If I have my nest cam set up and working to live stream on my dashboard, is it still streaming when tablet sleeps, or if I’m in another dashboard? Wondering about my bandwidth if it’s always streaming upload and download even in background.
Thanks!
Hi @Brandon - if the tablet is completely asleep or the webpage is otherwise not loaded, then the embedded Nest stream should not be active.
It depends a bit on what you mean by sleep though - for example, Fully Kiosk Browser is a popular app for displaying dashboards, and has some options for keeping the screen on but dim sort of like a pseudo sleep. In that case, the dashboard is actually still active and would still be streaming.
So I ran some tests. I am using a Lenovo m8 tablet. Running fully. .I have read about the dimming feature as a means to solve the fire tablet issues. My screen appears to go fully black. I didn’t think a screen could dim enough to appear off, but still be on. It is definitely a feature I did not turn on. Hopefully it’s not on by default.
If I leave the dashboard with a camera stream open and the screen “sleeps” my router still shows active bandwidth being used from device. As soon as I change to a dashboard without the stream, all bandwidth stops.
Also I’d like to ask, as I can’t find a separate page discussing. battery usage of the tablet. I get maybe 36 hours before tablet dies. Yet the screen is off 95% of the time. Could this be my screen is not actually sleeping? Or does sharptools and fully utilize that much power in background?
Thanks for the help. I gotta say I read here alot. And you are 1 damn active developer! Thank you!
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Thanks for sharing the results of your tests! That certainly makes sense to me as the tablet is technically still actively running even when the screen dimmed all the way to 0.
I would note that the workaround that dims the tablet to zero rather than completely locking the tablet screen is primarily an issue on the Fire Tablets because they can’t be automatically unlocked after being awoken. Most normal Android tablets can be unlocked by Fully Kiosk Browser (FKB) in which case you might be able to just have FKB lock the screen when the screensaver is activated and unlock it when motion is detected - you might have to play with it to see if it achieves the desired result of killing the background stream though. 
With the configuration you mentioned, it sounds like the tablet is still ‘awake’ but the screen backlight is dimmed down. Things like the Wifi chip running in the background and the CPU staying active to process changes will consume battery.
Many people in the community end up providing power directly to their tablets. @MakesByMike has some neat power options (and mounts) that you might find interesting:
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