Realtime transports

A device's realtime path follows its ecosystem. What differs per device is the realtime transport it speaks — but you never select it, and you never open it by hand. The SDK manages connectivity for you (see Connectivity & battery); this table is a reference for which transport carries each class, not a set of calls to make:

Device class	Realtime transport	Carries
HomeBase / station	p2p	device-state + semantic events
Camera / doorbell	p2p	events, faces, live video
Entry / motion sensor, keypad, lock	p2p (via HomeBase)	open/close + state (poll fallback)
Robot vacuum, light, plug, display	smqtt	appliance DP-state

• P2P — the realtime channel for the security ecosystem (peer-to-peer over UDP), not MQTT. One session per HomeBase; emits device-state events, pulls the face roster, and carries live video (see Live media).
• Secure MQTT (smqtt) — Anker's mTLS broker; drives eufy_mega / eufy_home appliances and carries the cloud DP-state shadow for security devices' settings.
• FCM push — orthogonal to the above; the always-on event + thumbnail channel for any device class, with v6 AI enrichment. Events reach you over push regardless of P2P.

Connectivity is automatic

Connectivity is transport-agnostic and SDK-owned. A successful login() brings up the event channels (push + secure MQTT) automatically; P2P to a camera opens on demand the moment a command, live stream, or doorbell ring needs it, and detaches when idle so battery cameras can sleep. Just log in, read devices, and send actions:

await eufy.login(); // realtime comes up on its own
eufy.on("motion", (e) => console.log("motion on", e.deviceSn));
const dev = await eufy.getDevice(sn);
await dev.camera?.()?.snapshotLive(); // explicit fresh capture; opens P2P on demand

Stored snapshots follow a separate path: qualifying push thumbnails are acquired eagerly, and snapshotStored() later reads only retained memory without opening P2P or making a network request.

How the lifecycle, battery savings, the opt-in event pre-warm and the read cache work — and the knobs to tune them — is the subject of the next page.

Next: Connectivity & battery · Live media.