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.

Secure & Bandwidth-Efficient Live Motion

From the start, we built Camiolog for our own use - for our dearest friends, family and neighbors. So privacy and security have been top design objectives.

That's why, for example, your cameras record to the cloud with encrypted Upload Tokens rather than with usernames and passwords, and access to your video is protected by Google's 2-step verification.

That's also why it bothers us so much that you're often told to forward ports in your local network router just to view live video! Unless you're a security geek, you may not realize that port forwarding makes your local network vulnerable to attack from anyone across the globe.

camiolog.com#live is secure & bandwidth-efficient.

So when you want to view live motion while away from your home/office network, please use camiolog.com#live instead of connecting directly to your camera or DVR over the Internet using port forwarding.  That way, you keep your local network safe and your camera credentials confidential.

You also save bandwidth - which is especially important on mobile data plans. Instead of continuously streaming video, you fetch only the latest motion as it happens.

Keep it safe! Learn more at help.camiolog.com/live-motion

Shortcuts for Power Users

Camiolog's Keyboard Shortcuts

Press the / key to see Camiolog's keyboard shortcuts. They're especially helpful when blazing through still frames.

In my screencast demos with fast time-lapse sequences, I'm just holding down the arrow key (← or →) to bypass the normal play timing.

The m key is helpful whenever I want to re-display the orange motion highlights after they've stopped flashing.

In Luca's Learning Motion Filter example, the quick hide and show of motionless frames was done with the - and = keys respectively.

Enjoy. Power User.

Video Images with 94% Less Boredom

If you have a web camera, you know the drill: the excitement of being able to see what’s going on at your house is soon replaced by the tedium of wading through images of branches swaying in the wind, shadows playing on the driveway, cobwebs dangling in front of the camera, etc.

Camiolog is coming to the rescue by learning what’s boring and selecting only the images with interesting action. It’s not perfect yet. But to show how helpful it is in reviewing video images, take a look at the examples below.

BEFORE & AFTER
Camiolog's Learning
Motion Filter
(94% less boredom)

On the left, you see a video image stream BEFORE and AFTER Camiolog’s learning motion filter was applied. 1,080 images were distilled to 105 images. Most of that 90% reduction eliminated blowing branches and their shadows. 42 of the remaining 105 images contain motion that’s interesting to us.

The orange motion cloud highlights the interesting motion.

That’s a 94% reduction in boredom!
(from 1,034 to 63!)

There were very few false negatives (4 frames out of 1,080) and not a single interesting event sequence was missed. Watch how a person playing chameleon with his car is detected even while ignoring swaying branches just pixels away!

In practice, Camiolog’s learning motion filter turns a flood of images, in which the interesting action is lost among the spurious motion, into a short and informative summarization. Watch this BEFORE and AFTER video for a sample of the effect:
(you may want to watch in full-screen HD)



Getting rid of spurious motion is only half the benefit; the other half is drawing your attention to the interesting events, preventing them from getting lost in the chaff. The orange motion cloud highlights the interesting motion.

We plan to make this "interesting motion only" view the default on camiolog.com very soon - you can still see all frames on request. In the meantime, use the keyboard shortcut key - to hide motionless frames and the key = to unhide motionless frames. (BTW, the slash key / displays all the keyboard shortcuts)

We have work to do, so thank you in advance for your continued use of the Donate to Science button that helps so much in making your Camiolog smarter!