Add an activity indicator icon within the video frame

[ElectronicBattle]

Problem: I sometimes find that one of my nine cameras has a frozen display.

Idea: a moving or pulsing icon in the corner of the field of view (like there is a red dot when something is recording) would mean that observing it as static rather than animated would highlight a failed/stuck feed

Background: I have two cameras which frequently fail in some way. Most of the time, one of them fails with a blank screen (but not always) and most of the time the other fails with a freeze frame. In either case, simply glancing at e.g. the birdseye view or the specific camera view doesn't demonstrate the "stuck" nature of the stream. This means that prompt action to find the cause is a lost opportunity.

[NickM-27]

(like there is a red dot when something is recording)

to be clear the red dot on the live view means motion is detected, it is not related to recording.

but the problem in general is this is all frontend based. The webUI will already show a buffering indicator if the video is not playing. At that point the pulsing icon would not help diagnose a frozen stream because the frontend would think it is playing even if there is a video issue.

[ElectronicBattle]

to be clear the red dot on the live view means motion is detected, it is not related to recording.

sorry - yes.

I understand your description and I realised that that might usually be the case. However, one of the problems I am having seems to contradict things: my EZViz DB1C doorbell (Hik clone) shows full motion video in its android app but at the same time the same video stream - the same URL - is frozen in Frigate. When this happens, the red warning triangle in the bottom RH corner of Frigate doesn't light up - it is either green

because it all appears to be working in spite of the EZViz "freeze frame", or my other unreliable camera - blue gate - has indeed failed and Frigate does detect that failed instance fully, with a black screen and red warning triangle:

I don't know what happens if more than one camera is detected as faulty - would I get two messages with the red triangle "blue gate is offline and doorbell is offline?

I'll need to try to investigate the various logs: I'll perhaps raise a support request when I get a bit further with my own diagnosis.

[NickM-27]

because it all appears to be working in spite of the EZViz "freeze frame", or my other unreliable camera - blue gate - has indeed failed and Frigate does detect that failed instance fully, with a black screen and red warning triangle:

right, so Frigate currently doesn't know about this, so anything Frigate does to show activity will also not be aware of this issue. Easiest way is to have the camera itself have a timestamp

I don't know what happens if more than one camera is detected as faulty - would I get two messages with the red triangle "blue gate is offline and doorbell is offline?

yes

[ElectronicBattle]

Easiest way is to have the camera itself have a timestamp

It is - unfortunately, having de-warped the DB1C doorbell camera, the timestamp it should show is no longer in the shot, and the blue gate camera, whatever is wrong with it, means that unlike its seven neighbours, the timestamp doesn't work!

However, these are my problems to sort out. Thanks for explaining things regarding more than one camera and for showing why live video detection isn't going to be practicable.