Wow. Just read through this thread. That was insane.
I’m a little dumbfounded. Because I wasn’t affected at all.
Regardless, I am now very concerned. I was aware that Internet connectivity was required to authenticate user login, but I did not think much of it.
Sigh.
Dear eufy backers,
All the issue has been fixed. If you still have same problems, please contact support@eufylife.com.
The video data does encrypt and save on local HomeBase. Video data streams directly from HomeBase to your phone.
Nowadays, remote access is mandatory for most people. We developed the architecture starting from this demand.
The App relies on the server as an address book to find the HomeBase and locate the video.
The key concern here is whether the video data is uploaded to the cloud.
No, videos are not uploaded.
If you would like to know more, a simple test could help you understand. Once the App allocates the video and you start playing one of them, you may unplug the Internet cable of the router. This cuts your camera system from Internet. You will find your phone can still playback the next couple videos because the video is transmitted directly from HomeBase to the phone.
Hi eufy fans,
Sincerely sorry for our lack of communications. As Mengdi has mentioned, this issue has been fixed.
If the issue persists, please feel free to email support@eufylife.com.
Sorry again for the inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience and understanding.
The Anker community team
So you’re using a server to get past the firewall? Or do you open the router port via uPnP and server is just for IP lookup?
I can understand why a brief outage, while to switch to backup server and upgrade the primary, then another brief outage while you switch back, but the only way you need to have a long outage is if you don’t have a backup server. High availability pair synchronous mirror , mirrors asynchronously to another backup HA pair, does cause a brief outage but not a long outage.
Therefore if you don’t have a backup server to switch to during upgrades, you must be vulnerable to server unplanned outages, a single point of failure (SPOF). If planned outages take a long time, then unplanned outages will take even longer. Ouch.
As to video storage, I don’t own any Eufy cameras but is there not an option for a customer to backup to cloud? They can add their AWS / Azure / GCP credentials and you can view videos from the cloud backup.
Suggestion:
The reason is a bad person can walk up to the property and destroy the camera, because you need to reasonably close to get a good hit and you must be in line of sight and the camera has a wide viewing angle so hard for the bad person to not be seen. More so if owner has multiple cameras with no hidden areas. The bad person the breaks into the property and destroys the homebase. Then all evidence gone. But all but the most recent seconds/minutes can be present in the cloud so its not all gone.
Then when someone uses the Eufy app, it can route to the homebase as primary source, but if its offline (Internet down, destroyed, etc) it goes to the cloud copy.
You also should implement a cache of the IP to the app, so if your server is down it goes to the last known good IP. Assuming you have security implemented with a uPnP to allow outside-in rather than a port open to bypass NAT.
None of this is at all complex to implement. I could do it.
Well no, the concern is the reliance of the Anker servers for the whole thing to work. Server goes down, whole thing falls apart. Some which that had users alarm going off in locations that aren’t necessarily easy to reach.
I get that things go wrong, a little notice would’ve been great. Personally the support chat and phone lines being down at the same time is the most ridiuclous part.
I love the products, but much improvement is desired.
There’s a SPOF within the network. They must be hauling all traffic including calls back through a VPN which is in-band in the server.
This is an inherently badly architected solution. I’d avoid it.
Shared nothing, high availability… I’m not hearing these from their replies. Sync mirrors locally, async mirrors distant. This is not a future calamity Eufy need impose on customers. Cost to avoid… about $100K. I don’t know how big is their database, daily rate of change of data, but as they said the data is kept in the bases, so just metadata only to servers, the data is likely tiny, so the cost to avoid this in future is probably small.
Hopefully your all negativity and moaning is just what a good engineer needed to get the additional funding.
The another problem is there’s no communication from their official support, twitter, in-app notice etc.
There are literally people who had no idea wtf just happened, or people whove failed to set cameras up if they’d just bought it.
Can you please get yourself a contract with Anker to fix this Professor? 
So the problem finally was fixed last Saturday, and all has been well, even up to 10 mins ago and it appears the servers are back down AGAIN!!! WFT??? I literally checked it a few minutes ago after a notification, and I got another one and “phone is not connected to the internet” once again. This is ridiculous.
I sent an email to you guys. It appears to be down again.
Same here. down friday and saturday , worked sunday and monday morning now down again
Lol wtf. So thats why there hasnt been any notification
wow sounds like someone messed up really bad during the system upgrade or just bad design overall. Either way sorry to hear what everyone had to go through. Been watching the eufy system for awhile and I still can’t justify buying it as of today. At least to me it feel like it’s still in beta v2
This is frustrating. Just received my Indoor Security Cam this morning. First, I find out that HomeKit enablement has been delayed, so can not setup the camera that way. Now I am unable to connect through the App b/c of these server issues. I was so happy to get away from Belkin Netcams connectivity issues, but sigh… not off to a good start.
It’s down again! Wtf.
As some of you have seen by now, our servers are down again. We are working with our AWS servers to see what is going on. Your video events are recording as normal. The apps ability to connect to your eufy security products is what allows you to view videos both at home, and remotely when you are not in your home. We know apologies aren’t enough here, but please know we are working hard to figure this out and will update you as soon as we have more detail.
The estimated waiting time in call center right now is above 1 hour and currently the call back function is not available. You can call but must stay on the line. If you have issues – for now, please email us at support@eufylife.com.
For eufy Security issues, you can also visit: communitysecurity.eufylife.com
Thanks for an official reply. I know from my end, a lot of the frustration is from not knowing if there is an officially recognized outage or an issue with the individual system.
I would also be interested to know if there are any plans to allow you to do pretty much everything (communicate with device, get notifications, etc.) if you are on the same network as your eufy device.
I know many chose eufy because we are able to keep things local. I understand that, in order to get notifications and do other things when you are out, an internet connection or central server may be required. However, when you are on the same network, it seems like you should have the ability to fully use your device without internet or a central server. You can already view the video camera, why not other functions?
Looking forward to seeing if this is something eufy plans to implement, and if so, in what timeframe.
Thanks for your understanding. Servers go down, but we are absolutely looking at new processes that allow users to continue to access their events.
It’s purely bad design (Technical Architecture) because what you do is have a copy of your data on a test server and you test an upgrade and test using a copy of data. The upgrade can thus mess up big time, take ages and repeat attempts but all of this is to the side, you the user don’t see.
So no, a failed upgrade is the assumption in architecture.
What you have here is bad design, they upgraded a live system, so you had to wait for it and suffer if it failed.
All I am saying does come at a cost. To have a copy of data comes at a cost, to have server to test upgrades comes at a cost. To actually do an upgrade in test then do again in production comes at a cost. However, when you do the costing, it works out cheaper than customer complaints and lack of confidence which impacts revenue.
I won’t name technology brands as that feels wrong in an Anker forum, but there are storage brands who do instant read-write copies of data (to which you test to the side) and cloning of servers, so it’s all push button in a console.
So an outage is a deliberate decision to save costs and impact users.
Just purchased a Eufy system and was trying to set it up today. Now I realize why it is not working. Server is down. Is this forum the only way to know what’s going on? Very unsatisfied so far.