My M1 Mac Mini can't view HomeKit camera video

Hi guys,

After more research, I've found the cause and already reported it to Apple: if your computer doesn't have a Microphone the live video stream will not work. It looks like an Apple bug as I've two cameras, one with 2-way audio that I can understand that requires a Mic to be able to talk to the camera but I've also another cam without 2-way audio. The Home App fails in both cameras so looks like Apple set the Mic requisite for live events regardless camera support it or not. As soon as you connect a Mic to the MacMini the video feed start working as expected. You can also install a 3rd party plugin to emulate a Mic like SoundFlower and it will work too. Try it and let me know if this worked for you too.

Regards,

Hi,

I have that exact same problem.

Mac mini M1 with a circle view camera and a Logi Circle 2 camera. Both have the same problem.

I can add that the recorded video on the circle view is even viewable but as soon as I try the LIVE image I get the same message "No response. The camera is not responding."

Same here: on iOS the LIVE image works fine.

I had contact with the support department and they could not help me: they suggested a reinstall with the recovery option. As I only have this Mac Mini M1 for a couple of days, I did not mind that, so I performed a recovery but this did not help. It seems even that the recovery itself is no good, because it gave a lot of errors in the log (even fatal).

The support employee said that it would be possible that I had to first erase my hard drive before a good clean install so I also looked at the disk utility program in the reboot menu but the instruction for hard disk formatting explicitly shows that the proces is only for intel processors. There is no disk formatting instruction for the Apple Silicon processors so I first will go back to the support of Apple....

Same issue here and I'm not using an M1 MAC, so it is not related to M1 chip, it is Big Sur software issue. I'm using MacMini 2018 and I'm suffering the same issue: the cam is viewable when it is under tile view but as soon as I click on it to expand I receive the same message.

thanks for your update ASPC!

Hopefully it shines a light on the problem.

I also have a Mac mini 2020 Intel, but sadly I cannot update to BigSur because of my use of an audio interface that is not yet compatible.

However...I do also own a MacBook Pro mid 2014 with runs on BigSur and is not having these problems. I double checked that during my first call to Apple support.

So it looks like a combination of MacMini and BigSur....?!?

Funny thing to add: the app HomeCam does show your live feeds, despite HomeKit (Apple's own) can not!

Gr.

A

Hmmm... are you connecting your M1 through a 5GHz WiFi while cams are using 2.4GHz and you have an OpenWRT device on the network? This is my schema and I suspected also that OpenWRT was the culprit but since Cam works fine on iPhone/iPads that are connected to WiFi I discarded it.

BTW: Multicast traffic is not flowing to the affected MAC, as IPTV is not viewable also on this device. Could be the cause...

@ASPC:

No indeed. This worked fine out of the box when I installed my MacMini. All on a 5Ghz bandwidth wifi connection.

I don't know what OpenWRT is, but I do not think I have that...it was just the Mini with 2 cams: Logi Circle2 and Circle View on BigSur. Suddenly it was corrupted. I even did a clean install with the disk erase function and it was working again, but after a few days the problem came back. I tried a backup of the Homekit app stand alone, because did not want to repeat the clean install again but it proved no solution.

I had the exact same problem and I managed to inadvertently resolve it while solving a different problem.

I have an M1 Mac Mini which would not stream homekit video via the Home app, but could stream homekit video with the HomeCam app. Additionally, I had Big Sur devices (intel) and iOS devices that had no problems with streaming homekit video. I also have an M1 MacBook Pro which was streaming video fine.

I've been having problems with streaming homekit video on my mini for about a week. I could see updating static images, but when I tried to stream the video I would see a message about the cameras not responding. I rebooted the mini several times for various reasons, but the video issue persisted. The OS was fully updated.

As of this morning, it's now working. The thing that fixed it is peculiar. I had a 10-port, powered USB hub which was plugged into the mini via an Apple USB-to-USB-C adapter. I was noticing that two devices had stopped working while all the others were fine: an AppleWatch charger and a webcam. I tried powercycling the hub and tried moving the affected devices to different ports on the hub, but nothing worked. Those devices worked on other Macs, so I knew they were ok. I ultimately unplugged the USB-to-USB-C adapter which the hub was plugged into from the mini and then plugged it back in. As soon as I did that, the AppleWatch charger started working and the webcam showed up in FaceTime.

I'm not sure why I thought to check, but I decided to launch the Home app and found that homekit video was now working.

I don't know if the problem was somehow related/triggered by the hub or the USB-to-USB-C adapter, but reseating the adapter seemed to resolve the issue. Nothing else seemed to make a difference.

I hesitate to assume that an issue with the USB bus could directly cause this issue, but I am left to wonder if having a video-streaming device (webcam) attached but in a weird state could somehow hang up the APIs used to stream video in the Home app. It certainly doesn't explain why HomeCam worked fine, unless it simply isn't using some aspect of video streaming that Home is.

So, based on my experience, my advice to anyone having this issue would be to try reseating the cables for all of your attached peripherals or maybe just try unplugging any external video streaming devices. In particular, reseat any connections (or adapters for the connections) to any devices that may make use of macOS video streaming APIs.

Yes interesting indeed.

But I don't have anything connected to my Mini M1 yet but my thunderbolt monitor cable. Only to connect the keyboard and trackpad I plugged them when I unpacked them, but the were already fully charged to my surprise so disconnected them imm. again. No other cable has been in my Mini since then.

It cannot be the solution for my problem.

thx anyway...

Hi ASPC,

That's it! Wauw...nice you found out!

I plugged in my microsoft webcam that I had lying around. I thought it would need some instal for sw or drivers, but I connected it to the USB port and opened FaceTime app. There was an image right away. I then switched to the homekit app and opened a camera feed of the Circle View. It worked again! Tried the other cam...the Logi Circle 2 and that also worked again.

Thank you for sharing this solution! Great!

Regards

Arjen

So happy you figured this out. I was going crazy trying to figure out what was wrong with my HomeKit installation. Rebooting everything and searching all over. It was the mic. The moment I plugged in a mic, everything works perfectly.

Thanks!