Cameras not live streaming over cellular

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Hello,

I have two G5 Pro’s PoE as well as an Aquara doorbell cam and non of them will show me the live video feed while I am on cellular and away from my home. The entire reason I purchased these cameras was so I could use them via Apple HomeKit remotely when I am not home.

I am using an unmanaged Ethernet switch and eero pro 7 mesh network. I have tried almost everything I can think of to resolve this along with things I have read on this forum as well as elsewhere online and I cannot seem to figure out the reason as to why they wouldn’t stream while I am on cellular but work just fine when I am connected to my home network. I pull up a camera feed and it simply is stuck on the frame from the last time I looked at it with a buffering / spinning loading icon. Eventually it will time out and say that the camera is not responding.

Any and all advice on how to resolve this would be appreciated.

Thanks,

David

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Hi there, it looks like you’re experiencing a support-related issue. We’ve automatically created a support ticket for you and will reach out via the forum email within the next two business days.

If other members have any suggestions or insights on this topic, feel free to share!

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Hey David, did you don’t get any connection in Apple home or Aqara? Or both?

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I did not get any connection in Apple home and only over cellular.

The Aqara app works flawlessly over both cellular and WiFi.

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What are you using for your Apple Home hub? Have you tried restarting that?

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I use the latest gen Apple TV 4K. I’ve restarted it and even reset it. Didn’t help.

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Do you have other HomeKit cameras? Do your other Apple Home devices work fine with remote access?

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I do not. Just the two G5 Pro and the G4 doorbell. They have never worked remotely via Apple Home. Only works with the Aqara app remotely. That’s why I am thinking it’s an Apple Home issue.

I was told these cameras work great with Apple HomeKit…

Also, I already reset my network settings, re added the cameras, deleted and re set up the entire home in Apple Home but all to no avail.

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But any non-camera devices in Apple Home? Can you control those remotely?

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Yes, I have plenty of other devices that are not cameras as for example my thermostat, heated floors, door sensors, motion sensors etc. in my home. It seems to be isolated to the camera feeds while on cellular.

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The only other factor to narrow down would whether it is specific to the client. Assuming you’ve tested this on your phone - do you have another you can test on?

It’s not a “no response” which tells me Apple Home is connecting to the home hub, but just can’t negotiate a connection to the stream. Diagnostics would help, so the Aqara bot opened a case for you - let’s see where that leads.

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So I ended up going through the trouble of setting up my home completely from scratch through my wife’s Apple ID and oddly enough the camera streams work now through cellular ON HER DEVICE. They continue to not work for me and other members of the home over cellular. It’s really frustrating and rather odd. I’ve checked every possible setting and cannot think of anything else. It must be an Apple HomeKit bug or something of that nature.

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Question: What Apple iCloud + plan do you have? I did not see where that was mentioned. Everything reads like you are not all on the same plan or you don’t have the 200GB+ plan

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Yeah good question to compare the previous set up. I was guiding to troubleshoot to see if it was specific to the phone, but the reset (setting up completely from scratch) adds more variables. Glad it is working for at least one user.

So digging into the set up now. The Home is set up with your Wife’s Apple ID, so you and other family members were added as Residents to the home in the Apple Home settings? Are you set for access to ‘streaming’ or ‘streaming and recording’ for the cameras?

Let’s also highlight any other variables.

  • What are the devices that are working and those that are not?
  • What ios versions are running?
  • Which version is running on your Apple TV (Home hub)?
  • Do all the phones have the same carrier?
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Yes, I set up the home now using my wife’s Apple ID. I added myself and my mother as residents who have full access to edit& add devices. Everyone is set to “streaming and recording.”

Devices that are working are things like my ecobee thermostat, Aqara motion and door sensors as well as my Aqara hub. The devices that are not working are the cameras over cellular ( G5 pro & G4 doorbell).

I am running IOS 27 Public beta whereas the rest of the household devices like my wife’s phone are running the most recent version of IOS 26.

TvOS is also the latest version. I updated it yesterday to make sure that was not causing the issue.

All phones are through the same carrier, AT&T. We pay for the most expensive cellular plans Available. I already reached out to AT&T to make sure there was no kind of data saver setting enabled that would prevent us from streaming video over cellular.

ICloud family plan 2TB.

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This could be your issue. iOS 27 handles HKSV differently and is more dependent on the home hub. You could try updating the Apple TV to the beta also or rollback to a stable version. Beta mismatch has often been an issue for HomeKit in past releases, but this time there are specific changes for HomeKit Secure video that could be impacting.

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Thank you for pointing that out. I first tried reverting my phone back to the latest iOS 26 version, which did not work. Then I put all my devices, including the Apple TV on iOS 27 and still had no success. Aqara as well as Apple technical support are looking into this. I will update their finding here as I find out more.

I do have to say that this should not be this difficult. I am lucky to be somewhat technologically savvy but for any average person that doesn’t know much about tech would have given up a long time ago.

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Update - it looks like this issue has resolved itself since I last posted. I have absolutely no idea how because I haven’t messed with HomeKit or anything since then. I know Aqara reached out to Apple and I also reached out to Apple technical support who ran some kind of diagnostics on a couple of my devices.

I Have not heard back from Apple technical support since then but I assume they did something to resolve my issue.

Just happy it seems to work from any device / Apple ID over cellular now.

Thanks again to everyone who provided insight.

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