Banner is Persistent / Does Not Fade

Monocle

I too have seen this banner in the past on some Alexa devices (I think it was in fact a FireTV) and like @pridsdale it seemed to go away eventually without any modifications on the Monocle side.

Just to be clear, this banner is entirely part of the Alexa/FireTV operating system/system software. Monocle is not an APP and thus nothing from Monocle gets installed on your Alexa enabled devices. Monocle only coordinates behind the scenes with the Alexa web APIs to implement the existing smart home camera features supported directly by the Alexa devices (Echo Show/FireTV). Enabling the Monocle skill is not installing anything either – it just connects the backend cloud/web services from Alexa and Monocle together and provides an account linking and grants access authentication.

I’ll re-check my FireTVs and see if I’m getting any lingering banners today. You might also hard-power-reset (unplug, wait 30 seconds, plug back in) your FireTV just in case.

Thanks, Robert

GreggC

@Monocle Thanks for the explanation, Robert. I just cycled power on the FireTV Stick again, but the banner’s still there. Hopefully Amazon will realize the problem and eventually correct it. In the end, users should be able to set a preference as to whether or not they want the banner at all.

dkbishop

I am also getting this same thing and it has annoyed me enough to go looking for a solution as well. I hope they get this corrected!

GreggC

@dkbishop It pretty much ruins the experience, doesn’t it? I hope you have better luck than me finding a solution.

Now that we understand from Robert that the banner is being generated on the Alexa side of things, it seems the key in getting a solution will be getting traction within the Amazon support/development organization. I don’t think I got that traction in my call with them the other day, as they volleyed the issue back towards Monocle.

Anyone got any ideas on how to get an incident opened directly with the Alexa development team?

Monocle

The following is somewhat subjective and partially a theory, but I think this banner is lingering because something in the Alexa RTSP player is struggling with the stream decoding. When I leave the stream running for a long time the banner does fade VERY gradually. So things you could try (again, maybe a shot in the dark) would be to change various settings on the camera such as resolution, bit-rate, frame-rate, audio codec, etc. Just to see if you can find a combination that Alexa seems to like better.

You could also try adding the “@noaudio” tag to your camera’s config in Monocle web portal if you are using Monocle Gateway. This would remove the audio stream — Alexa often has trouble with various audio streams from a wide range of cameras.

Thanks, Robert

GreggC

@Monocle Thanks for the additional ideas, I checked them out:

My wife sometimes likes the stream running a full day at a time, to the point where it even lags a whole minute or more (is that a clue?), but the banner never fades a bit.
No luck with @noaudio or @fixaudio. Of course we want the audio, and it does work by default.
No luck experimenting with various RTSP resolutions 1920x1080, 1280x720, 1024x526, 640x360 (all 16:9).
I did not adjust any bit and frame rates, but if anyone has a recommendation I’ll be happy to try it.

Monocle

@GreggC

Thanks for at least trying some of these. It was a shot in the dark.

The eventual lagging you describe, I have seen with select older Amcrest cameras when using the G.711 audio codec. I believe I was able to resolve this by either switching to AAC audio or lowering the audio bit rate (on the camera itself). So you might try that and see if it makes any difference on the lagging issue.

Thanks, Robert

GreggC

@Monocle With the Ubiquiti cameras, I don’t have any control over the codecs used for audio or video. However, I do have some control over video frame and bit rates. In particular, frame rates are interesting in respect to the Fire TV Stick 4K’s “Match Original Frame Rate” feature. Alas, I’ve tested a few combinations with no improvement.

My cameras were at default 15 fps and 3000 Kbps. I haven’t messed with bitrate, but I did try a few different frame rates, both with the “match” feature on and off. Here’s what hasn’t worked in respect to eliminating the never-fading banner: 15, 18, 20, 24.

Monocle

@GreggC

I’m not exactly sure what’s going on with this banner. I have seen banners that fade slowly over time in the past but none of my devices are currently exhibiting that behavior. If it’s not too much trouble – maybe a factory reset of the Alexa device would help? At this point we are just reaching … its entirely an Alexa software/firmware issue.

Thanks, Robert

GreggC

@Monocle Hi Robert. I actually already tried the factory reset and it didn’t help.

dkbishop

is there anything we can do to get rid of this annoying banner yet?

Monocle

@dkbishop

Unfortunately not on our side. This is an Amazon bug of some sort.

Thanks, Robert

dkbishop

I wonder if they even know about this

GreggC

@dkbishop said in Banner is Persistent / Does Not Fade:

I wonder if they even know about this

@dkbishop See above, I spent hours on phone w/ Amazon support. However, I’m not really sure it registered with them. We need someone with a more direct line to Amazon development that can speak their language.

phantom8299

Any updates about this? I have the same problems as well… using Firetv 4k stick, and two others 2nd-Gen Fire TV devices. All showed the persistent title banner.
Currently using RTSP Streams from unifi protect, and several panasonic ip cams.

GreggC

Still exists for me on Fire TV Stick 4K, now updated to latest Fire OS v6.2.7.7 & Fire TV Home v6242056.1.

We have various Echo Show, Spot and Fire Tablet devices, and this doesn’t exhibit on any of them. As mentioned above, each device handles the banners a little differently. This (and prior learning with this thread) convinces me that the issue is specific to Fire TV.

The trick will be getting this through to the Fire TV developers. If anyone things they have an ear, it would surely be appreciated.

GreggC

Hi all. I wanted to provide a current update on this. I just purchased a new Insignia FireTV (OS 6.2.8.4) and connected one of Amazon’s own Blink Mini cams, and this combination also exhibits the persistent banner problem.

Blink is a direct integration and doesn’t use Monocle at all.

The good news in this is that anyone that can duplicate this configuration and cares to open a new ticket with Amazon support might get better traction now because it’s a pure Amazon setup without any 3rd party components.

I might call them myself sometime, but probably no time soon. If I do, I’ll update again here.

VBasys

I can confirm the banner is entirely an Amazon generated feature and not unique to Monocle feeds. I have various Amazon tech (sticks, cubes, shows, etc) and various camera feeds (Hikvision+monocle, with\without gateway, Ring doorbells, Eufy doorbells, etc). While I haven’t tested all combinations I can say the overlay never fades upon my Fire TV Cube 4K regardless of feed, but does fade perfectly on my Echo Show 10. If you tap the screen on my Echo Show it pops back up, along with the controls for microphone and sound if the feed has that, then fades again after 5 seconds. On the Fire TV cube it just remains on screen permanently. However note that on the Echo Show I have disabled as much of the irritating tips, hints and suggestions as I possibly can, which might mean it has no reason to keep displaying the overlay. Indeed the only reason I suspect my FireTV Cube shows the overlay permanently, rather than let it fade and simply pop back up when you press the remote, is because it wants to display tips and suggestions on new camera feed features like PIP (Picture In Picture) etc. However I cannot find any setting to disable these hints displayed over camera feeds. The closest I can find is a Hints setting for the screensaver but this does not stop hints over a camera feed. It seems like Amazon are so excited with their new camera feed features that they actually compromise the feed to advertise them. Of course disabling these hints might not make any difference at all but it does seem to be the only justification for the overlay being permanent. Perhaps Amazon will provide a setting to disable these hints over camera feeds or perhaps they will decide they don’t need to display them in a repeating cycle and the overlay can then fade as it currently does on my Echo Show. However I suspect nothing will change for a while and I would not be surprised if an update to my Echo Show caused the same issue on that. After all Amazon can use these devices to advertise whatever they like to you whenever they like, therefore hints to try new features are probably considered perfectly acceptable, no matter how irritating they are or how unfortunately they impact upon camera feeds.

VBasys

There is an Alexa account wide setting to control “Things To Try” notifications across all devices (Alexa | Settings | Notifications | ThingsToTry) however it doesn’t seem to stop camera related suggestions being displayed on the camera feed.

Monocle

@VBasys

Thank you for your continued investigation and reporting of your findings!

Robert