SECuRET SpyCam Video Recording Length

One of the settings that is often questioned by users of SECuRET SpyCam is the Video Recording Length.  It specifies the length of the time you want to record for when you are capturing videos based on a motion trigger occurring.  So for example, the app detects a motion and then it will capture a video for 5 minutes, at which point it will stop and then resume to processing and detecting motion.

The first thing I should point out is why it has to be based on a length of time at all; why can't it just stop recording a video when the motion has stopped?  Well, the reason for that is simply that it is not possible to perform the motion processing on each individual frame coming in from the camera at the same time as video is recording - the two events are mutually exclusive.  So we can't detect when motion has stopped; instead we have to record for the length of time that we think we are going to expect, based on the scene you are detecting motion in.

The range of time you can set the Video Recording Length to be is from 5 seconds to 10 minutes.  So then why is the maximum only 10 minutes - that isn't as long as I want to record for?  Well, firstly there has to be a maximum of some kind, otherwise if it were unlimited there is potential for major problems.  Imagine if you had the ability to set the recording time to infinite, i.e. keep going until there is no storage left.  Sounds like a good idea on paper, but what if you intended to monitor for a very long time (a couple of days maybe) and in the first few seconds of monitoring someone just walked past the camera for a couple of seconds and then nothing else happened   Nothing at all for the next 24 hours.  What are you going to get?  A video of someone walking across the screen and then, depending on how much storage you had left, a really long, boring video of a completely still and uninteresting scene.  Then, when something does actually happen of interest on the second day, you have no storage left to record that all important piece of motion you were trying to detect.

So, the maximum of 10 minutes is there as it feels like a sensible amount of time to expect motion to be occurring or not.  In one video, at best you get 10 minutes of constant motion or at worst you only get 9 minutes and 59 seconds of stillness.  But the beauty of it is that after 10 minutes, if motion is still occurring in your scene, then it will trigger again and start recording another video, and another after that and so on, and so on.  In practice then, the Video Recording Length settings is of little consequence as it will essentially keep recording video for as long as motion is occurring and there is ample storage left - as long as motion is occurring  you will be sure to capture it (albeit over multiple video files).

I hope that clears up the confusion over the limit of the Video Recording Length and why it even exists in the first place.  It basically protects the amount of storage you are using in the most efficient way possible and ensures you don't miss a thing - you can record as much motion as possible and as little stillness as possible.

Dropbox Support in SECuRET SpyCam

SECuRET SpyCam has recently been updated to provide Dropbox support so that you can automatically upload your captures to your Dropbox account.   For those that aren’t aware, Dropbox is a service that is free to use and allows you to store you files in the cloud so they can be accessible anywhere on a variety of devices, both mobile and desktop.

The exciting thing is, this applies to all captures; photos and videos at all resolutions!  Now, that may not seem that exciting to you at first, but to users who used older versions of SECuRET SpyCam, the only option to automatically send your captures somewhere other than the SD card was to either email or Tweet them... and due to restrictions in both mechanisms, this was limited to only lower resolution photos.

So with this new Dropbox support allowing you to upload photos and videos at all resolutions, this will be a really useful addition for anyone that wants to view their captures remotely.  As the main use case for SECuRET SpyCam is to hide or position your Android device running the app somewhere where you are not able to directly use it, this ability to view all types of captures without having to wait until you recover your device from its hiding place will prove invaluable.

For example, you can position your device somewhere you want to monitor something valuable, like the amazing triple-decker sandwich you just made.  Set SECuRET SpyCam up to record videos on motion detection and enable the Dropbox support to automatically upload your files, and then wait.  You’ll now be able to sit and watch for a video to appear in your Dropbox account of that pesky housemate who keeps stealing your food tucking into your sandwich as they are doing it – caught in the act!  Obviously you would eat the delicious sandwich yourself before anyone else had the chance in this scenario, but I am sure you can think up your own scenarios, depending on what you are spying on!

How do you set it up then?  Easy - just go to General settings in the app and scroll down to the bottom.  Make sure you have Save Captures ticked so that your captures are saved to the device storage, and then click on Dropbox.  Here you can enable the automatic uploads and link your Dropbox account, and if you don’t have a Dropbox account already there is a handy link to sign up from within the app.  Now when you start the app and any motion triggered captures occur, they will upload to your Dropbox account into the SECuRETSpyCam directory which is in the Apps directory.  If you have Dropbox installed on your PC then you can see these new captures appear moments after they have occurred (depending on your network speed of course).

I think this is a really great addition and helps cement SECuRET SpyCam’s position as the ultimate security camera for Android.  I hope you find some interesting ways to use it and I am always keen to hear from users how they are using the app and if they managed to catch any criminals with it, so please contact me if you do.

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 :)

Twitter ... Automatic Uploads Via SECuRET SpyCam

I'll be publishing an update in the next few hours that allows SECuRET SpyCam to automatically upload the motion captured still photos (but not videos) it takes directly to Twitter!

Just go to Settings and then Twitter Settings, check the box, enter your Twitter credentials and select your gateway of choice to make the uploads to.  Easy as that!  Then every time SECuRET SpyCam captures a motion it will upload the picture to Twitter immediately.

I know that some users may think this is pretty daft and that they'd rather keep all their pictures private and hidden, but for people using SECuRET SpyCam to play pranks or just to muck around and want to immediately see what is being captured, this provides a good option... So go on, start using it and let's see what everyone is taking snaps of ;)

Oh, and it's quite possible some bugs may arise out of this as I have only manged to test it on a Nexus One and an HTC Magic, so if you spot any then please let me know via email.

Time To Buy!

In order to celebrate reaching 3,000 sales combined from the SECuRET range of applications and WiFi File Explorer PRO, I have decided to reduce the price of SECuRET SpyCam and SECuRET LiveStream for a limited time.

So, until 30th June 2010, SECuRET SpyCam will be priced at £2.99 and SECuRET LiveStream will be priced at £1.99.

There's lot of development work going on with SECuRET at the moment, and as such the regular prices may increase in the near future ... I'd recommend you buy now and get all the cool new stuff that's coming soon for free in the updates instead of waiting and paying a higher price!

Generous, aren't I? ;)

SECuRET SpyCam Video Recording Broken After Update To Android 2.1

I have had a couple of reports that after updating to Android 2.1, SECuRET SpyCam has failed to successfully start the video recording on motion triggers.  I have no idea what is causing this and it's not something I can easily reproduce myself.

However, the work around seems to be pretty simple; uninstall and then reinstall SECuRET SpyCam.  Easy huh?

I have so far had no reports of similar effects for SECuRET LiveStream or SECuRET RemoteControl.  A lot of the code base is shared between the 3 applications so they may suffer the same symptoms, but then neither uses video recording like SECuRET SpyCam, so they may not.

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.

SECuRET Webcam Help

Since releasing SECuRET SpyCam I have had lots of emails from users asking how to configure their webcams and I would always give a standard response of advising them to try and find some webcam software that suits them and that I had nothing to recommend ... well, that has changed now as I have found some brilliant free software that works perfectly together with SECuRET SpyCam.  It's called Yawcam and you can find out how to configure it here.

I have also added a link in the 'Pages' section, SECuRET Webcam Help.