Having trouble finding the balance or config to get data but maintain battery

[EricLauber]

I've found that neolink 0.6.2 seems to be the most stable version for me, but it eats battery life on my Battery Doorbell. Like 10% an hour, even if I set it for just mqtt with a large interval. The battery doorbell connects to doorbell power and can recharge, but only tends to do so when you don't use the device, so it's almost like connecting to get the data results in stopping charging.

I had an idea - what if I just shut neolink off entirely, and restarted it every 5 minutes? I've seen improvements, but it's still not what I wish it was. Not only is data infrequent, but I'm still losing about 20% per day. The goal obviously would be to get data like a doorbell preview image as frequently as possible, while minimizing power loss.

Anyone have ideas? Here's what I've got so far.

A custom entrypoint.sh that starts neolink every 5 minutes, but stops it after 20 seconds to break the connection.

#!/bin/bash

# Enable debugging for troubleshooting (remove `set -x` in production)
set -e

# Function to handle cleanup and termination
cleanup() {
    echo "$(date): Stopping neolink..."
    if [[ -n "$NEOLINK_PID" ]] && kill -0 "$NEOLINK_PID" 2>/dev/null; then
        kill "$NEOLINK_PID"
        wait "$NEOLINK_PID"
        echo "$(date): neolink stopped."
    else
        echo "$(date): No active neolink process to stop."
    fi
    exit 0
}

# Trap signals to cleanup on container shutdown
trap cleanup SIGTERM SIGINT

echo "$(date): Entrypoint script started. Looping to run neolink every 5 minutes."

# Main loop
while true; do
    echo "$(date): Starting neolink with mode: $NEO_LINK_MODE"

    # Start neolink in the background
    /usr/local/bin/neolink "$NEO_LINK_MODE" --config /etc/neolink.toml &
    NEOLINK_PID=$!

    echo "$(date): neolink started with PID $NEOLINK_PID"

    # Run for 20 seconds
    sleep 20

    # Stop the process
    echo "$(date): Stopping neolink after 20 seconds."
    if kill "$NEOLINK_PID" 2>/dev/null; then
        wait "$NEOLINK_PID" || true
        echo "$(date): neolink process $NEOLINK_PID stopped."
    else
        echo "$(date): Failed to stop neolink process $NEOLINK_PID."
    fi

    # Sleep for the remaining interval
    echo "$(date): Sleeping for 4 minutes 40 seconds until next run."
    sleep 280
done

A custom dockerfile to use that custom entrypoint.

# Step 1: Use the neolink v0.6.2 image as the base for copying artifacts
FROM quantumentangledandy/neolink:v0.6.2 AS base

# Step 2: Create the release container
FROM debian:bookworm-slim

LABEL description="An image for the neolink program which is a reolink camera to rtsp translator"

# Step 3: Set environment variables
ENV NEO_LINK_MODE="rtsp" NEO_LINK_PORT=8554

# Step 4: Install required packages
RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
        bash \
        openssl \
        dnsutils \
        iputils-ping \
        ca-certificates \
        libgstrtspserver-1.0-0 \
        libgstreamer1.0-0 \
        gstreamer1.0-tools \
        gstreamer1.0-x \
        gstreamer1.0-plugins-base \
        gstreamer1.0-plugins-good \
        gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad \
        gstreamer1.0-libav \
        cron && \
    apt-get clean -y && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# Step 5: Copy the build artifacts from the base image
COPY --from=base /usr/local/bin/neolink /usr/local/bin/neolink

# Step 6: Ensure the entrypoint script exists and is executable
COPY docker/entrypoint.sh /usr/local/bin/entrypoint.sh
RUN chmod +x /usr/local/bin/entrypoint.sh

# Step 7: Add the cron job
RUN echo "*/5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/run_neolink.sh >> /var/log/neolink.log 2>&1" | crontab -

# Step 8: Create the log directory
RUN mkdir -p /var/log && touch /var/log/neolink.log

# Step 9: Expose the port
EXPOSE ${NEO_LINK_PORT}

# Step 10: Entrypoint
ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/local/bin/entrypoint.sh"]

I build this image locally: docker build -t neolink-mqtt .

And then use it with this docker-compose.yml

services:
  neolink:
    image: neolink-mqtt:latest
    container_name: neolink-mqtt
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: host
    volumes:
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - ./config.toml:/etc/neolink.toml
    environment:
      NEO_LINK_MODE: "mqtt"