Nothin' but Browser

A common maxim among photographers is that “the best camera is the one you have with you.” We agree. Dedicated security cameras can’t be beat, but almost everyone has a perfectly good webcam built into their computer.

That’s why we’re so excited to preview CamioCam Web, which turns any (modern) web browser into a full-fledged security camera with nary a download.

Just open www.camiolog.com/cam to record. That's it.

It's simple and free for anyone with a webcam to get advanced motion detection, smart alerts, fast search, and easy sharing. It’s great in a pinch, or to try out Camiolog before buying standalone cameras. 

Just open www.camiolog.com/cam to start recording. Close the page to stop. Give it a try and, as always, let us know what you think!

Update: get CamioCam as a Chrome App too.

Sí, hablamos español (ok, Spanglish really)

Camiolog comenzó en México. Mis padres viven cerca de Puerto Vallarta durante gran parte del año. Les di una cámara y Camiolog como regalo para que pudieran permanecer cerca de la casa de sus sueños, incluso cuando están lejos.

Han tenido nuevos usos de Camiolog por decir lo menos. Era su casa en México que se quemó por un rayo y era su casa en Los Ángeles, donde tres coyotes casi comieron su perro.

Tres Coyotes... la traducción no es necesaria.

Estamos encantados de ofrecer Camiolog en español. No hemos traducido todos las páginas web al español, pero se puede utilizar la aplicación principal en español con www.camiolog.com?locale=es.

¡Disfrute!

53-second Setup. No Cables!

“

This feels like magic. I can mount an outdoor WiFi camera right out of the box. No cables! – Colin Maslan
Camiolog Installer #1

„

With this new Android app, your cameras are up and running in 53 seconds without ever needing access to a router or PC.

In the earliest days of Camiolog, Colin did most of the Bay Area installations so that we could learn quickly how to simplify setup. His biggest request: eliminate the need to connect to a PC or router - especially when installing outdoor cameras.

To experience the "magic", I recorded my out-of-the-box setup of a Sharx outdoor WiFi camera using nothing more than my phone:



No more crawling behind desks and cabinets to connect cables. Now Colin returns from his installations dust-bunny-free!

Pick up where you left off

When we leave our dog at home alone, I often search [ black dog ] for a quick check on how she's been doing.

But I'd have to repeat the same search each time I opened Camiolog, since the default search included all events from all cameras.

Now, Camiolog picks up right where you left off. Your last search is remembered as the starting point for the next time you open camiolog.com or the Camiolog app.

Click the X (highlighted above) in the Search Box to clear all search filters.

Since reloading camiolog.com no longer forgets your prior search, we've added an X button in the Search Box as a quick way to clear all search filters to get back to viewing all events from all cameras. The equivalent mobile app Menu option is Clear all filters.

This new "sticky start page" is especially helpful when you typically use Camiolog as the Guest of another user. Rather than having to select the Account of the person sharing with you each time you open Camiolog, you jump straight to the shared video images - whether viewing Live Motion or Search results.

p.s. - Live Motion View (#live) now includes a button on each camera to take you to the recent events of that particular camera.

Events at-a-glance

Want to see a quick summary of your video at-a-glance?
Now, whenever you pass your mouse over an event, you'll see a 2x-speed animation of the whole event sequence. In this screencast, I use the new color search feature with the query
[ front red yesterday 8pm events ]


Events can be animated, expanded, or collapsed with these actions:

animate	- move your mouse over the event
expand	- click on the event's green bar graph
collapse	- click on the expanded event's color-coded bar

On your smartphone or tablet, where you have no mouse, click on the event bar graph to start the animation.

Enjoy!

p.s. - click a timestamp (e.g. "8:05:24 PM") to show results second-by-second starting at that time.
p.p.s. - the keyboard shortcut character 'e' toggles to/from viewing events.

Crowdsource your Office Video Security

Now, all the Macs in your office are free security cameras! Just download CamioCam from the App Store.

If you have our latest iPhone app, your Macs will also alert you to what is happening wherever you are.

CamioCam only records when it matters, since it automatically adjusts to the lighting and motion levels in the room. When you get an alert on your phone, you can jump straight to the video that triggered the alert - no matter what network you're on. There's no need to configure firewalls or forward ports.

Once CamioCam is up and linked to your camiolog account, set up alert zones on the scene it’s capturing, like this:

conference room zone

You’ll get Alerts like this on your iPhone/iPad:

realtime alert

It’s as easy as that. I'm signing off with a screenshot of CamioCam and me triggering the conference room alert for your amusement!

CamioCam alerting me about me

Search. In Color!

[ entrance blue ]

[ entrance white ]

Have you ever wanted to know when the FedEx or recycling truck came by?

Now you can - with a quick color search!

In these examples, I jumped to the white FedEx truck and blue recycling truck by including colors in my searches.

Camiolog now instantly detects the colors of moving objects in each frame.  Computers and humans process colors differently: we call a truck white, even though its moving image contains many shades of color in the tires, the body, the logo, and the windows.  Camiolog imitates the human vision process, detecting the "relevant" colors for each moving object in real time.  We are still fine-tuning the color detection; we welcome all feedback!

We have made colors searchable - just like camera names and zone labels. That way, you can quickly find your UPS delivery with a search like [walkway brown] or your black labrador with a search like [backyard black].

Color is another ingredient in making your video cameras more useful - easy to access, easy to search, and easy to act on. 

Smarter Search with Vector-based Zones

When you label motion zones with simple terms like "lawn" or "driveway", you make your Camiolog search and alerts smarter. For example, the search [walkway by event yesterday] can include only the motion that happens in this oddly shaped polygon, selected in orange:

Vector-based Zone Editor with "walkway" selected

To label a zone, just:

1. click on any image in your Camiolog stream
2. click the "Edit Zones" button
3. click "Draw Area" to place the vertices of one or more polygons covering your zone
4. name your zone (e.g. "walkway") and click "Save"

Camiolog has switched to this vector-based zone editor. That means that:

1. your labeled zones are precise at any image resolution
2. it's easy to edit zones by moving polygon markers, and
3. you should no longer use the old zone editor!

We'll still use your old zone definitions until you replace them with the new vector-based zones. Once you save a zone using the new "Edit Zones" for a particular camera, then Camiolog's image analysis for that camera will use only your newly defined vector-based zones.  We've included a temporary link to the "Old Zone Editor" in the upper right just so that you can view any previously defined zones in a separate window while creating your new ones.

Search the Real World... on your iPhone

The Camiolog iPhone and iPad app was just released in the iTunes App Store. So now it's as easy to check your cameras on your smartphone or tablet as it is when you are at your desk.

Camiolog is still available from any standard web browser on any device, but we created this iOS app to improve the navigation and sharing experience. The app makes it easier to:

• search quickly with keywords like [walkway 3pm yesterday]
• filter results with native controls for cameras, zones or time frames
• share Camios using the native share dialog
• swipe to go back or forward in your navigation history

The Camiolog app will handle any camiolog.com link you click from your device. So it's easier to view a Camio shared via email, text message or web site.

I look forward to hearing from you how we can make it easier for you to get the most out of your content.  Please send me your top missing features so we can get them into our development plans.

Compressing Time at a Watering Hole in Kenya

It's a thrill to see wild animals on the other side of the planet. But it's nighttime in Kenya when we're awake here. And even when we stay up late, there's no guarantee we'll tune-in at just the right time to catch an elephant or zebra. 

Zebra Moon: Camio of their sunset salutation to Mount Kilimanjaro

But now we can search [watering hole kenya] to compress weeks of video images into the watering hole highlights.

Rather than wading through lots of dark night images and weather changes over the course of many days, you can jump straight to the activity at the watering hole.

tip: Camiolog automatically purges content older than 30 days. But when you create a limited timespan Camio like the one on the left, you also prevent its content from being purged until you delete the Camio.

Search the Real World (in real-time)

Michael T. Jones taught me that silly questions aren't so silly.

Many people, when viewing satellite imagery in Google Earth or Maps for the first time, would zoom over their home or office and ask, "Why isn't my car parked outside? It's outside now." Those same questions popped up even with Street View.

(cue laughter from anyone that had labored for years to build a pipeline to stitch and normalize all that imagery together even monthly - much less in real-time)

But it got me to thinking - what would it take to search the real world in real-time? Why can't I ask "Which way did my black lab go?", "Did UPS deliver?", "Are the kids home from soccer yet?", etc. There's so much useful information to make searchable in real-time.

That's our goal at Camiolog - to make it simple to search the real world in real-time.

Here's a personal example from Monday. We're mounting a TRX strap to the ceiling of Camiolog's office (to help us counter all that hunching over keyboards), and I wanted to know whether the mount had been delivered to my home.

I searched [walkway 3pm Monday by event] to see that the package was left at our doorstep and then confirmed that my son had come home with the dog to pick it up from the front door. Simple.

And with Android's voice transcription, I'm using Camiolog's Search more often than menu buttons. It's not silly to ask why my car isn't parked outside anymore!

More info and help links at:
camiolog.com/search-the-real-world

The Cloud is Always On (even if your camera isn't)

My dad's home in Mexico was struck by lightning. The palapa burned down — just 32 hours after insuring it.

Sounds suspicious, doesn't it? But the good people at Mariners Insurance México paid immediately to rebuild. It helped a lot that they could watch the video.

The cameras melted. But the video was already in the cloud. The lightning strike and subsequent fire are captured in this video by the reflection in a ceramic vase:



Since Camiolog is always-on — always running in the cloud — you get security and reliability benefits that also make video surveillance a lot more useful.

Not only is the video immediately off-site and securely replicated across datacenters, but the absence of video can be detected. For example, if your vacation home loses power, or if the dog knocks over your pet cam, Camiolog tells you. You'll get alerts like these:

As a cloud-based service, Camiolog just keeps running — reliably detecting the presence or absence of important events — even when lightning strikes.