feat: battery-aware reconnect backoff to prevent battery drain

[ramparte]

Problem

Battery-powered Reolink cameras (Argus series, E1 Outdoor, Go Plus, etc.) suffer severe battery drain when neolink is running. The root cause: when a battery camera is asleep, neolink retries the connection every 5 seconds (the current fixed backoff cap), each time waking the camera via the P2P relay. At ~240 wake-ups per hour per camera, this drains batteries in days instead of weeks.

The 15-second stream-info polling loop (get_stream_info) compounds the problem — it queries cameras that never change their stream capabilities, keeping the connection warm even when idle_disconnect is set.

Solution

A new battery_camera = true config option per camera that activates three battery-saving behaviors:

1. Exponential backoff with 1-hour cap

When battery_camera = true, the reconnect delay grows exponentially: 50ms → 100ms → 200ms → ... → 1 hour cap, instead of the fixed 5s cap. This matches the reality that sleeping battery cameras may not wake for long periods — there is no point hammering the relay every 5 seconds.

2. Stream-info poll disabled

The 15-second get_stream_info loop is gated behind !battery_camera. Stream capabilities are queried once at startup and cached. For battery cameras, these capabilities never change at runtime, so periodic polling is pure waste.

3. Auto-enable idle_disconnect

If battery_camera = true and idle_disconnect is not explicitly set, it defaults to true so the connection drops when no RTSP client is viewing.

Config

[[cameras]]
name = "front_door"
battery_camera = true
username = "admin"
password = "****"
uid = "XXXXXXXXXX"

For non-battery cameras, nothing changes. The default is battery_camera = false, preserving the existing 5-second reconnect behavior.

Changes

• src/config.rs: Add battery_camera field (default false)
• src/common/neocam.rs: Propagate battery_camera to NeoInstance, auto-enable idle_disconnect
• src/common/camthread.rs: Exponential backoff (1hr cap) when battery_camera is true
• src/rtsp/mod.rs: Gate stream-info poll behind !battery_camera, query once at startup instead

85 lines added, 6 removed across 4 files.

Testing

Tested with 6 battery/solar Reolink cameras (Argus 3 Pro, Go Plus with cellular, solar-powered variants). Neolink starts cleanly, RTSP bridge works, and cameras are no longer hammered with reconnect attempts while sleeping.

CI fixes (bonus)

Also included:

• Fixed Windows CI by downloading GStreamer MSIs directly (choco gstreamer package is unreliable — gstreamer.freedesktop.org now blocks automated downloads with anti-bot challenges, but the MSI URLs still work)
• Dropped deprecated macos-12 runner from CI matrix (stuck in queue permanently)

Addresses #204, #241, #334.

[surfzoid]

Hi, good job.
Since a long time @QuantumEntangledAndy isn't come. Somewhere we re launch activity around sdcard functionality #396 , pherhaps yu should use the "new" activ fork https://github.com/lorek123/neolink