The Ping Test

A number of my applications (WiFi File Explorer, SECuRET LiveStream and BabyCam Monitor) are all web server based applications (i.e. your Android device acts as a mini web server).  They start up and then prompt you to enter a web address into a web browser on a device on the same network to access the web interface.  Simple enough, but a common problem users email be about is not being able to connect to the application when they actually go to enter the address they have been given.

There are a number of reasons this can happen, and I have already listed out most of those at an article I wrote here at this link.  It's a very useful article and I'd urge you to read it, especially since there are many useful comments from users that have solved the problem in different ways.  However, it's over two years old now, and since writing it I have become better at recognising the cause of problem and finding a much quicker way for you to diagnose it.  So before reading the article linked to above, please read the following...

By far and away, the most common cause of not being able to contact the app when entering the address is simply that your network/router is not configured correctly.  The easy way to determine this is to perform a ping test and the results of this will confirm that or not.  If you don't now how to ping, then read this article.  So just ping the IP address of your Android device from your PC (search Google for how to find out your particular Android device's IP address) and if you don't get a reply, then we can say for certain that your network is not allowing communications between your PC and Android device.  And because these apps all use your local network, this will prevent them from being accessed... so not the apps fault at all!!  If you do get a reply, then your network appears to be OK, and so go back to reading the original article I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

More than likely though, you didn't get a reply in your ping test and the devices can't communicate on your particular network.  In that case, I am afraid it is up to you to figure out what is up with your router/network.  I can't really support you in this case because I have no idea what your network is set up for or what your particular use case for it is, not to mention the many different types of routers on the market than I am not familiar with (I usually forget how to use even my own router!), so I am in no position to offer expert support.  I can however say that a lot of users (more than you probably think) "fix" the issue simply by switching the router off and back on again (I know, right!).  Another common cause can be that you have "Wireless Isolation" (or something named similarly - basically, preventing wireless devices from communicating) enabled on your router, so check that option on your router settings.  Beyond that, I am sure a quick search on Google ("can't ping ip address") will yield enough results to help solve your network configuration problem (that's what I would do anyway).

Hopefully I have provided enough information between this article and the article here for you to be able to support yourself on this one, but if you are still stuck after that or your just need help understanding anything I have already written about, then please feel free to contact me again and I'll try to give you some personal support as soon as I am available.

SECuRET LiveStream & SECuRET SpyCam Working Together

SECuRET LiveStream's main function was always to stream video and audio from the Android device's camera to be viewed in a web browser.  However, because the live stream is presented in the web browser using Java applets, it means that some browsers (those that don't support Java applets) are incompatible with SECuRET LiveStream.

The Android web browser does NOT support Java applets meaning it was not possible to stream using SECuRET LiveStream from one Android device to another.  However, now that I have exposed some new functionality it is now entirely possible to stream from one Android device using SECuRET LiveStream to another that is running SECuRET SpyCam.

So now when you launch SECuRET LiveStream and press the Start button, you are presented with the choice to stream to a web browser or to another Android device.  Selecting to stream to a web browser gives you the same instructions as before, but streaming to another Android device gives you a new set of steps to follow.  Now these steps are pretty clear and there's not much scope for me to make them any clearer, but some people are having difficulty so I will elaborate on them here...

1) You need to have a copy of SECuRET LiveStream on the device you want to transmit the stream from, and a copy of SECuRET SpyCam on the device you want to receive that stream on.  This is where most people get confused; they are two separate applications!

2) Make sure both devices are on the same network, then start SECuRET LiveStream on the transmitting device, press the Start button and select to stream to another Android device.  Keep the resultant popup on the screen or note down the settings.

3) Start SECuRET SpyCam on the receiving device and go to Settings > Remote Camera.  Change the Remote Camera Type setting to "Android Camera (SECuRET LiveStream)" and then in the lower section of the page titled "Android Camera (SECuRET LiveStream)", enter the correct IP address and port numbers based upon what SECuRET LiveStream told you in step 2 above.

4) Then in SECuRET SpyCam, return to the start screen and make sure you select "Remote Camera" instead of "Built-in Camera", then press the Start button and if you have done everything above correctly (and your network doesn't have any funny configurations on it) then you will be live streaming from one Android device to another!

Now, inevitably some people will have difficulty getting this to work as anything that uses a network as part of an architecture can be susceptible to external influences that prevent it from working.  For example, my Motorola Xoom tablet has a terrible problem with WiFi connectivity and even though it reports as saying it is connected to the network, no actual communication occurs with the network.  So when you follow all the steps above and nothing works it would be easy to point the finger at the SECuRET applications in this case; but it's actually Motorola's fault for designing a shoddy WiFi implementation!  So my point is, this does all work and it works incredibly well, but if for some reason you can't get it to work after following all the steps above correctly, then the fault lays elsewhere.  And if you do come to that conclusion then please feel free to email me and ask for some support and don't run off to leave some factually incorrect review and nonsense low rating that will help nobody at all ... I'm sure that after bouncing some ideas around we can get to the bottom of your problem :)

Port Forwarding

A number of my Android applications (WiFi File Explorer, SECuRET LiveStream, BabyCam Monitor and GroovyCam LiveStream) all work by turning an Android device, which is connected to a local WiFi network, into a web server.  This then allows you to connect to it via a web browser on that same local network in order to access the service provided by the application, i.e. file management, video & audio streaming, etc.

So that’s all good and you got it working on your local network, and you’re pretty happy with that.  But wait; now you want someone who’s not on your local network to be able to use the application as well.  For example you may want someone to view the feed from SECuRET LiveStream across the internet.  Well, thanks to ‘port forwarding’ that is entirely possible!

Now, I can’t give you exact step-by-step instructions on how to forward ports for your model of router; there are far too many models available and I simply don’t know how to do it for them all ... hey, I even have to Google up some instructions for how to do it on my router whenever I need to.  But a good place to start to find out how to do it is as http://portforward.com/

What I can do though is tell you want you need to do to accomplish your goal.  Following are some general instructions for forwarding ports on your router to allow the services in my applications to be used across the internet...

Firstly, by configuring your router, you need to forward ports 8000 and 8001 on your router to ports 8000 and 8001 of your Android device, based on the Android device’s IP address.  WiFi File Explorer only uses port 8000 and that number is configurable in the application settings, so you only need to forward this port or whatever you have it configured as.  The other applications will have the ports configurable in the future as well, so depending on when you read this, just bear that in mind.

Once that is done, all you need to do is replace the IP address part of the web URL that the application tells you to enter into your web browser, with the external IP address of your router (one way to find that out is on the main page of the Port Forward website I linked to above).  So for example, the application may tell you to enter something like...

http://192.168.0.3:8000

... where 192.168.0.3 is the IP address of the Android device.  But instead of entering that, if your router’s external IP address is for example, 82.124.321.29, then you (or whomever you want to be able to use the service) would enter...

http://82.124.321.29:8000

... and hey presto, it’s working across the internet!!  Easy huh?!

Now, I realise depending on your level of skill that may not be easy at all, so if you get confused then feel free to email me for more help.  But remember, if it’s something specific to your model of router, I’ll only be using Google to find the answer, just like you would ;)

Help For WiFi File Explorer and SECuRET LiveStream Users

I often receive similar emails asking for help with 2 of my applications, WiFi File Explorer and SECuRET LiveStream, so I thought I would write a post that I can point users in the direction of to help answer their common queries. I should point out that the huge majority of users suffer no problems whatsoever with these applications – it is only a small handful of users that get caught out with this issue.

Both applications are similar in that they both require you to connect your Android device to a WiFi network and then when they start, you are prompted to enter a web address into a browser on a computer which is connected to that same WiFi network. Without going into too much technical detail, both WiFi File Explorer and SECuRET LiveStream are custom web servers that allow you to interface with your Android device using a web browser.

So the common problem is that users will start either one of the applications on the Android device, it will prompt them to enter an address into a web browser and then ... massive letdown - nothing will happen in the web browser; it will just display a connection error, or timeout. This leads to the inevitable poorly spelt, “Dis app sux – don’t even work. Uninstalling.” comment ... by the way, why do so many people include, ‘uninstalling’ in their comments? Do other people really care if they uninstalled the application or not?

Ah, but the applications don’t ‘sux’! The applications are actually pretty nifty and work perfectly, as proven by the thousands of happy customers that parted with cold hard cash to purchase them, or the 4.5 star rating of each one, of the high chart positions (not blowing my own trumpet or anything ;) ). The problem is down to user error or the network configuration; you know, all the stuff that is beyond my control, but I still get blamed for it anyway!

Now, to try and help the users that have difficulty using WiFi File Explorer and SECuRET LiveStream, I am going to give a few pointers below that should help you find the cause of the problem. Remember though, I don’t know how your network is configured, what network equipment you are using or how reliable it is, what security measures you have in place, or what you had for breakfast – I just write the applications, and I can only support them ... I won’t be your network administrator :P

Pointers are listed below ...

WiFi. Not 3G. WiFi!

More and more people are leaving comments and negative ratings against SECuRET LiveStream on the Android Market because it only uses WiFi, and doesn't use 3G.  You'd have thought that by naming SECuRET LiveStream as 'Camera WiFi LiveStream' on the Android Market (a seemingly fruitless attempt to try and make clear what the application is), that they may have got the massive 'WiFi'-shaped clue in the title.  Just in case they missed it, here it is again ... 'WiFi' ... got it?

Anyway, I think I better explain why it doesn't use 3G just on the off chance that any of those reckless commenters actually decide to read this and not rate an application poorly for something it doesn't do (thought: I wonder if they also rate Google Maps poorly because it doesn't play videos, or leave an insightful comment about Google Translate lacking any kind of 3D graphics :P )...

The main reason that it doesn't use 3G is because SECuRET LiveStream turns your handset into a web server in order to stream the video; that's how you are able to view the SECuRET LiveStream web page that comes directly from your phone.  The video stream on the web page is just a series of JPEGs; the Java applet in the web page just keeps requesting JPEGs as quickly as possible from the phone's camera to make it look like video.  To do all these web-server-based-shenanigans, your phone needs an accessible and unique IP address which is only possible when it is connected to a WiFi network (most of the time, that is - some public or corporate WiFi networks may not allow you to serve from your phone), and not possible with a 3G connection (when using 3G your address is NAT'd - all phones share an IP address; it's like a massive LAN) ... and ta daaah ... there's the answer - no guaranteed accessible and unique IP address when connected to a 3G network :)  Also, you'll find most network providers frown upon people setting up what amounts to a web server on their network without permission.

It's not impossible to design an application like SECuRET Livetream which uses 3G; you would just push the stream of JPEGs to an intermediary web server somewhere, and then connect to that to pull the JPEGs back to a web page ... I'd imagine this would be petty slow though and would surely use a huge chunk of your monthly data allowance if you were to use it for any prolonged period of time - peer-to-peer using WiFi is the quickest, cheapest and most efficient way to implement the application I set out to create and that thousands of people enjoy using.  Plus, I don't want to maintain an intermediary web server in my spare time.

So, there you go - SECuRET LiveStream a.k.a. Camera WiFi LiveStream has never claimed to, and doesn't use, 3G ... and is very proud to admit that fact :P

Groovy, Man!

With the help of my father, Andy, we have put together (well, it's mainly his work really!) a new camera application, GroovyCam LiveStream, that is very close to being finished.

It's based on the code for SECuRET LiveStream and use the same concept, i.e. streaming a live feed from the phone camera to a web browser using WiFi.  However, where GroovyCam LiveStream is different is the psychedelic and trippy effects that it can embellish on the feed from you phone camera ... I think it's pretty cool!  It allows you to save captures directly from the phone or via a remote control on the web page in the browser.

I won't give any example images just yet; I'll let you have fun yourselves finding out what sort of images you can produce when it is released (but the image above is a good hint!).

GroovyCam LiveStream will be available as a free demo and a full paid version sometime in the next couple of weeks (depending on how much free time I have to work on it ;) ).

Climbing The Charts

I monitor user feedback and positioning of all my applications regularly via the Android Market application on my phone, but I rarely check out the Android Market website.  That was until I read this article and decided to take another look at the website.

I was delighted to see that both SECuRET SpyCam and SECuRET LiveStream had made it into the Top Paid section for their category of Multimedia.  I also discovered that the demo versions for both those applications had made it into the Top Free section for their category of Demo.