctl disable firewalld

Everything is working as expected now.

It looks like Homebridge makes an entry for its port in /etc/firewalld/zones/public.xml - I guess that would be why bridging was working.

If you don't mind my asking, does the driver assign the port numbers for the Ring cameras or does each device choose a port and then the driver advertises that port with the Homebridge IP? I wonder if a range could be reserved so a firewall entry could be created, for example?

Either way, I thank you for your help and made a donation to the project. If I can support you directly for your help, please let me know. Someone needs to be there to tell idgits like me how to find our firewalls - you're doing God's work, sir!