Live Cams by Eggman Technologies Inc.

DynDns.org is no longer free - Try www.no-ip.com

2011-12-22T14:01:00.001-05:00

We have just been notified that the free dynamic dns hosting service at "dyndns.org" has moved to a paid-only business model. For those of you who wish to remain with their systems, here is a description of their changes:

http://www.dyndnscommunity.com/questions/21580/from-dyn-what-happened-to-free-accounts.html

For those of you who want to switch to a free service instead you can try this site:

http://www.no-ip.com

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-20T20:41:00.000-05:00

The holidays are approaching and we hope everyone enjoys themselves over the next two weeks! Whether you are getting a well-deserved break from work, visiting friends and family or just slowing down the pace a little it's the time of year to reflect and prepare for a fresh start.

We too will be slowing down (finally) for a break with our children. We hope to energize ourselves for another year of fantastic features and product development here at Eggman Technologies.

Our technical support address will still be accepting emails but we will be closed from

December 23 - 27
December 30 - January 3

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and best wishes for 2012 from Lorrie and Barry Egerter!

Known bugs in Live Cams Pro v1.6

2011-12-06T07:30:00.006-05:00

Apple reviewed and released the 1.6 patch yesterday and the high priority bugs were eliminated. We have now been working on the 1.7 release and can report on a few of the bugs that are being addressed:

Known 1.6 Issues - Fixed in v1.7

Foscam audio playback is poppy/scratchy/clicky in version 1.5 and 1.6
Foscam audio output quality improvements
Cisco/Linksys audio fails on some devices causing a crash.
JPEG/MJPEG URL profiles fail to allow "/" characters
Audio output does not work on Axis devices using HTTPS
Home Surveillance mode is missing an option to allow startup with favorites

Additions in 1.7

Linksys/Cisco audio out (tested on WVC210)
Advanced settings screens now use a label and a button to launch hyperlinks instead of a simple label
Added the ability to launch group 1 or group 2 cameras when starting in home surveillance mode (in addition to all private cameras or favorites)

Our next release should be the last update before the holidays and we hope to have it completed and tested this week.

Update (Dec 12, 2011) - The release has been submitted to Apple (followed by a review that usual takes them 6-8 days before the app appears on iTunes)

Live Cams Pro v1.5 (+ v1.6 patch)

2011-12-03T18:42:00.010-05:00

Our latest release is now available in the app store and it is quickly generating a lot of interest.

We'd like to report on several bugs that have been reported so far:

1) Anyone who had an unlicensed version of Live Cams Pro prior to 1.5 should wait for a patch to be released before making any in-app purchases. The app fails to recognize the purchase even though the payment is accepted by Apple. Users with licenses or new users of 1.5 have not reported any issues, this is only a problem for people who have updated an old copy before purchasing anything. If you have already run into this problem don't worry, your purchase is still valid and on record with Apple. When the 1.6 patch is released you can use the restore purchases option to resolve the issue.

2) Sort order for private cameras and favorites is not being honored. They will all appear alphabetical. Your previously assigned sort order has not been lost, it's just not being respected when the cameras are loaded.

3) URL-based camera profiles complain about protocols being present in the url when a camera is added.

4) Editing group names for private cameras always changes the name of the first group instead of the one originally selected.

5) Private cameras cannot be deleted from the list mode.

6) Control button sometimes doesn't appear (or never appears) for a PTZ device.

7) Audio no longer works for Apexis or Wansview cameras (this has been resolved without the need for a patch. Simply shut down the app and restart it to obtain the new configuration).

8) Astak Mole cameras fail to display video. This can be resolved by shutting down the app and restarting to fetch the latest config.

9) SecuritySpy camera import complains about requiring a camera name but the field is disabled.

All of these have been reproduced and resolved on our development systems but we will need to release a quick patch to Apple in order to get the software out to the customers. This can sometimes take 2-3 days.
The patch will be labelled as the 1.6 release and it was submitted to Apple on Sunday Dec 4 at 11:12am EST.

As always, please report bugs to our support@eggmantechnologies.com email account. Thanks!

Live Cams Pro - App Ranks (revised Nov 2)

2011-10-17T15:53:00.004-04:00

Recently we've had a great deal of visibility in the app store thanks to some top iTunes ranks in the major markets and some articles in the media. Here are a few of the highlights:

November 4, 2011 - The #1 top free iPad app in Greece

November 2 2011 - #2 iPhone app and #3 iPad app in Greece, top free overall category!

October 17 2011 - #1 iPhone utility in Italy, #14 overall app

October 14 2011 - #1 iPhone utility in Canada, #2 overall app

September 19, 2011 - My brother Chris and I are featured in a local business magazine. We don't work together but instead have separate successful mobile app businesses! My wife Lorrie and I run Eggman Technologies and focus on business/utility apps while my brother Chris makes games at his own company.

September 19, 2011 - #2 iPhone app in Spain (overall), #1 utility app

August 31, 2011 - #1 iPad app in Germany (overall), also the #1 utility for both iPhone and iPad

Live Cams Pro has been downloaded more than 750,000 times since being released on May 5, 2011. We have continued to push the product forward and have released several new versions over the past 5 months. Our next release is version 1.5 and this will mark the end of the free downloads for Live Cams Pro. The product holds a 4-star overall rating in iTunes and the current version is 4.5/5 with 88% of our reviewers giving it at least 4 stars out of 5.

We're not done yet! More enhancements are on the way.....

Thanks for your continued support.
Sincerely,

Barry Egerter - CEO/President
Lorrie Egerter - Director of Technical Support

Live Cams Pro to become a paid app soon, get it now!

2011-10-10T11:18:00.002-04:00

After six months in the app store Live Cams Pro has matured to become a quality and stable product. We continue to take customer feedback so that we can improve the product and provide the features that our customers demand. As such, we are moving Live Cams Pro into the paid apps category in iTunes. Customers believe that paid applications are of higher quality and more feature rich than free applications and this move reflects that.

Live Cams Pro version 1.5 will be a 99 cent download (US/Cdn $) with an in-app purchase for the private camera features. It will be ad-free and we will adjust the normal $3.99 fee for the private camera license to $2.99 so that the total price is effectively the same.

We understand that private camera owners will no longer be able to try the private camera features without making an up front purchase. The application will allow you to enter your private camera details and test the functionality before making the additional in-app purchase for a private camera license (as it currently does.)

To summarize:

Live Cams Pro will become a paid app at $0.99 cents US.
The app will not contain any ads!
The app will include all of the public camera features without restrictions.
In-app purchase for private camera owners will be $2.99. Users will be able to test their devices within the app by adding details and playing with it before making the in-app purchase to remove the banners.

Live Cams Pro 1.5 nearing completion

2011-09-21T10:04:00.003-04:00

Live Cams Pro v1.5 is currently under final development stages and entering the test cycle. Among the various bugfixes and improvements are:

TWO-WAY audio for Axis, Foscam, INSTAR, HOOTOO, and select Trendnet, Wansview, Dericam models. More models to come soon!
One-way audio added for

Cisco/Linksys devices like WVC200 and WVC210, PVC2300
Sanyo (VCC-HD2500 tested, supports G.711 ULaw, ALaw and Linear PCM formats)
Level One (WCS-0040/FCS-0040/FCS-3051/FCS-3031/WCS-0020/WCS-0010/FCS-0010)
ACTi devices (tested on ACM models, should also support TCM devices)

Baby monitor features such as push notifications when audio exceeds a predetermined level! You can set the app to fire an alert and an optional sound. The app must be running in the foreground or background with audio for this feature to work properly. If you are listening for baby cries or your pets you can simply launch the camera video, start the audio and then close the app.
New settings available! Under "General" there will be an option to have low-res camera images stretch to fill the screen (the current behaviour) or to appear smaller and in their native resolution. This will allow low-res cameras appear clearly on iPad screens and it will still allow you to stretch them digitally by using a two-finger pinch gesture. Many of the public cameras are low-res and this new option allows them to look very sharp on iPad displays.
On the main app screen you can now toggle the toolbar on or off by tapping a button. Some security teams are projecting the app display onto an HDTV and do not wish to see the toolbar while monitoring video. The thumbnails/map/list content will resize to fill the extra space if the toolbar is hidden.
Motion detection for FOSCAM compatible devices! When the app is running in the background and playing audio you can also receive local push notifications for motion events. An alert will display on your device which notifies you of the event and then allows you to launch back into the app to view the live video.
The app now allows for 20 seconds of video/audio for unlicensed private camera users. This gives enough time to evaluate the basic features but prevents people from using the app without paying for the private camera license. After 20 seconds the audio will stop but the video will continue behind a translucent message. You should be able to continue playing with PTZ and advanced camera features to further evaluate the product.
New camera profiles added for some Chinese devices without a logo or brand name.
Axis cameras now properly handle multi-camera PTZ (on 241Q models for example)
Additional bugfixes and UI enhancements.

We are continuing our efforts to port the Live Cams products to Android and hope to have a release before the end of the year. If time runs out we will put out an initial version with a limited set of features and gradually introduce the remaining ones as time allows. Our port is targeted at Android 2.2 and will also be designed for tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

In other news we have also released a Nokia Symbian version of Live Cams for Symbian^3 and S60 5th Edition devices (like the N8-00, E7-00, 5800 XpressMusic, X7-00 and C7-00). This version of the product is public cameras only (no private camera support) and is available in the Ovi store. We will be updating the product to improve the UI in the next few months and we will continue to expand the offering from its initial release.

Private Camera licenses now 25% off in Live Cams Pro

2011-08-09T00:33:00.000-04:00

Act now and purchase your Live Cams Pro license for private camera usage at a 25% discount!

Don't forget that this is a permanent license for our most powerful Live Cams Product to date.

You can buy a single license and then install the app on as many iPhones/iPads/iPods as you own!

Simply use the "Restore Purchases" button on each extra device to activate your existing license.

Eggman Technologies - How it Began

2011-06-23T10:51:00.000-04:00

As many of you know this is a small family-owned and operated business. Our lives have drastically changed in the past 3 years due to our success with Live Cams (and now Live Cams Pro). Here is a little background on how it started:

How it began
I (Barry Egerter) am the author of the applications. In 2008 I started working 1 hour a night between midnight and 1am creating Live Cams as a fun project to keep my mind fresh. Within three months I completed the first release and submitted it to Apple for review. Two months (and 5 submissions later) they finally approved it for sale on iTunes. It was available in February of 2009 and sold 1 copy on the first day (at $0.99 US). By April I was selling about 5 copies per day, netting us a cool $3.50. At this rate it would take over two years to reach our goal of covering the cost of our iPhone and Macbook Pro laptop.

In May I made some changes to the app name, the logo, marketing and the user interface of the app. It supported pan-tilt-zoom controls for Axis and Canon devices and included hundreds of public cameras to view/control!
Within a few weeks of this update it reached the #6 top paid app spot in the US and was the #1 paid utility app. This forced me to decide if I wanted to pursue it full-time or keep my day job as a lead software engineer for Comcast. The idea of working from home was too tempting and I resigned in mid-June 2009.

Rough Start
Knowing that customers wanted new releases and features at a fast pace I immediately put another version in Apple's hands by the end of June 2009. The thought of losing my full-time paycheck was terrifying and I knew that I had to keep pumping out enhancements to succeed. Sadly, Apple was going through growing pains as well and the update was repeatedly rejected by their review team for having "keywords in the app name". The app was previously named "Live Cams (Pan Tilt Zoom)" but we had changed it to just "Live Cams" as part of the update. For some reason the app review team did not see this change and every two weeks after submitting the app they would reject it. We had no way of contacting a real person to discuss this and were forced to send emails (which were ignored). By early SEPTEMBER our app was still not approved even though there was nothing wrong with it. I was furious because our app reviews were becoming very negative due to lack of updates and we could not get Apple to do anything. I wrote an angry email to Steve Jobs (guessed his address and got lucky) and within 24 hours the issues at Apple were resolved! Their computers had a "cached" copy of the app name from May and as a result their app review team was looking at old data and rejecting the update!

iOS Changes - Breaking Everything!
During the months that the update was locked in "review hell" I also saw Apple release several new iOS updates. These updates were coming faster than I could keep up with the software requirements for device compatibility. As a result I found that the app was crashing for users with specific iOS versions that I could not test due to my single iPhone. I went shopping and bought a second iPhone and an iPod Touch in order to properly install and test various iOS combinations. This new business was becoming costly and challenging!

#1 in the US and Japan - OVERALL!
By December of 2009 I had put out several patches and updates to keep the software moving forward and something changed..... within a few days of my December update I saw the ranks rapidly climbing. As of December 17, 2009 it reached the #1 paid app spot in the entire app store (for the US, the biggest market). Incredible! Emails started pouring in and on Christmas day it was still ranked #1. It pulled in the biggest sales figures ever at over 40,000 copies sold in 1 day! The laptop and iPhones would finally be paid off.

Too much too fast
As 2009 tuned to 2010 I was working 18 hours per day trying to simply answer customer emails. My quality of service was drastically lowered as I could do nothing more than deflect the questions with reasonable answers. This was not how I like to do business, as I feel that a high-level of customer service is the best way to succeed long-term. My wife and I were exhausted by our schedule and we had a long discussion about how to proceed. We agreed that we did not want to be the #1 app any more and that it would be better if we could have a lower level of sales but at a steady pace. In January we raised our price and purposely changed our marketing so that the app sounded less appealing. This worked and within 24 hours we were no longer #1. In fact, we completely dropped out of the top 100 within a few days. It sounds silly but we were very happy that we might regain our lives and be able to offer our customers a better experience.

Japan takes over
Immediately after raising our price and dropping out of visibility in the US market we suddenly reached the #1 spot in Japan (another major market!). This was confusing to us but we concluded that the news had just reached them about our app. For a few weeks we stayed at the top of the charts overseas but eventually it also calmed down.

The iPad Cometh
On January 27, 2010 the iPad was announced. We downloaded the new SDK (software developer kit) and started to investigate what the app might look like on a larger screen. Sadly we could not purchase an actual iPad because we live in Canada and it was only available in the United States. We patiently waited and by May 28th they finally started taking orders. Live Cams HD was released in June after we finally received our device and resolved some issues with the software. It immediately became a top-seller for the iPad as well.

Incorporation
With all of the excitement generated by our software we decided to form an incorporated business under the name "Eggman Technologies Inc.". This happened in August 2010 and we still operate under that name. My wife Lorrie has been working as first-line tech support (her existing profession) allowing me to focus on software and website design.

Competitors and copycats abound!
As with any success we have found that there are now dozens (if not hundreds) of similar applications trying to capitalize on our design and success. We've had people steal our data and release competing apps, copy our logo, app description and even app name! Looking on other mobile platforms you will find that there is a "Live Cams" for Blackberry, one for Android and several look-a-likes or sound-a-likes on other devices. These are not created by us but they have used our name to trick customers into buying the products. We will move into these markets in time but hope that the copycats don't cause too much confusion with the product branding. This is simply a part of business and we accept it for what it is.

Stay tuned for part 2, Eggman Technologies - Where are we headed now?.

Getting the most out of Live Cams Pro

2011-06-13T23:20:00.000-04:00

Here are a few quick tips for new Live Cams Pro users:

Hide or Show Thumbnail Labels
A simple swipe upwards on the thumbnails will remove the labels from the screen. This is useful if you want to maximize the viewing space available on your iPhone. To bring the labels back into view, swipe down on the thumbnails and the labels will reappear. Settings are saved when you close the app so that it looks the same when you launch it again later.

Install the app on multiple devices (iPads, iPhones, iPod Touches)
If you have more than one iOS device then you probably want to have a copy of Live Cams Pro on each one. Simply download the app onto each device and make your initial license purchase using iTunes on one of them. On each additional device you can press the "Restore Purchases" button in the store tab to bring your purchases into effect. This is also how you can recover in-app purchases if you replace or re-install your existing device.

Keep your camera information up-to-date on all devices
Any private cameras or favorites that you have are stored locally on your iOS device. This is not posted to a server or shared with the world in any way. If you want to have the same information on another copy of Live Cams Pro, use the IMPORT/EXPORT functions in the settings screens. A wireless transfer of your data will take place (using Wifi or Bluetooth) from one device to another when you choose "Import" on one and "Export" on the other.

Advanced camera features can be accessed on the iPad thumbnail screen!
Double-tap on a private camera thumbnail when on an iPad to bring up the advanced options for a particular camera. For many models you can alter contrast, brightness, resolution, alarm settings, LED settings and more!

Drag the PTZ or Advanced Settings window out of the way
Tap and hold the title bar of the advanced settings menu (or the open space in the PTZ window) to drag the window out of the way. On the iPhone this can only be performed on the PTZ window.

Use "List" mode when travelling abroad to save $$$
Roaming charges are bad enough when you are simply sending emails and text messages. If you are using Live Cams Pro to monitor personal surveillance systems then you will probably want to change the app to show text-based lists of cameras instead of the usual thumbnail mode. Video will only be loaded when you select a specific camera. The app automatically reduces the refresh rate of thumbnails and video on cell networks but it can still be costly if you are pulling images from a high-resolution camera.
Individual frames of video can be as much as 2 or 3 megabytes.

Foscam Audio (1-way) coming in Live Cams Pro v1.2, Panasonic and Sony in v1.3

2011-06-08T00:06:00.001-04:00

We've finally cracked the issues with decoding Foscam audio and have submitted Live Cams Pro version 1.2 to the app store. It was submitted on June 3rd (5 days ago) and is still listed as "Waiting for review" by Apple. Hopefully this will be released soon!

A word of caution, Foscam uses a highly compressed audio format which results in poor quality playback (although if you've heard it in Internet Explorer then you already know what to expect). Also we've noticed that the built-in microphone on these cameras is either of poor quality or poorly placed within the housing. As a result the volume of the audio is very low. We tested our 8918 unit with an external microphone and noticed a substantial improvement. If you are using these cameras as baby monitors then the external microphone is a good investment in peace of mind :)

Two-way audio will be under development after we add audio for a few more brands. At the time this article is being written we have completed one-way audio for Panasonic Profile 1 (non-iPro devices) and the first 2 Sony profiles. These will be released as v1.3 shortly after v1.2 is approved.

Our price remains at $1.99 US for the private camera license in Live Cams Pro. This is essentially the $2 upgrade fee we would have charged for audio and other enhancements if they had been introduced into the two separate apps in the past. The new app is a universal binary, requiring us to release it as a new product. Having a single application binary that works on all devices is better for our customers and easier for us to test and roll out as well. Our full-time efforts are still focused on producing the most powerful IP camera product on the iOS platform, we appreciate your support!

The Impact of App Reviews

2011-05-10T10:56:00.001-04:00

App reviews are a great way to receive feedback on a product. One concern we have is that you must be cautious about the level of knowledge that reviewers have about the products.

A good example of this:

After the tsunami in Japan we received a review in the German app store claiming that our app was fake and not showing real video because Tokyo looked fine. An intelligent reader would realize that Tokyo was not wiped out by the tsunami. Damage was primarily in the Miyagi prefecture farther up the coast.

Sadly, comments such as this have an enormous negative impact. Our sales went to zero in Germany for the next few weeks. Everyone assumed that the reviewer was correct and that we were a "scam".

They didn't see the sadness in our staff's faces as they removed 56 dead camera links from Japan that morning. The cameras had instantly gone offline and it was safe to assume that they would never return.

Sales in Germany have never recovered and unless someone else posts positive reviews in the German app store they will continue to remain this way.

One user has the power to alter the efforts of thousands of hours of work by many individuals. Please take this power seriously and write constructive reviews. Our support team is always available to answer questions and we encourage you to contact us before you rush to judgement without proper information.

Customer requests - the reason for Live Cams Pro

2011-05-10T09:54:00.003-04:00

There is much confusion within our Live Cams community with the recent release of Live Cams Pro. We need to help everyone understand the direction we are going and the reasons for the approach.

"Why did you release Live Cams Pro as a new application instead of simply updating the other apps?"

One of the most common requests we have received in the past few years is to produce a universal binary so that people can buy a single copy of the application and install it on all of their devices. This reduces the cost of owning the product and allows them to expand to all of their mobile devices. As we stated in a previous blog, we were early adopters of the iOS and had produced separate copies of Live Cams (with the iPad release being submitted as Live Cams HD). This was fine for a while but it forced users to pay for both releases to allow them to use it on two platforms. We listened and spent the past 6 months combining the two into Live Cams Pro (and adding a lot of new features at the same time).

"I don't see why I should be forced to pay for another version of Live Cams."

"You should spend time enhancing the product instead of finding ways to rip us off as loyal customers"

This is absolutely the farthest from the truth. We have invested a great deal of money and time in bringing this new product to reality and it was entirely based on customer requests. We purposefully released the app as a free download so that everyone can fully evaluate it before making a purchase decision. Our existing products required "blind faith" or the ability to see it on someone else's device before making a purchase decision. This is unfair and we felt it was better to give everyone a free peek at the app. Apple does not allow time-based trials so our approach required us to limit features in some way. The "unlicensed" banners were created so that everything in the app would work the same as the paid version. There are no secrets or hidden capabilities with this approach, simply purchase a "license" to remove the banners.

Our intent is to let people enter their private camera information, check compatibility and then purchase if everything works as expected.

Software piracy of our previous apps has been quite intense and this new approach prevents people from stealing the code without making a legitimate in-app purchase.
Existing customers are not required to make a purchase if they don't feel the enhancements are significant enough. Purchase of the app is optional, we're not sure why everyone feels that they are forced to buy it!

Current app reviews claim that we are trying to insult our customers and have not spent time enhancing the product. For those who truly believe this we are sorry. We have spent over 2000 hours in the past months preparing this release. We have purchased a fairly large inventory of IP cameras in order to effectively integrate and test the private camera features. We have also invested in additional staff for tech support and software development. As much as we'd love to give out products for free, there is a cost associated with all of this.

To summarize, anyone who has not currently purchased our products should download and evaluate Live Cams Pro. It is a very powerful engine that we can expand rapidly as additional device models and features are added. For those who have already purchased our products in the past you have the option to invest in the new app. If you don't find the enhancements worth the $$ then there is no harm done and you can continue to benefit from the existing applications. We continue to add functionality to Live Cams Pro in the hopes that private camera owners will find a reason to purchase. Our primary focus is on audio support and the ability to adjust your camera settings from your mobile device.

If we had been able to simply update our existing apps the new features would have been implemented as an in-app purchase. We have permanently fixed our Live Cams Pro prices at the same value in order to equalize the cost to our existing customers. We ask for your support in order to continue our efforts to improve the product. Publicly attacking us for free updates to older technologies is not a good way to support a business that is providing a quality product. Doing so has the opposite effect and may cause the demise of those who worked hard to produce this software.

Sincerely,

Barry Egerter
President / CEO of Eggman Technologies Inc.

Crash resolved in Live Cams Pro for French Language Users

2011-05-10T08:56:00.001-04:00

Shortly after the release of Live Cams Pro a critical bug was discovered for users who have set their devices to French language. Pressing the "Settings" button on the main screen crashed the app because the iOS was looking for a file that did not exist. We have fixed this issue and are attempting to get a patch out to Apple for approval asap.

The workaround for the meantime is to set your device to English and the crashes will not occur. We apologize for the inconvenience and should have caught this during our pre-release testing.

While we understand the frustration those users are encountering we would appreciate feedback via support rather than the current approach of sending 1-star reviews claiming that we are thieves and that the app is a scam. This is very deceiving for people who are reading the reviews and it damages the reputation of the business unnecessarily. A crash is a bug, not an attempt to steal from our customers.

Audio and Public Cameras

2011-05-09T00:29:00.000-04:00

With the recent introduction of audio support for some camera models in Live Cams Pro it appears that there is some confusion. Let's clear it up:

None of the public cameras can or ever will support audio in the app. Out of the 5000 active cameras we've only found about 5-10 that support audio in a format that the app can handle. Even if we allowed it the cameras are only capable of streaming audio to a single client at a time. Obviously this would cause more frustration than it is worth :)
1 way audio for Axis devices works if the device is configured to output G.711 format. We are actively trying to get the other formats working and will release an update when we do.
We have succeeded in getting Foscam audio working (1-way) but there is a nearly 10 second delay in loading both the video and audio. Because of this we have chosen not to release this yet. Again, too many people would be frustrated by waiting over 10 seconds too long to hear their baby crying via their iPhone/iPad.
Linksys WVC210 devices are similar to Foscam, we've had it working but the code is still unstable and causes the app to crash randomly. We've held on to this one until we can perfect it.

For the time being, audio is 1-way only and is supported by certain Axis, TRENDnet and DLink profiles.

See our feature matrix here:

http://www.eggmantechnologies.com/featurematrix.php

We are very busy working on audio because we feel it is the most important improvement we can continue to make in the app. Devices using G.726 format (Panasonic & others) are also in our radar.

Updates to our Live Cams Pro Product

2011-05-08T14:32:00.000-04:00

After our launch this weekend we have found that a change to our approach is necessary. Our intention with the latest software release was to get into a "freemium" business model. This allows everyone to see our product and experience it without having to blindly purchase it first. We know that our product quality and features stand out from the crowd and that we simply needed better exposure so that we could continue to sell our software. Unfortunately since we were one of the first apps in the app store we produced our software before in-app purchases were available, forcing us to charge for the app up-front and spend money on advertising to get everyone interested. This is a very restrictive approach. We cannot simply upgrade our existing application because there is no way for us to detect or guarantee that a user has already purchased it. This necessitated the release of a brand new app.

Our recent release of Live Cams Pro was aimed at new business from users who needed advanced features not available in our existing products. After receiving our initial feedback we have found that so many of our customers love our software that many existing users wanted these expanded features but did not like the higher price. In order to continue to run a viable business we cannot simply release the expanded capabilities for free (some users have been using our 99 cent (US) Live Cams product for over 2.5 years now without any additional costs). Our Live Cams HD product was created before universal apps were common and we felt that we also needed to put out a release which would allow someone to install a single licensed copy on all of their devices.

In both an apology and a compromise we have lowered our private camera purchase in Live Cams Pro to $1.99 US in the hopes that we can get enough volume sales to make up the difference. We also intend to eliminate the "Unlicensed" banner on public cameras and retain the 99 cent (US) fee to eliminate the advertising banners. A new release is being generated and submitted to Apple for review which will implement this approach.

In the coming days we will be communicating with Apple in order to find out how customers can be reimbursed for the difference in price from their initial purchase of private camera licenses. If you wish to ask them for a refund now in order to purchase again later at a lower price, please contact iTunes via the links on your email receipts.

This change is a recognition that the recent outcry was primarily from existing customers who love our products and are frustrated with a higher cost to update. Live Cams Pro is the product we wanted to create initially 2.5 years ago but the infrastructure and payment mechanisms were not possible at the time. Going forward we will continue to push out regular product updates of Live Cams Pro with enhanced menus and features at no additional cost (Live Cams received over 40 updates in the past 2 years). For many existing customers our Live Cams and Live Cams HD products are sufficient and will continue to give them the features that they need most. In this case there will be no need to upgrade to the new software.

Live Cams Pro now available!

2011-05-06T10:56:00.003-04:00

You've probably noticed a slowdown in the updates for Live Cams in 2011. This was due to our intense efforts to produce an entirely new product - Live Cams Pro!

What's new with this app? Why should you get it? Here's the scoop:

It's a FREE download. You no longer have to purchase the app to see what it can do. If you try it out and like what you see, in-app purchases are available to unlock the license for public or private camera features. Any purchase will also remove the advertising banner from the main screen.
It's a UNIVERSAL BINARY. In simple terms, this means a single version of the program can be installed on all of your iPhone/iPod/iPad devices. If you've purchased a license and then install the app on another device that you own, simply go to the settings screen and tell the app to "Restore Purchases".
AUDIO SUPPORT (private cameras only) for many models of Axis, TRENDnet and DLink cameras. We are expanding this offering and as we add support for additional brands and models you will receive free updates.
MAP and LIST view modes! If you want to save bandwidth on 3G connections you can switch away from the thumbnail viewing mode and change to a simple text-based list to select cameras from. If you are viewing public cameras and want to select them from a map, that's also supported!
GPS features! One of the new built-in camera lists is called "Nearby" and it will find the nearest 100 cameras to your current location. Keep in mind that there are roughly 5000 cameras in the app but they won't necessarily be in your neighborhood or even your city. We will continue to add more content as time goes on.
Advanced camera settings. If you enter your own private camera information and it uses one of the camera profiles that support these features, a new menu option will be available that lets you adjust camera properties like contrast, brightness, motion detection on/off, night mode, etc. See this feature matrix to determine what the current features are for each profile.
Push notifications. The app supports push notifications so that we can transmit messages to individual devices. Currently this feature is unused but in the future we intend to add additional capabilities to take advantage of it!
URL launching. Other applications can launch Live Cams Pro by opening URLs with the "livecamspro://" prefix. This could be used by more complex configurations to automatically launch the app (perhaps when your camera's motion sensor is triggered). We'll talk more about this in a future release :)
Full orientation support. All device orientations are handled for every single screen in the application. This means you are free to choose if you hold your device on the side or in portrait mode.
Optional thumbnail titles. Swipe up or down on thumbnails to toggle the visibility of the thumbnail titles. On iPhones and iPods this is vital so that you can see the entire thumbnail and not have it obscured by text.

NOTE TO EXISTING LIVE CAMS CUSTOMERS:

This application is primarily geared to new users and private camera owners who wish to take advantage of the extra features. The public camera list is identical to that of the Live Cams and Live Cams HD applications. It is your choice to purchase the public license again for this application or to continue using the older product line. The application was built and released as a free download so that we can increase visibility in the competitive app store marketplace.

Here's the link to the app in the US app store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/live-cams-pro/id428145132?mt=8

Locking the screen orientation on your device

2011-03-21T13:56:00.001-04:00

Many people have asked for a screen orientation lock feature in Live Cams. We have not bothered with this because Apple has added a built-in feature to OS 4.2. When running any app, simply double-tap the home button on your device to get the task switcher bar to appear at the bottom of the screen.
Swipe left to get to the iPod controls and you'll see that there is an icon with an arrow on it. Toggle this to lock your device in or out of the current orientation.

Here is a tutorial on how to do this, along with a description of the iPad lock switch on iOS 4.3:

http://osxdaily.com/2010/12/03/how-to-lock-ipad-orientation-in-ios-4-2/

Because of the technique, this works while you are running Live Cams. If you are watching the thumbnail screen or full screen video and want to stay in landscape mode, just hold the device on its side and follow the instructions above.

Dozens of Japanese cameras are now permanently offline

2011-03-15T15:46:00.001-04:00

As a result of the disaster in Japan we have sadly removed (from our database) dozens of unresponsive cameras in affected regions. Immediately following the tsunami we lost all connections to cameras in Sendai/Miyagi and other severely affected regions.

It is truly a devastating disaster and we urge everyone to make a donation to their local Red Cross at:

Canada: http://www.redcross.ca
United States: http://www.redcross.org

Tsunami Caught on Camera by Live Cams users!

2011-03-11T11:19:00.001-05:00

The recent Tsunami (caused by an 8.9 earthquake in Japan) washed up on the shores of Waikiki and was caught on camera by several users of the Live Cams and Live Cams HD apps. Here is a recent news article regarding the tsunami.

Here are the photos (too bad someone moved the camera during the approach!):

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

It's approaching, and the waters recede

The tsunami arrives!

Waves are near the hotels

The peak is near

The water levels are at their peak

Image 9

Image 10

Image 11

Image 12

Image 13

Another surge approaches

Image 15

Image 16

Image 17

Image 18

New public cameras added!

2011-02-05T08:53:00.002-05:00

To see the latest cameras added to the public camera database, click "Select" and then "Recent". Cameras are ordered from the newest to the oldest (by the date/time they were added to the database.

Here's a screenshot of the Live Cams HD application with the most recent cameras selected:

KHAS-TV Report on Live Cams in the Community

2011-01-27T06:43:00.002-05:00

Curt Kasper from News 5 KHAS-TV in Nebraska has just completed a report about Live Cams in the local community. Here's the clip that was aired January 26th, 2011:

Click here for a free download of the latest Adobe Flash Player.

And you can read the rest of the article here.

NASA uses Live Cams

2011-01-25T15:58:00.000-05:00

We love hearing user stories for our products and were happy to hear from NASA earlier in the week. Here's a short quote from the CSO (printed with permission):

"Yours is the only camera app I have found that works on all of our cameras @ NASA and works completely as advertised, again thanks so much"

Curran C. Cole
Infrastructure Security Manager
Information Security & Technology / Technical & Physical Security / CSO
NASA Police & Fire - Protective Services Division
NASA/AMES Research Center
Moffett Field, CA

If anyone else would like to share their story, let us know and we'll publish it!

What do I enter for the "Host or IP" field when adding a camera?

2011-01-02T15:23:00.001-05:00

The Live Cams application requires only a few items of information in order to connect to your cameras. You are probably used to typing a "URL" into a browser to log into your device. The URL is a long string that defines an address and a protocol for your webbrowser to connect with. For example:

http://backyard.viewnetcam.com:8080/login.htm

The first part (in pink, "http://") specifies the protocol for the browser to use. In this instance we are using a standard HTTP protocol.

The second part (in yellow, "backyard.viewnetcam.com") is the host name.

The third part (in green, "8080") is the port. For http connections, ports use TCP as the transfer protocol.

In Live Cams you would enter "backyard.viewnetcam.com" in the host field and "8080" as the port.

Here's another example:

http://backyard.viewnetcam.com/login.htm

In this example everything is the same except the port is missing. When the port isn't specified, webbrowsers assume a default port of "80" and use this automatically. It works the same as if you had typed "http://backyard.viewnetcam.com:80/login.htm"

Secure connections on HTTP use something known as SSL (Secure Socket Layer). If your camera is configured to use SSL (also known as HTTPS) then you can toggle this option on when entering or editing your camera information.

If your camera does not use a host name but uses an IP address instead, the same logic applies as the examples above. For example:

http://192.168.1.115/index.htm

This camera uses a "Host or IP" of 192.168.1.115 and since the port isn't specified, it uses the default of 80.

http://192.168.1.115:8080/index.htm

Same as the previous example but the port is now "8080" instead of "80".

One very important thing about IP addresses is that anything starting with 192.168 like the example above is a "local network" address. It is valid as long as you are connected to your router via Wifi or ethernet but as soon as you connect to a different network (or cell tower) the number will not be valid and therefore unreachable. See our tutorials on dynamic DNS accounts in order to conquer this problem.

"Send Camera Details To Support" Feature - Misused!

2010-12-27T11:34:00.000-05:00

At Eggman Technologies, most of our effort is put into handling technical support questions and ensuring that our customers learn how to use our software and properly integrate with their own hardware. This can be challenging because there are so many variations of equipment to handle and varying levels of knowledge from the camera owner/consumer. In many cases we ourselves do not have experience with particular hardware and need time to investigate it online or via direct access to a test device.

Recently we added a new menu option that allows you to send us an email containing your camera connection details in the hopes that we would cut down on the number of emails bouncing back and forth. Prior to this we would often get simple emails like "my camera won't connect, please help!". To this we would take time to reply and ask "What kind of camera is it and what did you try so far?". A few emails later we would end up asking for direct access to the camera so that we could easily diagnose the problem ourselves. To circumvent this, the new menu option automatically populates a form-based email to our tech support account. The first line of this email states in capital letters, "TYPE OVER THIS LINE AND ASK US TO EITHER HELP WITH SOMETHING OR ADD YOUR CAMERA TO THE PUBLIC LIST".

Now instead of getting questions from our users we are getting 1-2 dozen emails a day which are simply the unaltered form letter without any explanation of the problems encountered or what the customer needs assistance with. At first we started replying to these emails and asked people to tell us what the problem is but after the volume reached a certain point we have decided to simply not respond at all to these types of emails.

We urge you to "help us help you" and be descriptive in your tech support requests. If we spend all of our daily effort answering emails and not doing any development then the product will not continue to improve. We take pride in offering fantastic service for a product that is only a buck or two but this will cease to be the case if this situation does not improve.

iCamView Profile broken in v4.90 and v4.91

2010-12-23T16:32:00.000-05:00

It has been brought to our attention that the iCamView camera profile is no longer working (the last working release if v4.8). We have verified this and have fixed the problem but will not be able to release another update until Apple reopens after the holidays.

For now, you can get video using the 4.9/4.91 release by adding your camera using the JPEG image via URL profile and the following syntax:
http://HOST:PORT/pda.cgi?user=USERNAME&password=PASSWORD&page=image&cam=1

Replace all of the words in CAPS with your own values.

Again, we're very sorry and hope to have the fix released as soon as Apple reopens for business in a week or two.

Live Cams HD 1.9 - Image size change!

2010-12-16T14:46:00.002-05:00

As requested by many of our Live Cams HD users, the iPad release now shows cameras at their native resolution by default. This means that after selecting a thumbnail and launching the video screen the cameras will often load as a smaller size than before. This is because the camera may be sending 320x240 or 640x480 video and the iPad is using a 1024x768 screen.

For now you can simply pinch-zoom the images to stretch them and get the same result as the previous release. We are adding a settings option in the 2.0 release which will allow you to control the default behaviour. In this way you can decide if you prefer the native resolution (which makes the video look crisper, yet often smaller) or the stretched images that will always fill the screen.

We were hoping to add the toggle switch at the same time as we introduced this feature but we ran out of time to submit the app to Apple before the holiday shutdown. Version 2.0 will complete the feature and hopefully offer some additional goodies!

UPDATE - Due to overwhelming response we have reversed this change and released a patch to Apple. The Live Cams HD release is v1.91 and the Live Cams release is v4.91
We will re-introduce the feature in the next major release along with the toggle option to turn it on or off.

Some people still don't get it!

2010-12-06T08:50:00.000-05:00

App reviews are fun to read. The reviews are a good indication of people's perception of your product. Even after 2 years on the App Store we are finding that some customers still don't understand what they have purchased or how it works.

Today I'd like to discuss the perception that the app is faulty because some of the cameras don't load. This is not true :) The software requests video from each camera and simply can't show the images if the camera does not respond. Keep in mind that your iPhone, iPod or iPad is connecting directly to the cameras and it is not reading a cached copy of the video from some server in-between.

There are numerous reasons why a camera may fail to respond:

The owner pulls the plug and the device is powered off.
The network connection at the camera is faulty.
The owner has configured the camera to respond only during certain operational hours.
Your device has requested the video over a slow connection and the request times out (over 60 secs)
The owner has changed the IP address or port and our database is using the old address.
Too many users are trying to use the device at the same time and it is overloaded.

The most common scenario is #6. The hardware that the cameras are based on is intended for private use and is generally not capable of scaling to large numbers of viewers at once. You are sharing the cameras with hundreds of thousands of other people using Live Cams in addition to people connecting from websites on the internet and users of other competing applications (at least 10 other companies have stolen our data in the past year and now offer similar products).

If your favorite camera is not responding, chances are good that it is a favorite for many people and it is simply busy. Try again later and hopefully the camera will respond.

Every few days we "scrub" the data for all 4500 cameras in the database. We disable those which fail to respond and re-enable any previously disabled cameras that are now working again. To obtain these updates your application must be launched on a Wifi network. We also add new cameras every week and you can find these by selecting the "Recent" category from the thumbnail screen.

Live Cams - Adding Cameras

2010-11-29T16:03:00.002-05:00

FOSCAM, APEXIS, IPCAM Central, InCam, Cowkey, INSTAR, EasyN, SagaEye, Wansview devices supported!

2010-11-24T19:59:00.000-05:00

Many of the popular Chinese devices are now supported in Live Cams and they offer an excellent price point for low-cost high-quality IP products.

Live Cams supports both fixed and PTZ style devices from these manufacturers and continues to enhance our offerings with each release. If you are intimidated with the high cost of popular brands like Axis, Canon, Panasonic and Sony, these highly competitive companies are worth a look.

For North American distribution, please check here:

http://www.ipcam-central.com/

All Trendnet models are supported in Live Cams!

2010-11-24T19:51:00.001-05:00

As a very popular entry-level IP camera line, Trendnet models are fully supported in Live Cams. We have tested legacy devices and current models alike. We teamed with Trendnet representatives to ensure that all of their products have been properly added to the app. This includes legacy devices that are now discontinued.

You will find many camera profiles in Live Cams for Trendnet because each of their devices follows a different protocol. Many other devices are OEM versions of Trendnet hardware and also share these profiles. When adding a camera to the app you can always check our "Supported Camera" list to see which one to use based on your specific model:

http://livecams-iphone.com/profiles

Astak Mole and YOICS

2010-11-24T19:46:00.001-05:00

While working on our latest version of Live Cams (4.9) we spent some time looking at our competition on the App Store. To this day it surprises us how much money some people are spending on applications that do very little compared to ours!

The latest example is an app named "Yoics camera viewer: IP and web cam viewer". The application currently costs $9.99 US and allows people to view video from their Astak Mole devices. The current release lacks PTZ support and the customers appear to be frustrated because of this.

Live Cams has supported PTZ on Mole cameras for almost a year now, yet it seems to be unknown to most! Astak is only one of the 80+ manufacturers supported by Live Cams, so it makes sense to buy the all-in-one application rather than a separate app for each camera you buy!

We'd love to hear from some owners of Astak Mole cameras on the forums so that we can find out if there are additional features that they'd like to see in the future.

BLACK FRIDAY SALE!

2010-11-18T12:05:00.002-05:00

Live Cams and Live Cams HD are now 66% off their full retail price on iTunes! ($0.99 US each)

Grab them quick before we restore the full price ($2.99 US for each of Live Cams and Live Cams HD)!

New features arriving soon!

2010-11-17T00:35:00.000-05:00

We are still waiting for the 4.80 and 1.80 releases of Live Cams and Live Cams HD to be approved by Apple. With these releases come several exciting new features (among other enhancements)!

TV OUT
For those using an iPad or iPhone 4 with a component video cable or a VGA cable you will be able to view the fullscreen video for a camera on your HDTV. This is currently a very simple implementation (nothing is shown for any screens other than the video screen) but should get the ball rolling as we start to figure out how far we can take this!

REORDER PRIVATE CAMERAS AND FAVORITES
This one has been on our to-do list for a long time and we've finally got it ready. We have replaced the "Add Camera" button with a new title, "Manage". If you select either "My Cameras" or "Favorites" the button will become enabled. After selecting this you will see a table which lists all of the cameras in text form and it will allow you to delete them (or remove from favorites) or reorder them. Simple drag and drop allows you to change the order of items in the list. Pressing the "back" button will repaint the screen with the new sequence.

We do not currently have support for assigning cameras to groups (and we know many have asked for this) . We hope that this initial step gives our users better control over their camera lists.

IMAGE ORIENTATION
From the video screen for a given camera you can now choose the tool icon and select "Image Orientation". This will give you several choices such as "Normal", "Flip", "Mirror" and "Flip + Mirror". If you change the orientation you will notice that Live Cams remembers this setting on subsequent loads of the app. Each camera can be configured independently using this option.

On a side note, please be aware that a number of new "free" camera apps are showcasing public cameras and due to the popularity of the apps the cameras are starting to disappear. The developers of these applications do not apparently have respect for the bandwidth used by their volumes of users and as a result, the owners of the public cameras are disabling them or removing them from public access. We do our best to charge a reasonable fee for our software in order to reduce the number of active users, thus reducing the bandwidth impact and improving camera stability. We hope that our "competitors" figure this out soon before the number of active cameras drops to an unreasonable level.

Crashes found and fixed in Live Cams v4.71 for OS 3.x users

2010-11-04T14:31:00.000-04:00

When pressing the preset button on Live Cams 4.71 the app will crash if you are running 3.x firmware. We have resolved the issue (it was trying to draw the menus with a font that was introduced in iOS 4) and will be submitting the 4.8 release to Apple after further testing.

If you are capable of updating the firmware on your device to iOS 4.x this issue will disappear. For those using older devices (like a first generation iPod touch) you will have to wait for Apple to review our update before the problem will be resolved.

We have acknowledged this defect in the release notes, our blog and in the "What's new in this version" text that appears when you update the app. It is also appearing in the "news" badge via the Help button in the 4.6 release of the software. Hopefully those with OS 3.x will see one of these notices before updating to the newest release. If not we promise to have the fix available soon!

Live Cams 4.71 approved and back in the store shortly!

2010-11-02T18:19:00.001-04:00

Apple has approved the release of Live Cams 4.71 and we are happy to announce that it will be live in the App Store in the next hour or so. We removed the 4.7 release after hearing that owners of devices with OS3.0 and OS3.1 were experiencing crashes. Unfortunately due to the way that the app store works we were forced to remove the app for all customers even though it worked fine on newer firmware.

We apologize for the delay but we remain committed to having only the highest quality releases available for sale. Live Cams HD v1.7 is still waiting for review by Apple but should also be available in a few days if there aren't any issues.

Development continues on Live Cams v4.8 (allowing you to re-order your private cameras, and more!).

Live Cams 4.7 - Removed from the App Store

2010-10-30T14:32:00.002-04:00

Apple has just approved Live Cams 4.7 after it sat in the review queue for the past 10 days. Within an hour of the app being approved and going live on the app store we have received 5 emails about the app crashing when a thumbnail is clicked.

We have decided to pull the app from the store until we can reproduce it and identify the issue. At the moment we have tried unsuccessfully to reproduce the issue on iPhone4, iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 2nd gen. (running iOS 4.x)

UPDATE: We have reproduced the issue on an iPhone 3G running OS 3.0
The crash is caused by the use of an API that was introduced in OS 3.2 which means than any OS older than 3.2 would experience this issue. We have fixed the bug and have resubmitted the application to Apple. We now await their review process (usually 6-10 days) to get the fix out. The app will re-appear in the store once this is complete.

Thank you,

Live Cams Support
support@barryegerter.com

Light My Way - Approved

2010-10-26T21:34:00.002-04:00

It appears that a week later Apple has approved our second application, "Light My Way". It's free!

At the moment it's very simplistic but we will be adding a large number of enhancements as usual :)

"Light My Way" submitted to App Store, along with Live Cams 4.7 and 1.7 HD

2010-10-20T16:34:00.001-04:00

We've just submitted new versions of Live Cams and Live Cams HD to Apple for review. These releases resolve all known display bugs in the previous version and introduce some new graphics to further enhance the look and feel of the app.

We have also spent some time working on a brand new application called "Light My Way". As you can probably guess, it's another flashlight app! This particular application uses licensed graphical backgrounds to show different scenes while allowing simple taps to activate or deactivate the LED flash on iPhone 4 devices. The first release includes 4 different scenes and is fairly simplistic. As we do with our Live Cams products we will continue to enhance and release free upgrades for all customers who purchase the app.

The app will be free for a few days initially (when approved) so be sure to grab a copy before it becomes a paid app. We will be adding a large number of customization features in the future so you will be sure to see some great functionality as time goes on!

Live Cams 4.7 undergoing testing

2010-10-12T22:11:00.000-04:00

We have had a fantastic response to the latest 4.6 and 1.6 releases of the Live Cams product line. We are approaching the two-year anniversary of the creation of Live Cams and we are very excited to see that it is still a very popular app in the iTunes App Store. Currently Live Cams is in the top 100 paid apps in the UK.

That doesn't mean we rest! We have been busy with our usual bugfixes and enhancements and are performing our last few days of testing on the 4.7 and 1.7 releases.

Live Cams 4.7 and Live Cams HD 1.7 contain a number of significant enhancements, including:

- Fix for "hanging" app caused by moving the app to the background and then resuming it on a different network (ie, pause the app on Wifi and resume on 3G)
- More reliable thumbnail generation from camera profiles which can only load snapshots
- Streamlined UI with new slider images, new toolbar images (instead of button text) and a new look for the PTZ preset list
- Eliminated the customized battery status indicator on the video screen and replaced it with the official iPhone status bar (which shows your true network connection and the realtime battery indicator). This can be toggled offscreen just like the titlebar and lower toolbar
- Memory leaks resolved relating to PTZ button presses
- Select Trendnet devices can now be rebooted from the advanced controls menu
- DLink DCS 2121 and DCS 5635 PTZ and preset support added
- Planet ICA-H610 profile with PTZ controls added

Update available, Android port underway!

2010-10-04T21:38:00.005-04:00

After being under "review" for 7 days, Apple has finally released the 4.6 and 1.6 versions of Live Cams and Live Cams HD. The major change in these releases are the fixes for crashes caused by sliders and Canon camera profiles. If you continue to experience crashing when using the app, please contact support@barryegerter.com as soon as possible so that we can examine the issue. The application appears to be very stable on our test devices so we hope that it behaves as well for our customers :)

On another note, there have been a lot of requests for an Android version of Live Cams in the past few months. I'm happy to report that Google has now opened up the marketplace to Canadian developers and we are going to start porting the app to the Android platform. From first glance we will likely target the 2.1 OS as our lowest supported device. Development will be underway in a week or two and we are hoping to have a release near the end of the year. We may scale back a few features in order to get the first version out but we will definitely continue to enhance it once completed!

Live Cams 4.6 and Live Cams HD 1.6 submitted to Apple

2010-09-28T12:50:00.000-04:00

We have released another minor update to Apple while we undergo some major engine updates (to be labelled as a 5.0 release and 2.0 HD release). Here are the details.....

New overall features:
- Corrected pinch-zoom issues with JPEG camera profile (the video frame was shifting after a new frame arrived)
- Fixed crashes related to the use of Canon cameras and PTZ slider controls

New camera profiles:
- Hawking HNC290G
- Sanyo VDC-DP9584N with PTZ and presets

New camera-specific features:
- Corrected zoom in/out increments for Axis 241S and 240Q servers using RS-485 port for PTZ control
- Fixed PTZ and presets for Trendnet IP400 and IP600 models, as well as their Airlink equivalents
- Corrected the aspect ratio display issues for the Dedicated Micros camera profile
- Added auto pan/tilt features for DLink camera profiles that were previously missing this
- Added PTZ and preset support for Compro IP530 and IP540

New releases submitted to Apple - v4.50 and v1.50 (HD)

2010-09-13T23:35:00.000-04:00

As of early this morning we have submitted the latest versions of Live Cams and Live Cams HD to Apple. Here are the release notes for the versions that are waiting for review:

New overall features:
- Added camera name to the prompt if a favorite (private camera) is not loading and the thumbnail is tapped.
- Added iOS4 multitasking support
- Corrected iOS4 display issues with PTZ sliders and Axis/Canon cameras

New camera profiles:
- INSTAR camera profile (with PTZ and preset support).
- Aviosys camera profile for 9100a devices using YOICS firmware. Camera number should be specified (0-3).
- EyeSpy247 camera profile (with PTZ and preset support).
- SagaEye camera profile (with PTZ and preset support).
- Sparklan camera profile with PTZ support. Preset positions are not yet supported.
- Seteye Profile 2 for ANC818GE devices
- Basier IP camera profile (untested)
- Two new IPcam Central profiles for devices from http://www.ipcam-central.com

New camera-specific features:
- LED and display mode controls for Foscam/Cowkey/InCam/INSTAR profiles.
- Preset support for Panasonic KX-HCM280 and similar discontinued models.

Reviews typically start about 5-7 days after an app is submitted and the reviews themselves can take 1-3 days for them to complete.

Pinch Zoom!

2010-09-09T11:19:00.001-04:00

As many of you have noticed, the latest versions of Live Cams and Live Cams HD support pinch zoom on the video screen. This allows you to digitally zoom (stretch the pixels) any camera in the app.

To use this feature, simply use two fingers and pinch or expand while touching the camera video. The image will stretch to a maximum of 4 times magnification and will shrink back to original size. Once magnified you may also use a single finger to pan around the image and see parts of the picture that are now offscreen.

The pinch zoom effect does not currently work while you are using the "Control" feature to perform PTZ functionality. We hope to add this in future versions of the software.

If you take snapshots you will still get the full image saved to your photo album even if you are zoomed into a particular area of the video frame. This will allow you to save the full resolution image to another computer and you can again zoom and crop the original as you desire.

Major enhancements under development - Audio, MPEG4, and more!

2010-09-07T16:42:00.000-04:00

That's right, we are currently researching how to decode audio from MPEG4/H264 streams and hope to include support for this in a future release of Live Cams!

For now we will not be responding to any questions about these features because the development is still in early stages and we are not sure what the limitations or capabilities are. Our intention is to allow existing camera profiles to take advantage of MPEG4 audio/video streams if the device supports this and if the output is compatible with the decoder that we are implementing. MPEG4 has many variants and we will try to include as many as possible.

Audio streams are not part of the MJPEG (Motion JPEG) file format which is why there hasn't been any audio support to date. MPEG4 is a container for many types of data including audio and video. Once working we should be able to playback audio from MPEG4 streams and video from JPG/MJPEG/MPEG4 streams.

There haven't been many blog posts for quite a while due to recent incorporation of our business. We are now officially known as Eggman Technologies Inc.

Live Cams and Live Cams HD continue to enjoy top ranks in dozens of countries around the world. Live Cams has been in the top 20 utilities for the US, UK and Japan for nearly two years now and as always, we are very grateful for our customers and your support!

Hermosa Beach Camera and Hotel Riccione in Italy

2010-08-06T10:33:00.002-04:00

For those who are interested in a decent HD view of a beach, I highly recommend the Hermosa Beach HD camera. You can add the camera using Axis Profile 1 and the following information:

Profile: Axis Profile 4
IP: 71.254.156.56
Port: 8000
Camera #: 1

I am not going to add the camera into the public listing because it would likely degrade the performance of the camera too much. I urge you to make donations to the owner if you enjoy the camera:

http://www.hermosawave.net/webcam/videocam.php

For a beach view at a hotel in Italy you can try the Webcam di Riccione:

Profile: Canon
IP: 95.240.2.94
Port: 80
Camera #: 1

Please visit their website at:

http://www.riccionehotels.com/webcam/webcam-riccione

Demo Cameras from Axis are now Live!

2010-08-05T11:45:00.000-04:00

I have recently added a lot of demo cameras from Axis Communications. To view them you can simply choose "Select Cams" and then use the "Recent" option. This shows the most recent public cameras added to the database (sorted from the most recent to the oldest).

Many of the cameras are fixed position devices but a few of them also have PTZ and preset capabilities. Axis has limited the number of viewers to 3 per device so please don't use them for too long unless you are serious about testing a particular model.

To view information about the cameras you can click on "Options" and then "View owner's website".

Performance of iOS4

2010-07-28T15:23:00.001-04:00

We have been doing extensive testing on various firmware and device combinations over the past week and have found that the latest firmware (iOS4) has some serious performance issues that were not present in iPhone OS 3.x

For those using iOS4, one of the most important things you can do to improve the performance of Live Cams is to double-tap the home key of your device, then press and hold one of the icons that appear in the lower tray. This will show all of the icons for the background tasks with little red minus signs next to them. Remove each of the icons until all that you have left is Live Cams.

Remove background tasks on iOS4 to improve performance

Most background tasks don't actually do anything while idle but any network activity will be noticeable in an intensive app like Live Cams. We have also noted that several GUI elements of the app are "laggy" in iOS4. Apparently the graphic updates in the new firmware are not as fast as their previous counterparts. We would recommend staying with OS 3.x if possible.

Apple has finally reviewed and approved Live Cams 4.21 !

2010-07-27T14:43:00.002-04:00

The long-awaited patch for Live Cams 4.2 is now approved by Apple and should be available for download on the App Store soon (their systems take a few hours to fully update when changes are made).
We have waited 3 days for them to get this done but we can finally move past the issues and continue with development.

The vast majority of our customers have been understanding and we appreciate this. We have received hundreds of critical reviews (all stating the obvious, the app was broken for older firmware) but we understand that people would not be so upset about it unless it was a product that they truly care about and enjoy. This is the type of product that we strive to produce and this recent glitch will certainly remind us of our responsibilities.

UPDATE:
Some OS 3.x devices exhibit graphics artifacts when the app is launched. Simply rotate your device to landscape mode to restore the proper display. We have fixed this (as well as eliminated several memory leaks) in the next release numbered 4.30
We are submitting 4.30 to Apple for review on July 28th after extensive platform testing on iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch devices. We want to ensure that all firmware versions and platform combinations work properly once again before we move on with feature enhancement requests.

4.21 Release (fix for loading problems on OS 3.x devices)

2010-07-26T17:24:00.000-04:00

The most recent release of Live Cams for iPhone and iPod Touch has obviously caused quite a commotion in the App community. Anyone using the 3.x firmware on their device will find that the app does not load at all. This was reported within minutes of the app going live in the store and was fixed within a few hours. The fix however has been sitting in Apple's hands for a couple of days now and they have not yet begun to review it for release. Unfortunately this is the weakest part of the iTunes process. We have requested that an emergency review be conducted so that the patch can go out immediately but so far the only response has been a form letter stating that all requests will be processed as soon as they can.

Let us re-state the options for those who have been caught by this bug:

1) Use iTunes to restore a previous backup of your device and get the older version of Live Cams back.

2) Upgrade to iOS4 (the latest firmware from Apple). The application runs fine on this.

3) Wait for Apple to approve the patch and then download it.

We understand that some people are using first-gen devices and they cannot upgrade to the latest firmware. You will need to resort to option 1 or option 3.

Again we apologize for the defect, and we are doing everything in our power to get the patch approved faster. Live Cams HD (for iPad) is unaffected by this bug.

Camera Resolution

2010-07-26T06:14:00.001-04:00

Many people ask about the resolution settings for various cameras in either Live Cams or Live Cams HD. There is an important setting within the application (and in your camera firmware) that must be used to obtain optimal results.

Higher Resolution versus Faster Video

You will see this option in the settings screen and may have wondered what the effect is. Essentially there are three different resolutions used within the app when possible:

1) On the thumbnail screen.

The application requests low resolution video or stills in order to display as many thumbnails as possible while keeping the responsiveness reasonable. Your iPhone/iPod/iPad requires a lot of CPU in order to crunch larger images down to fit in the thumbnails. Most of the time the app will request 160x120 images for this screen.

2) On the video screen, with the Faster Video setting.

As the video screen loads, it shows the existing thumbnail as a placeholder while the request for video is made to the camera. This image looks chunky and blurry because the thumbnail is stretched to fill the screen while maintaining aspect ratio. The video request is made for 320x240 resolution if the camera allows the resolution to be dynamically adjusted. This keeps bandwidth low and allows for a higher framerate on your portable device. Again, CPU usage is the key.

3) On the video screen, with the Higher Resolution setting.

When you select Higher Resolution in the settings screen it tells Live Cams that you want the best quality even though framerates will likely be reduced. When asking for video in this mode, Live Cams will not tell the camera to send it a specific resolution, but instead it will allow the camera to send out video in its default quality and size. This is the important thing to note! If your camera is set to output 320x240 video as a default but can transmit 640x480 images then you will not be receiving the highest quality available. Make sure that you configure your camera to output the best images possible by default.

Hopefully this clears up some confusion and perhaps allows a few Live Cams HD users to get the best results for their devices.

Live Cams 4.2 is out - but problems exist!

2010-07-24T21:43:00.002-04:00

Apple has finally approved the sale of Live Cams 4.2, but within hours of release there have been several reports of loading issues. It seems that devices running 3.1.2 (and possibly older versions) of the iPhone OS will not load the app properly. Phones that have iOS4 installed seem to work fine. A patch is currently under development and will be submitted to Apple for emergency release shortly.

For those of you who failed to read this in time, your options are to either upgrade to iOS4 or wait a couple of days for Apple to release the patch. You could also restore a previous backup of Live Cams if you have one synced with iTunes.

UPDATE (July 25th):
The fix has been submitted to Apple and a request for emergency release has been issued to them. The cause of the crash was due to some changes in the latest Apple SDK. These changes (unknown to us) caused the app to attempt to load features only available on the iPad when running on OS 3.x
We hope that the update is released as soon as possible.

Linksys Cameras and Live Cams

2010-07-20T23:32:00.000-04:00

Many Linksys (now Cisco) devices are supported in Live Cams. Fairly often the owners of WVC models struggle with loading them into the application. This is because they can only stream a single format of video at a time, as opposed to most dual-streaming cameras that are on the market today.

For example, a recent app review by "jaspman" in the United States claims that the application does not work and simply crashes his iPad. I suspect that he needs to change the output mode of his Linksys camera to JPEG (MJPEG) so that Live Cams can decode the video stream. Certainly the lockups are a defect and should not be happening if the camera is sending MPEG4 instead, but the app will work fine if the camera sends a properly formatted MJPEG or JPEG stream.

As always, I recommend that my users contact me via support@barryegerter.com before jumping to conclusions (or giving up) with camera configuration. Every camera model and firmware release has its own quirks and this can often be frustrating when integrating with third party applications like Live Cams. We are here to help, and would like the opportunity to assist you before you write a negative review about the software!

Another version on the way!

2010-07-13T15:58:00.000-04:00

Live Cams 4.2 (for iPhone) and Live Cams HD 1.2 (for iPad) are soon to be released for review by Apple!

Once again we have added support for new camera models and enhanced the control capabilities for certain devices (such as digital IO on/off, night mode on/off, resolution changes, and more!)

If you haven't purchased yet, what are you waiting for? Upgrades are free forever and it's a one-time purchase with no recurring subscription cost! Live Cams is THE TOP SELLING iPhone app for home/business surveillance and has been available since January of 2009!

Identity Theft - An Acceptable Practice with Apple

2010-07-08T14:48:00.002-04:00

It seems that identity theft is something that is A-OK with Apple. Yang Ke from QUUS.US has stolen my app name, product logo and app description, in addition to my camera database which is password protected because it is intellectual property that I created and belongs to me.

Since stealing these items they have also effectively replaced me in the app store ranks. Their version of my software has now taken the #1 free iPad app slot and the #7 paid app spot in the US. I was previously at #13 and have dropped far out of the top 100 since their claim to being "me".

I've seen movies about this on TV and not surprisingly I can relate to the main character (Sandra Bullock) who has her identity stolen in cyberspace and eventually loses her home and livelihood. I'm not letting that happen to me!

I urge everyone to contact Apple at AppStoreNotices@Apple.com and let them know that you don't like scammers stealing my name! I have demanded that they remove the apps from sale but they have done nothing other than forward emails to the other author asking for their "opinion".

They said it was a coincidence:

"we are so sorry that we have a these coincides with barry egerter , we have replaced our logo and app name when we found this problem. we promise that the infringe of the barry egerter is totally unconsciously, we are so sorry once again ."

Would they also like to replace my lost revenue and future business as a result of their scam? If my sales continue to slide at their current rate I will be forced to close my business and look for other work. This is not acceptable.

What is Apple doing? This is ridiculous!

2010-07-01T08:03:00.001-04:00

Yet another copycat has appeared, and this time they have stolen the name, the icon and the app description. They even claim to have been the #1 app in the US and Japan just like I have in my description!

My lawyers will have fun with this one!

Is there something I'm missing with the legalities of doing this sort of thing? I've filed for registered trademarks but the process takes 1-2 years. After contacting Apple's legal department (AppStoreNotices@apple.com) they have not responded or taken action.

Where are my rights as a developer and as a business!?!?!

Calling all iPhone 4 owners.....

2010-06-24T20:31:00.000-04:00

I'd like to hear from the owners of the new iPhone 4 to see how their experience with Live Cams has gone so far. There are countless users of this application but at the moment there have been 2 reports of the app not working properly on the new device, so I'd like to see if these are exceptions or of this is the norm.

Please join the forums and leave your comments at:

http://livecams-iphone.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=2

Thanks!

Live Cams HD is the #1 utility app for iPad in the US!

2010-06-21T19:43:00.000-04:00

For a few days now my latest product has become the #1 utility application in the United States. It has been hovering around the #15 overall to #19 overall spot for a few days. Surprisingly the results are very good for Deutschland as well (#24 overall, #3 utility in the store).

After getting mostly caught up on customer support emails I'm preparing to move ahead with engine enhancements once again. My intentions are to utilize the new menu structures to add additional camera features. Among my longstanding list of todo items are:

- Digital I/O control
- Nightmode on/off
- Autofocus on/off
- Digital zoom
- Additional tweaks to the iPhone interface to prevent screens like "please rotate to...."
- Additional enhancements to the iPad version so that presets appear as a popup window like the "select cams" feature does already
- Inverted video for ceiling mounts
- Audio support
- Video recording
- MPEG video support
- Milestone server support (I have plans to eliminate the need for expensive apps like iRa Pro)
- X10 automation control

I have many others on the list but this gives a good sampling of what I've been planning all along. The first 6 or 7 items on that list are likely to come first, but I will add them slowly and make sure that I'm not introducing any drastic changes all at once. Version 4.0 was a major update in order to prepare for these items but it's still causing a bit of commotion for users who really liked the 3.x UI.

I have not yet tested the app on OS 4.0 so this is obviously going to interrupt the work I listed above. I'm in Canada so as usual we are on a delayed release for the new iPhone 4 hardware compared to the US. If we're lucky we'll have them in late July. At that time I may choose to add features that are specific to the new devices if it makes sense to do so. I silently eliminated the support for 2.x firmware in the latest releases and have not heard any complaints. This is good news because I am now free to take advantage of the latest APIs and features in the 3.x and 4.x firmwares without being tied to an older development system.

As I have stated before, my customers are the best and I really enjoy speaking with you in the forums and the support emails. If you have dealt with me before you've found that I'm upfront, honest and very willing to help you out. Those of you who buy my software are now my sole source of income so I absolutely respect and appreciate your support.

Barry

EarthCam proves yet again to be a horrible organization

2010-06-20T19:21:00.000-04:00

Last year I wrote an article complaining about EarthCam Inc stealing my application name in order to boost their sales. They released an app called "Live Cams Free" which made most potential customers of mine think that I released a free version of my popular app. Sales dropped immediately because people decided to try the "free one" first. From what I saw in the reviews most disliked the offering from EarthCam and decided "not to buy" the paid version. Let me state this very clearly, there is NOT a free version of Live Cams and I have no affiliation with EarthCam Inc. They have tried to boost their sales by copying my idea and my app name and releasing it to leverage the brand recognition.

Returning home from Father's day vacation with my wife and kids I found that they have done it again. There is now a $5 US app called "Live Cams - HD" which has the same name as mine but with a dash. I assure you that my app has nothing in common with theirs and you should not judge any of my products based on copycats like them. Look at the demo video on my home page (or YouTube) to see my app in action and judge for yourself.

Since it appears that EarthCam can't come up with an original idea of their own I'll tell them what my next product will be....

Just kidding, even they wouldn't create an app called "EarthCam Sucks" :)

Once again, many thanks to my loyal supporters and I really hope that this poor marketing approach by others isn't confusing you in the App Store.

Live Cams 4.1 and HD 1.1 now submitted for review

2010-06-18T10:54:00.000-04:00

All bugfixes to date have been built into the next version of Live Cams and submitted to Apple for review. No major changes other than a few camera profiles added (3xLOGIC and Axis Q6032), some PTZ controls for LILIN devices and the PTZ buttons and window are refined. It will likely be several days before Apple has a chance to review this.

Top 100 iPad app in all 8 of the "big eight" regions!

2010-06-18T09:42:00.001-04:00

I use MajicRank (by Majic Jungle) to monitor the ranks of my two apps and today I've reached a milestone with Live Cams HD that I had not yet achieved with Live Cams. There are 8 regions that are considered to be the largest markets for iDevices and today the HD version reached the top 100 in all 8 regions at the same time!

Here's a screenshot:

The iPad market is much smaller than the iPhone/iPod market but this is still nice to see. After being the #1 app for iPhone and iPod I've now got a personal goal of reaching the same spot with the iPad. I'm close in the US but I can't see how the app will be more popular than the Apple apps that cost $10 each. We'll see in the next few days!

Live Cams HD is now the #1 utility app for iPad in the US!

2010-06-17T20:18:00.000-04:00

In less than 24 hours this app has rocketed to the top of the charts in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Deutschland, Italy and Japan. At the time this post was written the app has claimed the top utility spot in the largest market, the US.

We had no idea that so many iPad users were waiting for this release! Thank you very much for your support and once again we pledge to take the app to another level as each release goes out.

Live Cams HD - #30 iPad app in the US, also the #1 utility app!

Live Cams HD is now available on the App Store!

2010-06-17T08:15:00.002-04:00

Finally, the time has arrived and Live Cams HD has been live on the App Store for a few hours.

In just a few hours the ranks for the app are incredible:

#59 iPad app overall in the United States (#5 utility)

#8 utility in Canada
#8 utility in Australia
#10 utility in the UK
#11 utility in Spain
#13 utility in France
#16 utility in Deutschland
#16 utility in Chile
#18 utility in Japan

There are a few bugs that have been reported in Live Cams 4.0 and these have already been corrected in our development release. We will complete testing and release a patch for both the iPhone and the iPad shortly.

Please remember that there is a new import feature available (find it under the settings screen). If you have Live Cams installed on more than one device it's very handy to be able to pull your favorites and private cameras to the other devices without having to type anything in. On the master device you simply click "Allow others to import" and then on your secondary device you just click import.

Live Cams HD - get it now! :)

EDIT:
New ranks as of 1:49pm EST:

Top 100 Paid Apps (iPad)
#22 in Turkey (#2 util)
#42 in the US (#3 util)
#46 in Canada (#3 util)
#73 in Norway (#6 util)
#88 in Australia (#8 util)
#98 in the UK (#6 util)

Top 100 Paid Utilities
#7 in Deutschland
#7 in Japan
#7 in Nederland
#9 in Espana
#13 in France
(and many more)

Live Cams 4.0 is now live in the App Store

2010-06-15T07:19:00.000-04:00

As always, take a little time to familiarize yourselves with the new interface. Some of the toolbars and icons have been modified to provide a consistent look and feel with the iPad release (which is still under review by Apple). Also, orientation changes are supported for portrait modes so much of the UI was changed to make it fit properly when in this mode.

A quick overview of the interface changes from 3.7:

The thumbnail screen is mostly identical but the built-in searches are now split off from the customized search menu. For the past 8 months a lot of users could not find the custom search feature and thought the app was lacking this ability. It's now labelled "search" and the canned searches are listed under "Select Cams".
The settings screen is now available under portrait mode only. You will need to rotate from landscape mode to see the options while viewing this screen.
The help screens have been improved and now feature a "back" button. If you navigate forward into a webpage the back button will become enabled.
After tapping a camera to view the video screen, you'll find that I have removed the icons from the right side of the screen. Again, these were changed due to the need for consistency between the iPad release and the iPhone release as well as the ability to rotate to portrait mode.
Adding or removing a camera from your favorites now requires an extra tap. You need to choose "Options" first and then your desired action. This is in preparation for an expanded options menu where new features will be added soon.
Snapshots are now taken from a button at the bottom rather than at the side. The video is partially obstructed due to the toolbars but this was necessary to remove screen clutter in certain modes.
Some cameras have the ability to view their associated websites (try Boyne Mountain, or AtomicMods). Under options you'll see a button for this if there is a website available to view.
For cameras that use buttons for PTZ control you will find that they can be moved. Touch the empty space in the blue window that appears and drag the window around.

And unfortunately, with any new update there are always a few people who get corrupted databases during the install process. If no cameras will load after applying the update then you should uninstall the app (from iTunes), sync with iTunes to ensure that it is also removed from the iPhone/iPod and then download again from the App Store. This is the required process to cleanly remove the app and any associated data.

Contact support if you have any issues, thanks!

support@barryegerter.com

New Demo for Live Cams 4.0

2010-06-12T09:34:00.000-04:00

EvoCam issues resolved in Live Cams 4.0 and Live Cams HD

2010-06-10T09:45:00.001-04:00

Previous releases of Live Cams have had issues with pulling video from secured EvoCam servers. This issue has been resolved in the latest releases of Live Cams and you will now be able to pull video safely with a username and password assigned to the camera.

EvoCam is a Mac-based security product which can connect to webcams and IP cameras. It can rebroadcast the incoming video in MJPEG format which makes the video stream compatible with Live Cams. To enable this feature you should select your camera in EvoCam, go to the "Server" tab and configure the "Built-in Web Server". Enable it and use the advanced options to set a password if you want to secure the connection.

If Live Cams does not directly support your camera model you can use a PC or Mac-based product such as this to do so. You can then point Live Cams at the software to pull video instead of going directly at the camera itself.

Visit http://www.evological.com for more information and downloads of the product.

BP Oil Spill

2010-06-06T10:16:00.001-04:00

Lately we have been getting a lot of requests for the BP Oil Spill video feed. This feed is currently being streamed using a video format that is not compatible with Live Cams. There are however several cameras included in the public lists that may show the effects of oil arriving on the shoreline in the Gulf region. Check the beach cameras and look for the Gulf Shores feeds (as well as any from the Alabama coast). Tar balls have been reportedly found in the past few days and they will likely increase in frequency as this disaster continues.

Keep in mind that the cameras and bandwidth expenses are owned by the businesses that are being affected by this disaster. Many restaurants and businesses along the coast are being shut down or downsized due to the impact on the tourism industry. If there is anything you can do to help them (financially or otherwise) we urge you to do so.

Live Cams 4.0 and Live Cams HD ready for submission

2010-06-04T17:42:00.000-04:00

Live Cams releases for both iPhone and iPad are now ready for Apple to review. During the past two days we have resolved the interface glitches that we discovered during testing and we also took time to add an important new feature.

Using Bluetooth radio the app will be able to transfer private cameras and favorites to other devices. This will be handy if you have an iPad and want to pull your camera settings from an iPhone or iPod touch. It will also allow you to use one device as a master and then pull the data to other devices (perhaps you have dozens of private cameras and a team of people who need to have the same data). Simply bring the devices within range (for bluetooth signal) and with one click on each one it will transfer the data.

We understand that it has been about two months since our last release and that many have been waiting patiently for various fixes. Now that the laborious process of implementing these engine changes is complete we will be able to return to our frequent smaller updates on both platforms.

Expect a week or so before Apple (hopefully) approves the two releases.

Live Cams HD - Delayed

2010-06-01T15:32:00.000-04:00

We have a few more user interface glitches to resolve before we are satisfied with the quality of the release. We expect a few more days of development and testing before we submit the software to Apple for review.

This delay also applies to Live Cams 4.0 which is partly tied to the same source code and therefore subject to a similar timeline. The products are feature-complete and are being held back due to display issues during orientation changes.

Thanks again for your support and patience!

Live Cams HD on iPad - Now being tested!

2010-05-28T16:37:00.001-04:00

Our iPad finally arrived today and Live Cams HD definitely looks good on a real device! There are a couple of obvious glitches in the user interface that need to be resolved after our initial tests but generally speaking it looks like it should be ready soon!

We will work through the weekend to complete testing and with any luck we will have the app submitted to Apple early next week. Thanks everyone for your patience!

Final "Control" button issue resolved

2010-05-20T12:24:00.001-04:00

The past two software releases have had bugs involving private cameras and the appearance of the "Control" button for PTZ features. We have just identified and resolved the final known issue and will release the patch as part of the 4.0 release due out in a week.

Users with WebcamXP, Abelcam and IVC Relay devices were affected by the latest bug. In all cases you can get the control button to appear by editing the camera settings (while watching the video for the camera in Live Cams) and hitting cancel to return to the video screen. The screen is repainted and the control button appears.

Testing continues....

Live Cams HD completed

2010-05-19T13:37:00.001-04:00

We are proud to announce that Live Cams HD (for the iPad) has been completed and is now undergoing a final week of testing and interface tweaks. Our pre-ordered iPad (64GB + 3G +Wifi) will be shipped on May 28th and we intend to spend a day or two double-checking everything to make sure that it behaves as well as the simulator.

We will also be releasing version 4.0 of Live Cams for iPhone and iPod Touch. This version of the app will continue to be functional on iPads as well but will not take advantage of the extra resolution. If you choose not to purchase the new HD version you can opt to install and use the iPhone version on the iPad instead.

The newest feature for both apps is the ability to rotate to either portrait or landscape mode. We have also added camera support for Sony SNC-M3 devices and are working on final tweaks to Aviosys models. If these can be resolved before testing is completed we will add them in.

The engine is well positioned for future enhancements including trigger control (io on/off), digital zoom, audio and potentially MPEG playback.

Pricing for Live Cams HD will be set at $1.99 US.

Responses to the latest App Reviews

2010-05-10T08:57:00.004-04:00

App reviews for Live Cams are pretty much consistent since the very first release. People tend to give the app either a really good rating or a really bad one. Almost all reviews are based on the expectations that people place on the app. I've found that people who don't expect it to be real are pleasantly surprised and give it a high rating because they are amazed at the possibilities. On the other hand, those that expect to find cameras on their home street or think that the video will come at them in film quality are quite disappointed.

As I often do, here are a few quick facts about the app to quell rumours and false statements by reviewers:

The cameras are real. Nothing is pre-recorded but one or two cameras are configured by the owners to play back 12 hours of footage during the evening (like the Shamu cam at Sea World)
Any camera that is listed as a JPG camera is simply a link to an image on a webpage somewhere. These might be out-of-date if the website doesn't refresh the images very often or the owners are having technical problems resulting in downtime of the system.
The length of time that you are allowed to control the PTZ features of a camera (notably the Axis and Canon devices) is set by the camera owner and not by this app. Live Cams merely asks for control and the camera tells the app when it can control it and for how long.
Live Cams does not control the range of the pan/tilt/zoom features. Again this is set by the camera owner and Live Cams simply reads the settings before displaying the sliders or buttons onscreen.
Public cameras may go offline at any time and are not under our control. Each camera is owned by a different individual or organization and they may choose to disable or password protect a device at any time. We simply remove the dead feeds from our lists every so often when it appears that a particular feed is no longer valid.
The search feature does not search the internet for cameras, this is not possible. The search feature simply scans the embedded database of cameras that we include with the application. We spend hundreds of hours scouring the internet for new cameras and add them to the app as we discover them.
The most popular cameras are getting slower every day. This is due to the number of users viewing them, not the performance of the app. Camera hardware is designed to handle a load of a few dozen viewers at a time and it becomes very slow and unresponsive when there are hundreds or thousands at once. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about this other than to find new cameras to spread the load. The more successful this application becomes the worse the performance of the existing cameras will be.

We are also finding that there are now a large number of competitors who have stripped our camera database from the binary and have made "copies" of the Live Cams app. Most notably there is iSpy by SKJM and World Cams by EyeSpyFX (for both iPhone and Blackberry). These developers have copied our dataset and sell at a constant $0.99 rate in an attempt to steal our business. Unfortunately this greed has also caused a lot of the cameras to become overwhelmed and unresponsive. We have been attempting to sell our product at $1.99 US so that we would have fewer users but similar profit. This would allow the cameras to remain responsive and handle the load more gracefully over time. Sadly due to the competitive nature of the App Store we have been forced to sell by volume like the others. In the next year I would be surprised to see even half of the current public cameras still available.....

Live Cams 3.6 Bug

2010-05-06T15:15:00.002-04:00

A bug has been reported for Live Cams 3.6 which prevents some cameras from showing the "Control" button for PTZ capabilities. This bug has been identified and corrected and a patch will be released to Apple shortly.

For private cameras there is a workaround in which you can click the "Options" button, then "Edit Connection Settings" and then choose cancel to return to the video screen. The control button should then be visible.

We're surprised that more people haven't reported this issue but we hope to have the patch out ASAP nonetheless!

UPDATE: May 7
Version 3.7 has been submitted to Apple for review. It corrects the issue with the missing button.

Live Cams 3.6

2010-05-06T10:06:00.001-04:00

Live Cams HD - Setting Expectations

2010-05-01T11:02:00.001-04:00

I just wanted to make a quick note about the expectations people may have for Live Cams HD. It's important to note that while I'm making use of the full screen resolution for displaying the thumbnail grid and the video window you shouldn't expect to see all of the public cameras in high res. Almost all of the cameras are configured by their owners to output a fixed resolution, typically low (like 320x240 pixels). Some models (like Sony, Panasonic, some Canon cameras, Axis) can be told to stream at a particular resolution and these look better on the iPad. Mobotix cameras are high resolution by nature and they tend to output the clearest images, but again the public ones are usually set to 640x480 or so.

From my tests so far it often looks like the thumbnail screen is a crisper picture than the video screen. This is due to the fact that the native format is 320x240 for many cameras and this is close to the size of the thumbnails. When the video is stretched to fill the iPad's 1024x768 space it looks blocky.

That being said, Live Cams HD will likely impress private camera owners more than those who buy it for the public cameras. I'm thinking about adding a new camera category called HD Video that will allow me to tag the best of the public camera feeds for easy viewing. Unfortunately I don't look forward to spending time trying to identify these out of the existing 3000+ cameras in the app :(

Things are looking GREAT with the latest 4.0 release. The biggest challenge has been supporting portrait mode since almost every screen has to be redesigned to fit on the iPhone properly. The iPad is easier thanks to the extra real estate :) Both versions of Live Cams (iPhone and iPad) will support any orientation going forward. Those of you who have been asking for portrait mode when docked will be quite happy!

Live Cams HD - iPad release coming soon!

2010-04-27T10:17:00.001-04:00

Work is currently underway on a brand new release of Live Cams called "Live Cams HD" for the iPad. This release will take advantage of the larger screen size and resolution as well as the ability to rotate into landscape and portrait modes. The quality already looks incredible and we are very pleased with the progress so far.

Pricing will be similar to the iPhone release so you can expect to see a $1.99 US launch price. We hope to complete the product within the next 3-4 weeks so please be patient. We see that many of our competitors are releasing iPad versions of their products but we do not want to rush the product out the door and sacrifice quality to do so.

There will be some surprising new features added to both versions of the software so be prepared for more fun!

Video Review - App A Day

2010-04-25T16:18:00.003-04:00

3.6 Release STILL under review....

2010-04-17T07:40:00.003-04:00

This is all I see as a developer, no idea what's taking so long.....

UPDATE: Late on April 19th I was phoned by Apple to let me know that the submission was rejected. They asked me to remove the popup that says I'm pulling less bandwidth on 3G connections under "Apple guidelines". They didn't want any references to their guidelines in the app. I've already resubmitted the app without this popup but it means that the review will start over again.

Also, it will mean that I have to answer a lot of emails about the "slowness" of the app now that the message is gone. People will once again assume that the poor 3G performance is due to my lack of programming skills :) Thanks Apple, I appreciate this.

MayGion camera support coming in Live Cams 3.7

2010-04-12T22:07:00.002-04:00

Just a quick note to everyone with MayGion cameras. I've just added a new camera profile and PTZ support for IP cameras using the latest firmware from www.maygion.com

Many thanks to Anthony Diehlman for allowing us to use his camera for testing. It's largely due to customers like Anthony that we are able to continuously add support for new (and often obscure) camera models.

Keep the requests coming, iPad development starts shortly!

PS - The 3.6 release is still under review by Apple.

Dynamic DNS Lessons

2010-04-09T15:34:00.003-04:00

The most common question (by far) that I get via support requests is the following:

"My private camera only loads on my Wifi network. I can't reach it on 3G or on the Wifi at work. Why not?"

The reason is due to the way that IP addresses and TCP networks work. In order for your home computers and cameras to be reachable from the internet you must have a way to get to your router that hosts your home network. This can be done with either a static IP address or a dynamic DNS account. More on this topic later.

Getting there from here

If you are using Live Cams on a 3G or cell network and you want to get video from a camera at home then you will need to go through your router first. Requests for video go from your iPhone/iPad through the internet to your home router. The router then passes the request through (if properly configured) to your camera. The camera responds and sends the video back through the same way that the request arrived.

This is a fairly simple description of how the data flows, but the trick is configuring your router to pass the data through and configuring Live Cams to find the router in the first place. There are two ways to do this.

Static IP Addresses

Some ISP (Internet Service Providers) offer static IP addresses to their customers, but most do not. If you are a business then you are likely capable of getting a static IP. This is an IP address like ###.###.###.### that you can assign to your network router that will never change. Once your router is configured to use this number it is always easy to find from anywhere in the world. This is only part of the solution though, as you will also need to configure port forwarding to get data to/from your camera behind the router.

Dynamic DNS Accounts

This is probably the best way to go. Simply sign up for a free account at http://www.no-ip.com and then download and install one of their free update clients. What this does is allow you to assign a simple text-based name to your router. The update client will periodically check to see if your router has a new IP address (some ISPs do this every so often) and then it will keep the name resolution working properly.
If you selected a prefix like "egerter" and a suffix like "dyndns.tv" then your host name is egerter.dyndns.tv and this is what you would enter into Live Cams. Now the app can find your router, but we need to configure port forwarding!

Port Forwarding

This sounds scary but it's actually fairly simple. Once the request for video reaches your router via one of the two methods above it still needs to go to the camera. In your router's administrative webpages you need to find the port forwarding screen and tell it a few details:

External port - This is the port number that you will use in a webbrowser to reach your camera. If you have multiple cameras then you will need unique numbers for each. I like to assign numbers starting in the 8000-9000 range. For example: http://egerter.dyndns.tv:8000
Internal port - This is the port number that your camera is assigned to within your local network at home. It can be the same number as your external port to keep things simple.
IP Address - This is the IP address of the camera within your local network, like 192.168.1.100
Protocol - TCP.

Once you enable this rule you should test the setup by entering your details into a webbrowser and see if the camera interface comes up. If everything is configured properly then a URL like this:

http://egerter.dyndns.tv:8000

will go out to the internet, look up the router from the dyndns servers, then reach your router on port 8000. The router then looks up port 8000 in the port forwarding rules and sees that it should send TCP data to a local IP of 192.168.1.100 (your camera). Voila, video!

Within your local network you can also reach the device using the local IP address and internal port:

http://192.168.1.100:8000

Conclusion

If you are reading this paragraph I commend you for sticking with it. This article is fairly wordy but there are really only two basic steps. First you get the requests to find your router, then you get the router to pass it to the camera. Live Cams does not need to be involved in this equation until you can successfully reach your camera via a standard web-browser using either the dynamic DNS account or the static IP address. I configured 7 cameras at my home (each with different ports) before travelling on vacation this winter and the result was that I could check in on my property via Live Cams while in another country!

Don't be discouraged if it doesn't work the first time. Focus on each step separately and try to get the configuration working before you involve Live Cams in the mix!

Barry

Live Cams 3.6 submitted to Apple for approval today

2010-04-09T15:03:00.003-04:00

I've been a little slow to get the next release out but after many spot-checks and continued testing I've finally put it into Apple's hands for review. Here's the release notes:

Added DLink 5220 preset support.
Added Compro camera profile.
Axis devices were not always showing the full list of presets.
Linksys WVC200 default resolution is now higher on 3G connections.
Fixed crashes on Linksys WVC200 when resolution is set to 640x480.
Trendnet 301 camera profile added.
Panasonic i-Pro profile altered, now there are 2 profiles so please check the models supported for each.
Vivotek multichannel support (using basic "Vivotek" profile and camera number field).
Lorex LNZ4001 PTZ support (directional controls only, no zoom in/out).
IVC Relay camera import added (initial support, long term plan is to sync with server on every startup).
Abelcam import added (same as IVC Relay Server).
Moved all of the thrid-party PC/Mac software to a single NVR group in the camera selection screen.
Beginnings of Sony PTZ support added, queued PTZ not yet supported.
Performance improvements during transition from thumbnails to fullscreen video for some camera models.

Some notables include the camera imports for IVC Relay Server and Abelcam. This is a temporary solution for those users who are trying to pull in data for hundreds of cameras at a time. It is implemented as a one-time option during the "add camera" phase so that you can choose to enter data for a single camera or simply import all of the cameras found on the server. Long-term I hope to have the server information synced on every startup. This would be the proper approach so that camera maintenance can be completely server side and Live Cams only needs to point at the server to find the data.

As always, if I've messed something up or there are any issues that arise with this release, please contact support@barryegerter.com for assistance. I hope to see Apple release the software within the next few days. My plans are to start work on Live Cams HD (the iPad-specific version of the app). I have also been preparing ideas for Live Cams on OS 4.0 which will add some incredible new features for all application developers and consumers alike.

See the new features in OS 4.0 here:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/live-from-apples-iphone-os-4-event/?sort=oldest&refresh=0

The iPad Cometh

2010-04-01T21:22:00.001-04:00

It's almost here. I can feel it. The iPad is on it's way and the masses of Apple enthusiasts will most certainly embrace yet another portable device. That is, if you live in the United States. For those of us who live outside the continental US (I'm two hours away from the Detroit border crossing) we won't get access to the new hardware for another month.

For those of you who are expecting to run some fantastic applications on the iPad due to it's larger screen, don't be shocked when you find that the existing 150,000+ applications are quite small and merely centered on the screen. If you choose to expand the applications to fill the screen you will just get blocky pixelated versions of what used to look almost decent on a lower resolution.

Now this is all based on my experience with the iPad simulator so it may not be the final case when the iPads arrive, but I wouldn't expect much more from an existing iPhone application unless it has been enhanced as a "Universal Binary". Here's a screenshot of Live Cams 3.6 running in the iPad simulator:

You can see the wasted space. Not too impressive. If you tap the "2x" button on the bottom right it will expand the app to fill the screen:

As you can see you may be disappointed with the quality of your current iPhone apps when they are launched on an iPad. I for one plan to port Live Cams to a new code base that takes advantage of the screen space for video resolution and for improved menu systems and prompts. Unfortunately I won't release any software until I can finally get my hands on an iPad for testing for a few weeks. This means that Live Cams - Tablet Edition won't be available until mid-late May.

For those of you who don't mind spending a dollar or two you can buy the current release and run it on any iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, but the features and quality will be identical on each one. You will need to purchase a new copy to get the iPad specific release when it becomes available.

I could have made a Universal Binary which would run on any device but the changes that I wish to make are so drastic that it would not make sense to turn the source code into spaghetti to make it happen. I prefer to offer a solid product for each platform. The other issue is that iPad apps must support portrait and landscape modes and they will require a base SDK of 3.2 in order to use some of the latest features available. One that catches my eye is the ability to share files from the iPad to your computer. This will make backups of the Live Cams database and your private cameras very easy!

I encourage everyone to post messages with their thoughts on our user forums.

Thanks,
Barry

Version 3.5 on the way shortly!

2010-03-10T13:36:00.002-05:00

I've been very hard at work since the 3.2 release went out and can finally announce that the 3.5 release is almost ready for submission to Apple! I've added support for many new cameras, adjusted the gui for preset lists, added a battery level indicator and clock, and more!

Here are my release notes so far:

Preset order corrected, now based on the order received from the cameras
IVC Relay Server - removed home position from preset list
Added Iris (Mac software) camera profile
Abelcam PTZ support added
Added clock and battery indicator to video view on lower titlebar
LevelOne camera profiles (3) added
i-Pro PTZ controls corrected
JVC camera profile (no PTZ yet)
PTZ Preset GUI modified, menu is now transparent
Blue Iris PTZ support (no presets)

I have also been very focused on putting some materials together for a security conference in Las Vegas. I will be attending the ISC West conference in Las Vegas on March 24-26. If anyone else is planning to attend I'd be happy to arrange a face-to-face meeting (most likely on the 24th). I do not have a booth but will be represented in the ACTi booth (thanks to ACTi for helping me with this) and perhaps a few other manufacturers as well.

I look forward to meeting those who attend!

Some responses to app reviews

2010-02-21T14:40:00.001-05:00

Once every so often I take a break from the usual support emails and development to just read some app reviews and see what people are saying about the app. After reading a few more today I'm finding that the content is the usual mix of relevant, irrelevant and impossible requests. I've been selling my app for a year now and I'm finally starting to ignore the reviews (which is the best way to keep a clear head).

Here's the general list of concerns from the reviews in the past few weeks:

1) The app is slow, please fix it.
2) My USB camera isn't supported without additional software so I give it 1 or 2 stars.
3) Private cameras are being published to the internet.
4) The latest update is bad and breaks the entire application.
5) Lots of lag and no live feed. The same car was on camera 6 times in fifteen minutes.
6) Video feeds are boring, nothing ever happens.

And here are my responses (with injected sarcasm so I can have some fun):

1) The app pulls data as fast as the network connection allows. More often than not the camera is slow to output video. Public cameras are under a load that is roughly 100-1000 times their capacity so yes, they are slow. Tell your friends to stop using my application so that you are the only one looking at the cameras and it might be faster!

2) If you are refusing to install webcamXP or some other PC/Mac software to get your USB webcam working then you are going to be waiting forever. There is no magic way for another application to fetch video from a USB webcam over Wifi/3G unless it broadcasts the data over the internet. Please don't blame Live Cams for this because it's a basic networking issue and has nothing to do with my "lack of support" for the webcam. You need software to be on the host PC to resolve this and no amount of complaining will avoid this :)

3) As stated in another blog article, this is untrue. Live Cams does not upload or publish any data anywhere. If your private cameras are in the public list then they were already on the internet and I found them there. Camelive.info is the website where the majority of my public cameras were pulled from. I strongly suggest that you add a password to your security system if you don't want others to see it. Don't install a security system if you leave it unprotected and don't want others to watch.

4) None of the updates would be released if they caused problems like this. What DOES happen however is the occasional corruption of files when the updates are installed by the firmware. I have found that roughly 1 out of 15000 customers experiences this so every release I get a bunch of emails about it. I suggest you make a backup of your data with iTunes before installing any updates. The data can easily be restored if you do, but is lost if a failure occurs and you don't!

5) That car driver must be dizzy.

6) Sorry if the feeds are boring but have you ever watched a security guard at a desk with video monitors? Most of the time they are bored too. It's a good thing if we don't have robberies and car accidents every few seconds! Live Cams is not an entertainment application, it's a utility. Some people find it entertaining but that's not the intent.

Closing Remarks
I've listed a few of the negative reviews but keep in mind that the majority of the app's customers are very satisfied. These are 6 reviews out of 3/4 of a million users. I know that most of my existing customers support my efforts and they continue to send me encouragement via email every day, so thank you! I just enjoy taking time out once in a while to respond to the critics.

Critics - Please Read
App reviews (both negative and positive) are welcome. Keep in mind however that they are anonymous and there is no way for me to respond to them directly or even identify who wrote them. If you are having problems and want some help you must contact me at support@barryegerter.com

Looking for app reviewer - "Finatik"

2010-02-20T17:00:00.000-05:00

Could the person going by the name of "Finatik" please contact me via support@barryegerter.com? I just read an app review by this person who claims that my app published private camera data to the web. This is not true (not even possible with my app in any way). The opposite is true, I pull cameras from websites on the internet and it sounds like his/her cameras were on the one that I pull data from.

They have given my app a 1 star review claiming that it publishes private data and this is a very damaging claim and totally untrue. The truth is that even I as the author do not have a way to get to anything that you add as a "private cam". The data is stored in a database in the filesystem of your iPhone/iPod but this database cannot be accessed by any other apps and it is never uploaded anywhere.

I take great pride in offering a security product that is totally secure and wish to contact the author of this app review to find out which cameras are in the public list that should be removed.

If you are out there, please contact me!

Thanks,
Barry Egerter
Author - Live Cams for iPhone

Barry will be live on cam shortly!

2010-02-14T10:49:00.001-05:00

My wife Lorrie and I are in Dallas on vacation and will be visiting the leafy sea dragon cam at the Dallas World Aquarium. We'll snap our own pic and post it shortly!!!

Sadly I forgot to make a sign but will wave and point to my iPhone.

Update:
We did it! The aquarium was absolutely amazing and one of the highlights of our Dallas trip. Admission was $21 each but the sights and surroundings were well worth it. I love animals and particularly aquatic life so this was a fantastic place to visit. I also found it very interesting to see the PTZ cameras mounted inside of the two tanks that are viewable via Live Cams.

Here are a few photos:

This is a photo of my wife pointing to the Sony PTZ camera found in the Manatee tank. This camera can be found in the app via "Search", then "Animals", then go to "Dallas World Aquarium - Manatees".

The camera is in a waterproof enclosure and mounted from above the water surface. It dips just below the surface and has the PTZ features locked out. When this camera was first added to the app it was wide open but I suppose too many people were abusing it so the owners set the fixed position and allow video only now.

Here is a close-up of the camera in the enclosure:

And here is a view from a little farther back where you can see more of the tank. The camera is on the upper left side just above the family watching the manatee swim past.

Next up were the leafy sea dragons. They use a similar device and enclosure but in this case the camera was mounted deeper in the tank and attached to some of the rocks.

This shot was taken with my iPhone from just outside the tank window. You can see one of the sea dragons on the upper right and the camera in the center towards the back.

And now you'll see a picture that I took from "inside" the tank using Live Cams to snap a photo of the sea dragons. The best part of this photo is that you can see my wife and I looking into the tank as I snap the photo using the app! (It's a little dark but you can see us squatting down and waving)

My camera only works at home, how do I access it from somewhere else?

2010-02-05T10:21:00.000-05:00

This is a very common question and although it is a simple concept to understand it is really hard to explain unless you are technically inclined.

The short answer is this:
Live Cams connects to your camera by an IP address and a port or a host name and a port. If you enter an IP address it is most likely only valid when you are connected to your home network. This IP address is not valid on the internet and therefore your iPhone/iPod cannot find your home network or camera. You need a dynamic DNS name (host name) that will always point to your router so that Live Cams can find the network where your camera is installed. After this you will also have to open the port so that the request for video will pass through your router and be sent to your camera.

That's short? I guess not, it's still rather complicated. Here's an article with greater detail that may answer your questions:

http://www.networkwebcams.co.uk/blog/2007/01/09/dynamic-dns-or-do-i-really-need-a-static-ip-address/

I recommend signing up for a free dynamic DNS account at http://www.dyndns.com

Live Cams - Tablet Edition

2010-01-27T14:52:00.001-05:00

With today's announcement of the iPad device (finally official!) I thought it would also be good to announce my intentions for the next app....

Live Cams - Tablet Edition

Once the new hardware becomes available I intend to port the existing Live Cams application to a new codebase and enhance the UI for the much larger and crisper iPad resolution. Much of the code in Live Cams is focused on scrunching data down to a smaller resolution and then painting the screen. The purpose of this is to improve the framerate and also reduce the processor usage while at the same time improving on the app's responsiveness.

It appears from the demos today that the new iPad will be much faster with respect to graphics and should be capable of showing higher resolution images without any degradation in performance. Live Cams is well suited for an iPad device because security video should ideally be high-res, especially in the often low-light conditions under which the cameras are located.

The new devices are expected to be available in two to three months so it will be a while before I can start work on the new software but I certainly intend to offer something better suited than my current product. It will not be offered as an upgrade but will have to be a new purchase for those who wish to move to this new device. I expect to offer it for $3.99 initially.

Please add your thoughts on the user forums at http://livecams-iphone.com/forums

Common App Problems - How to Resolve Them

2010-01-27T09:48:00.000-05:00

Quite often I receive emails from people who cannot load the app or when the app loads it doesn't display any cameras. In both cases its likely that the database is corrupted and the only solution is to remove the application and reinstall it.

To remove the app:

1. Launch iTunes on your computer. Navigate to the applications section of your library.
2. Highlight the Live Cams application and press delete. Answer yes to verify that you want to delete it.
3. Sync iTunes with your device so that the application is also cleared from your device.

To re-install the app:

1. Launch the App Store and search for Live Cams.
2. Even though it appears as though the store will charge you again to download it will not. Click the purchase button and don't worry about the price that is displayed. Apple tracks your purchases and will not charge you a second time if you have already purchased something.
3. Wait for the download and install to complete and then launch the app.

You will lose any private data or favorites that were previously saved with Live Cams. This is a completely fresh install. We're not sure what would cause the database to become corrupted but it's possible that various versions of firmware have bugs with the SQLite database.

Database updated - Jan 23

2010-01-23T21:18:00.003-05:00

I've done another weekly sweep of the database to see how many dead links should be removed or temporarily disabled. For those of you who wonder about the contents here are some figures:

There are a total of 4879 cameras in the database
1539 are currently disabled (because they fail to respond or contain "questionable" content
Of the enabled cameras, here is the breakdown by brand

696 are Canon devices which all support PTZ and streaming video
1186 are Axis brand, supporting streaming video and sometimes PTZ
532 are Panasonic, supporting streaming video and sometimes PTZ
91 are Sony, supporting streaming video and sometimes PTZ
381 are Mobotix (high definition cameras), none of which support PTZ
352 are JPEG stills that are pulled on an interval from a host website
The remaining cameras are a mix of various brands and capabilities

I manually spot-check every few days to see which ones have gone offline or have been password-protected. I also screen the content as best I can to eliminate cameras found in people's living quarters or in children's daycares (and yes, there have been a few and I'm surprised these are even installed by anyone!).

I may have missed some because it all depends on the time of day that I check and the area that the camera is pointed to. If anyone has seen cameras that should not be available, please contact support. Be cautious here, I have had dozens of emails about the rooms with the "Dora" bedsheets and wallpaper. This is in fact a doggy daycare and not a childs room!

Cameras may go offline due to maintenance, poor internet connections, or the owner is intentionally removing the camera (perhaps it was not intended to be public!). If a camera goes offline I can't honestly answer why because I don't own or operate the devices, nor do I know who does (in most cases, some of the cameras have been submitted to me by the owners but only a few hundred in total).

MacWorld Review

2010-01-22T11:24:00.000-05:00

Tim Mercer has just completed a review of Live Cams and the article is available on the MacWorld website.

You can read the full article here.

It's a fairly straightforward review with an objective viewpoint. Thanks Tim!

#1 in Japan!

2010-01-13T08:29:00.000-05:00

Even after returning the application to it's regular price of $1.99 US it is now ranked #1 in Japan!

It seems that North Americans are not willing to pay $2 for my work at all, but the Japanese love it!

Thanks again for your continued support. I'm busy getting another release ready and still catching up on support emails from the past two weeks.

Barry

Adding your private IP cameras to Live Cams

2010-01-11T10:52:00.003-05:00

This is a tricky topic to approach so I'll cover the basics and perhaps write some more detailed blog posts in the coming weeks. Adding your IP camera to Live Cams can be very easy and straightforward if you are using one of the more common devices, but many older models require some patience because they require special handling or setup.

Lets start with an easy one. Let's pretend you have a Canon VB-C50i camera and it's available on the internet using a static IP address at:

http://204.117.196.50:65304

Try the link above and you'll see the camera interface for the WonderWorks Pigeon Forge Web Cam - Tennessee. This camera is already included in the app database but serves as a good working example of how to add cameras.

NOTE: If your camera uses an address without the ":" after the host in a browser then it is using the default port of 80. This example assumes that your camera settings have been customized to use a different port.

To add this you would:

1. Press the 'Select" button from the main screen in Live Cams (the thumbnail view).
2. Select "My Cams" to view your private camera list, which will be empty the first time you view it.
3. Select "Manage" to enter the camera management screen.
4. Press the + button to add a new camera to the list.
5. Scroll down to the section called "IP Camera" and find Canon - Generic. This profile should work for all Canon models except the VB150 which has its own profile listed below.
6. Enter a name like "Pigeon Forge Test".
7. The host should be entered as 204.117.196.50 (don't enter any url characters like http:// or others, we just want the host name or ip address here)
8. Erase the default of 80 for the port and enter 65304 instead.
9. Leave the username and password blank and ignore the camera number field. Save the camera.

You should get an error message saying that the camera exists. If you were entering your own camera it should save successfully and then you could find it by selecting "My Cams" from the thumbnail screen. If you entered something wrong or need to change settings (or delete the camera) you would select the grey box from the thumbnail screen and then use the "gears" icon in the video screen to alter settings.

That's it. If you are using a different brand then it can be tricky to know which profile to use. I generally create a generic "catch-all" profile for each brand to be used for the majority of cameras that follow a standard. If there are some models within that brand that require special processing or protocols then I create additional profiles for them and try to give it an appropriate name.

You'll notice that some brands like DLink and Trendnet have many profiles to choose from. This is because they never standardized their interfaces and each one uses a different technique to get to the video or control PTZ functions. Your particular model might not match the name that I have assigned so it sometimes takes a few tries to enter your settings with a profile, discover that it doesn't work and then delete the camera and retry with another profile. I am working on a web page that will allow you to enter details once and then the page will test all available profiles to see which ones match your device.

It's important to note that not all cameras can provide streaming MJPEG video. Some cameras can only produce still images (JPEG) and some can't do either via a programmatic interface. Live Cams can only communicate with cameras that support external applications requesting data/video via HTTP urls. Always update your firmware to the latest and greatest before trying to use Live Cams with your device. This may save a lot of hassle due to firmware problems that the manufacturer has since resolved.

That's it for now. I'll write some more posts soon to describe how to set up and configure dynamic DNS names so that your cameras are reachable via 3G and cell networks rather than just your local Wifi network. This is not a Live Cams feature but rather a standard networking exercise. As always, I recommend trying to reach your camera via Safari before you enter details into Live Cams. If your Safari browser cannot connect to the IP and port that you use then it's not worth trying the application because it will also fail. Safari will give you much better error information to help diagnose the problems before you try adding it to Live Cams.

Adding cameras found on the Internet - Part 1

2010-01-01T03:43:00.001-05:00

I've been asked a countless number of times about how to add cameras from the internet into Live Cams. It can be really easy at times and sometimes just plain confusing.

To begin with, lets add some simple traffic cameras from the Oregon Department of Transportation.

The website is found here (Portland region):
http://www.tripcheck.com/Pages/RCMap.asp?mainNav=RoadConditions&curRegion=16

Click on the camera that you want to add, then when the image pops up in a new window, right click on it and copy the image address (link) into your clipboard. I use Safari as a web browser so the option in the menu may be worded differently on other browsers.

Paste it into a text editor and you'll see something like this:
http://www.tripcheck.com/RoadCams/cams/i84lloyd_pid587.jpg?0.6435205

You can then go to my app and select "Add Camera" followed by the JPG camera profile.
Enter the full url as above but leave out everything after the .jpg (you won't need the ?0.6435205)

For JPG cameras the app will simply request the url you added every few seconds. You can customize this interval to speed it up or slow it down. If the website you copied it from is only updating once every 30 seconds then you should set the number to 30 so that it matches. Pulling frames every 2 seconds would waste your battery power and your data plan when the image doesn't actually look any different for another 30 seconds.

You can now save the camera and view it when you select "My Cams". Any cameras that you add are considered private and the data is only stored locally on your iPhone/iPod. Nothing is ever posted back to a server or made available to others.

App Store and Product Names - What happened to the concept of copyright?

2009-12-29T13:55:00.000-05:00

I'm outraged. Being at the top of the charts brings out the competitors like you wouldn't believe, but some have now crossed the line, the legal one!

My product is named Live Cams. It was first released as i-c-LiveCams in January but changed later that spring to be simply "Live Cams". After becoming a top 10 app in the US and Canada in June there was a deluge of app submissions that mysteriously contained the "Live Cams" keywords. The most notable was Mobiscope changing their app to "Mobiscope: Spy Live Cams".

I didn't have a problem with this because it was commonplace for people to use keywords to boost app sales at the time. I was flattered by the attempts to duplicate me so no biggie.

Things are different now. A quick search on Live Cams in the app store turns up a much more bold and nasty approach by some large organizations.

Several times between September and December 2009 I attempted to contact EarthCam to see if I could get permission to include some of their content in my application. I was willing to discuss profit sharing if necessary and shared my thoughts via email. No answers whatsoever, not even a polite "no thanks".

On December 23rd an application was released by EarthCam and it was named "Live Cams Free". To add to the attack, their product logo prominently contains the words "Live Cams" and a graphic image.

I ask you to boycott their free application or to at least write reviews that state their shameful use of my product name in their own. To think I was willing to work together with them!

I'd love to get your thoughts on this. It's really too bad because they have some of the best cameras in famous places and yet they take this approach to marketing themselves. Dispicable!

Wow - Christmas sales figures have just arrived!

2009-12-28T14:04:00.000-05:00

I'm shaking.

The iTunes Connect website just became accessible again after being turned off for the holidays on Dec 23rd and I've just now received my sales figures for the last 5 days.

Wow!

I'm not sure what to do or say right now. I've thought about it and decided that I would publish the numbers since the #1 app last year (iFart by Joel Comm) did the same.

The numbers?

Dec 25 - 40,336 people bought the app
Dec 26 - 28,703 did the same

That's $48,327 profit in 2 days!

I think I need a drink. Happy Holidays everyone, and thanks for giving me a heart condition for 2010 :)

Holiday Challenge - Want your picture on iTunes?

2009-12-24T13:49:00.000-05:00

I've seen enough reviews now about the app being fake that I've decided we should all show how these cameras are in fact real.

I'd like to ask everyone who knows the location of one of these cameras to make up a simple sign that reads "Live Cams for iPhone!" and hold it up so that you can get a screenshot of yourself with the sign. Try to get your face on camera if you want to be seen :)

You may have to ask a friend to take snapshots with the iPhone while you hold up the sign, or perhaps other customers will see you doing this and send in snapshots for you....

I'll take some of the best ones and post them as my screenshots on the App Store and will post all of them on my website/blog for others to see.

Remember, these cameras are not owned or operated by me. They are publicly available cameras that are hosted on various internet sites. As cameras go offline or are protected by the owners they become unavailable in the application. Due to the HUGE number of people currently purchasing and using the application its quite possible that by the summer there will be very few cameras left to view. The owners must pay for equipment and bandwidth costs so there will likely be a shock when they find the new audience that is now watching.... These cameras have been available online for years but never concentrated into one easily accessible collection like my app has. Because of this the usage has been much lighter and the traffic negligible in the past.

Take your photos now and get your image on iTunes for your friends to see! Please keep it clean, no obscene gestures or poses. I look forward to seeing the submissions.

To submit, go to the user forums, sign up and post the photo here:
http://livecams-iphone.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=68

More fun with App Reviews

2009-12-22T21:46:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to finally take a mental break from iPhone development but can't quite tear myself away from reading reviews and checking support emails. I'm so worried that taking a few days off will result in the loss of my #1 spot in the US! Realistically it's out of my hands anyway but I feel that my attention to customer requests is keeping me on top.

That being said, I read some very funny app reviews a few moments ago and thought I'd share :)

"Umm yeah it's about 300-500 cameras in all different places that you can vie for control over. Low quality and mildly laggy but exactly what I thought I was gonna get. Also the screen shots are deceiving in quality."

First of all, the current database contains 4820 cameras to be exact, and I have disabled 1291 of them (leaving 3529 active cameras). If you just use the predefined categories to find cameras then maybe there are only a thousand or so but that's because I haven't managed to completely categorize all of them yet! Use the custom search feature to find cameras.

Also, the screen shots deceiving? I captured 100% of my screen shots by pressing the home and sleep buttons on my iPhone to save them to my album. Shots are transferred directly to my Mac via iPhoto and not retouched in any way. Obviously I pick some of my favorites to promote the app, but nothing is altered from the original in any way.

"Stupid app! do not buy! first of all it's sooo slow it's ridiculous you can't even tell what's going on and second there aren't even any animals in the animal cateragory."

Wha? No animals? Are they sleeping? Haha...dunno what to say about this review, I just have to laugh.

"Plus only for streaming live cams. Static cams that update their image every few minutes only are nowhere to be found. World View is much better."

Wait a minute, so you are suggesting that instead of streaming video you'd like to load the app full of images that take several minutes to change? I have a feeling I'd drop out of the charts pretty fast if I did that :) I've been adding a few as people request them but I already feel like there are too many! Plus with the heavy bias towards World View I suspect this is the author trying to trick people or perhaps a friend of the author. Either way, this amused me. I apologize if you are seriously addicted to World View, I've never tried it.

"Junk. 1 star. Don't waste your money. Slow."

After working for more than 1 year on this app and supporting a few hundred models of IP cameras I would appreciate a bit more depth in a review than this :)

Well, that was fun. There are more every night and I'll post a few on the blog from time to time since it's my only venue for "challenging" the reviewers. I don't think all of the reviewers realize that they are 100% anonymous and there's no way for the app developers to respond to them. As a Canadian citizen I cannot even post a comment on the US App Store so it's impossible for me to help people or respond if they ask questions in reviews.

The holiday season is here! I'm off for some mental health days and I shall return to the world of Live Cams on the 27th!
Have a great week everyone,

Barry

Namibia Wild Cam is back online!

2009-12-22T15:14:00.000-05:00

I've just found that the Namibia Wild Cam (animals section) is back online! It has been down for a few weeks (unknown reasons) but is now active again. I've re-enabled the camera and everyone should get it in their list when they connect via Wifi.

It's a great camera with streaming video and IR night vision from Africa. You'll see lots of animals both during the day and at night. It supports PTZ but as you'll find if you attempt to control it, the admin has locked us out :)

Happy Holidays!

Barry