I have an iPad monitoring one of my Yi cameras 24/7. In the last few days the Internet band width usage has skyrocketed for both. I don’t have the cloud service anymore. I always assumed the camera feed traffic was only in my local network. Seems like it’s now going to the Internet and then back. Did something change recently?
It still uses the internet regardless of cloud service.
Make sure the cameras didn’t get set to HD. This will use 3-4 times the bandwidth as SD.
I went from around 20mb/day to 10gb/day. So weird. SD/HD can’t possibly be the culprit. Previously, the iOS app must have been getting the video stream directly. It was working this way for years and just decided to change a few days ago. Oh well. The camera is old so I’m changing to an RTSP camera.
That is a crazy jump!
Are you using cloud services? Is your cloud sub a continuous recording plan?
How long are your recording lengths? Lower the length to see if that has an impact.
Check your motion detection frequency if its an outdoor battery camera.
Did changing from HD to SD make a difference?
Thanks for your patience. I look forward to your response.
Going from SD to HD can absolutely make a huge difference especially if more than one camera.
My increase in bandwidth use was 6 times more per camera with HD.
WOW! That is incredible to me… Thank you for the update.
Do you mind if I ask how many cameras you have?
That was 4 cameras. Switched them all to HD at one point. a few weeks later my internet provider sent a warning I was reaching my download (streaming) limit provided with my plan.
For two months I kept track of usage and looked at past usage to figure out what happened. I figured the internet provider was screwing it up. Do not trust them at all.
I ran an app to track the usage of every device on my network and it revealed about 80% of the usage was the cameras.
My account showed my monthly internet usage was an average of 300Gb/month.
For the two months I tracked it the usage was over 1300Gb/month.
After finding that the cameras were the likely issue I set them back to SD and my usage has returned to an average of 300Gb/month.
I was quite surprised at the amount they consumed but a little Google and I found that HD can consume a huge amount of bandwidth when compared to SD mode.
I really don’t see much difference in the picture so SD it is.
that’s incredible. Good to know. I am going to switch all of my cameras to SD just in case. I have gotten close to my limit recently and I’m going to do the same and check my usage.
Thanks for all the feedback. I guarantee that someone on the forum is going to be thankful for this data.
Hope you’re having a good day!
That is a concern with IP type cameras that are always recording. Also with limited internet. Didn’t know limited usage was still a thing though.
It would be good to see some rule of thumbs which state
Record in SD - xxMb is used
Record in HD - xxMb is used
I have fast low ping unlimited fibre to home service and therefore leave on HD all the time because of the improved visual quality. But can imagine those on limited plans must get a bit worried about it.
Good suggestion @YorkshireUser. Definitely a concern with IP cameras.
We can do some internally testing to get a rough estimate on record in SD/HD Mb usage. There is a number of factors dependent on that so I think it would have to be a rough estimate with some stipulations as to why it would be increase.
Let me chat with the team to see what I can find out.
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Steven, no I’m not using cloud service and motion detection is off.
Wirlybird, I’m not saying SD/HD doesn’t make a big difference, I went from a few hundred megabytes to several gigabytes. It doesn’t make that much of a difference.
Since the bandwidth usage of my camera and iPad both suddenly increased, the only conclusion I can come to is that things changed and data was going through the internet instead of just on my LAN.
I switched to a real IP camera and my bandwidth usage is now back to practically nothing with the camera and monitoring on 24/7.