Help
Camera
Monitor
Knowledge base
2021
2020
2019
I use S5e and front camera does not give me the option to set up focus distance.
Yes, some phone models don’t support manual focus. In this case the application cannot do much with it. If the phone only support autofocus, the application uses autofocus. But lots of phones do support manual focus, so if you can, try to use a different phone model as the camera.
I want to pose a question to give an example of a Xiaomi A2 Lite that I use as a camera. The camera always tells me to plug in a charger with the battery at 100%. Is it necessary to have the phone that acts as a camera plugged into a charger for it to work?
Generally, it is not necessary to have the camera phone plugged in to a charger, it can work on the battery. But: when the (modern android) phone is not in a charger, it deactivates some modules (like Wi-Fi module) periodically to save energy. When the phone isn't on Wi-Fi, it will be marked as "offline" after a time. As soon as the Wi-Fi will wake up again, it will be online again.
So for smooth functionality, it is highly recommended to have the camera phone plugged into a charger.
Turn off when I'm nearby - what exactly it means?
This function turns off the motion detection when you are (with your monitor device) nearby your camera. This function uses native ability of android phones to detect entrance to some area. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work for 100% and on new android devices (Oreo and above) it sometimes react with a delay which is caused by strong power saving functions (the phone detects its position only once per some period of time). But if you leave this function ON, it will start to work reliably after some time.
How can I change the camera to the front mode?
To change to front mode, please go to the camera settings (the "gear" icon), click on the item "Rear camera" do open a dialog, where you can change camera mode.
How do I change to a different email address?
To change to a different email address, just go to the main menu and choose Logout. Then you can log in using different account.
Does the app use Wi-Fi or mobile data to connect to the camera?
If you are on Wi-Fi, the application uses Wi-Fi. If you are not on Wi-Fi, the application uses mobile data.
Do you accept BLINK payments?
I must say this is the first time I hear about BLINK payments. I will keep it in mind. If more users will want this, I can add this payment option.
Can you have a function using which you could restart the camera phone? Sometimes I have to restart the phone to be back online.
I wish to have this option. Unfortunately, Android phones cannot be restarted by applications, unless they are "rooted". There is no way to restart the phone remotely, I tried lots of things.
On the other hand, the camera phone needs to be restarted only when the camera electronics freezes and the message "Cannot access camera sensor" appears. This shouldn't appear often and only on very old phones. Do you have an option to change the camera phone for another one?
Any idea why for one cam "turn off when I'm nearby" remains greyed out? What can be done? On the camera phone, your app has location permission.
Do you have any message in the greyed option? When the option is greyed out, it should include a message why it is greyed out. If the message talks about missing camera permissions, check the permissions in the phone settings. May be try to turn the permissions off and then on.
The app is so good, but the zoom function is only for the central area of the camera, please you can improve for zooming in other camera areas?
The off-center zoom is already implemented and it works pretty well on phones that natively support off-center zoom. Unfortunately, not all models support it, but I hope that in a near future all phones will support off-center zoom.
I need an app that monitor movements and notifies with SMS or push over mobile internet. And possible give the possibility to connect and see what happened. Important is that it doesn’t eat MB by sending video even if nothing happens.
The Security Camera CZ is possibly exactly what you are looking for. It monitors movements, records it as a series of still images, notifies you by push notifications and stores (in cloud) images in low resolution (about 30kB per image). It was originally designed to work on mobile data, so sparing data as much as possible.
On the other hand, you can, by your own request, download high resolution images remotely from the camera, watch live stream etc. So you can still do the heavy on data tasks, if you want.
How can I get pictures that the camera took while live feed is running?
When the camera is recording (i.e. when you run the live feed), it doesn't detect motion at the same time. The camera runs a live feed or detects motion, not both at the same time.
Hello! After taking more than 100 pictures when motion is detected, the camera stops working. I need to restart my phone to make it work again.
This error (cannot access image sensor) appears on some old cameras whose electronics is already a little bit "tired". On such devices, the electronics around the camera chip sometimes "freezes" and when this happens, the camera and video isn't accessible by applications. Unfortunately, there isn't much we can do with this. Sometimes it helps a factory reset of the device (be careful, because all data will be lost after factory reset).
I want to change the mail. How do I do it?
To change the email, simply log out from the application (go to the main menu and choose Logout). Then you can login again using any email you want.
I've been using this app since today and it really works great! The only issue that I can see till now is the date and time that appears to be miss leading: data over impressed on the image shows the data of 2 days ago with a time hours totally different from the reality. Today is 16 October 2020 and I keep seeing October 14. Same thing happens with the pictures saved: the app shows me a back log of two days but this is impossible because I only have installed it few hours ago. Anything that I should do?
If the date and time is wrong, please check the date/time settings on the camera phone (in system settings). Most probably it will be set incorrectly.
You have a very good program. I used it on my previous smartphone. But now I have installed the program on a new smartphone Techno Camon 15 Air. Android 10. The program runs for a while in the background, but then it turns off. I've been testing it for a week now and it happens all the time. How do I fix this? I gave this app all permissions to run in the background.
The application is written to run in background without interruption. If the operating system of the phone terminates the app, there will be something wrong. I saw such a behavior on some Huawei models. It also happens on phones that don't have enough resources (memory, processor), so the operating system terminates even background applications.
Unfortunately, I cannot give you some specific advice on this issue. If the phone was already used, try to make a factory reset (keep in mind that all data will be lost).
When the sun comes up and same also when it is getting dark, I get a lot of false alarms in areas with high contrast on the pictures. I already decreased the sensitivity to 10 and I am playing around with it. Do you have any recommendation how to fix these kinds of problems? With Track View for example, I had less problems (but your app is much better anyways).
High contrast areas are a nightmare for motion detection... Did you try this? When looking at recorded "alarm" images, open the context menu, choose "Highlight motion…" and switch to "Frame with sensitivity exceeded". Now you will see for each alarm the value that exceeded the sensitivity level. So, for example, if the frame has value +2 you should lower sensitivity from 10 to 8 to exclude this alarm for the next time. By the way, level of sensitivity 10 is still pretty sensitive. I personally use value around 6-7.
I love the app I have three cameras and what I would like is a hot button on the main screen that I can press to turn off detection mode for all cameras (or a group), that way I can turn detection mode on again with a single press. To put it another way I want the cameras to stay on but I want to be able to turn off detection mode on all of them with a single button press on the main screen. Thanks so much I really appreciate the app keep up the good work.
Such a functionality wouldn't be a problem, technically. But where the button should be put? It would be a global button which would work for all cameras, so it should be put somewhere with some logic. Or should it be a gesture? You know about the gesture, when by swiping camera picture left or right the camera is turned on or off?
Edit February, 2022: a widget has been added to the app (in version 2.6.0) using which motion detection on all cameras can be turned on or off at once.
How can I see who has been invited?
The invitation is a single-use ticket that can be used by anyone who receive it. But the application cannot control to who you sent the ticket and how (via SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook etc.). So until the person who received the ticket accept it, the application doesn't know who it is.
Hello, I have recently started using your app, I have two phones connected using my email. My question is though, one of the phones states that "can't access image services" like allot! Sometimes it works other times it doesn't. I was wondering if there is anything I can do or change to possibly fix this issue.
This error message means that the application cannot access the image sensor on the camera device. On some older and used devices the electronics is already a little bit "tired" and sometimes freezes. You can clean this problem only by restarting of the camera device. Unfortunately, the error will probably appear again after some time. I would recommend to start to look around for another phone as the camera.
After about ten minutes of recording the app asks whether to stop or to go on. Is there a way not to see this message and going on recording until I want to stop?
In the ad-free version the live video (and recording) runs 30 minutes without interruption (it doesn't ask whether to stop or to go on). Please note that even in the ad-free version there is a limit of 30 minutes for the live video - it is due to security reasons.
Does not connect, because the image sensor does not work. Why?
If you get and error about an image sensor of the camera, it means that the electronics in the camera has frozen for some reason. In this case only restart of the camera device will help. This happens on some older phones that are already a little bit "tired". I would recommend to use some another phone as the camera.
There seems to be something wrong with sharing. The ID reported in the app is different from the page.link of the URL and the “c” value. Could be encryption, or bug, or me testing the free version.
I hope that there isn't bug, I have no other reports about such issue. The ID reported in the app is just your internal number of the invitation. The number in the link is different, because it is global number in the Google invitation system. Any way, it should be clickable and it should work just fine.
An audible alert on the monitoring phone when motion is detected would be terrific. Current silent (as well as tiny and brief!) notice goes undetected maybe 90% of the time.
And automatic recording on the phone used as a camera would also be great.
Concerning the siren on monitor phone - what about setting some loud alert sound as a notification sound for the Security Camera CZ app? Notifications can be setup in high details in the device's application menu.
Concerning automatic recording on the camera phone - you probably mean recording of short videos, like other applications have. Well - because all other similar apps on the market records detected motion as short videos, I decided to create this app which records motion as a series of still images in very high resolution - just to have an alternative. But yes, I receive some requests from users to add also option to record videos, so maybe I'll add this in the future.
What does mean the red round icon?
The red circle (or disc) means that there isn't enough free space in the camera. This is just an information icon. In such a case, the camera automatically deletes old images in order to make a space for new images. So nothing horrible, you only loose history. To avoid this, please clean the camera from old stuff or add an SD card or switch camera to store images to your Google Drive.
How do make the siren come from the speaker on the phone instead of the earpiece? The siren is coming out from the earpiece that's in the phone. The one you listen to when on a call. The speaker in the phone has no loud volume coming from it. It can barely be heard. If I walk in and it's really quiet, I can barely hear it.
I have never heard about such issue. Siren should always sound from the speaker. Are you sure your camera phone has a built-in speaker?
I want a CCTV for my phone.
Using this application, you can make a remote camera from your old cell phone. You can then watch this remote camera from your own personal phone. Please note that this application doesn't support third party CCTV cameras.
The problem is that the camera had power saving mode enabled which interfered with your app.
I will try to detect power saving mode and show a warning.
It's quite plenty of time I use your camera. Now, when I try to connect my monitor phone to a camera phone, I get the message: Ooops!!! Problem with connection. Of course both the phones are connected and have no limitations.
I would guess that there went something wrong with the internet connection of one of the device, camera or monitor. I would start with restarting both devices. Also try to restart the Wi-Fi router, just to be sure.
After detecting something a message appears saying "Pause motion detection for 30 min". What does it mean?
The message "pause motion detection for 30 min" is just a button (shortcut). When you press it, the camera will cease motion detection for 30 minutes. When you don't press it, then nothing happens, the motion detection continues.
The purpose of this button is to postpone detection for a while, for instance when you come back home, or you simply want to stop the motion detection for a while for some other reason.
How does the siren function work? Does it sound when motion is triggered or is it a manual setting to make it sound? I tried turning it on, and then listening with the other camera and I did not hear anything. So I'm guessing is triggered by motion?
The siren, when turned on, will start to sound from the camera when the camera detects motion. The volume of the sound will be automatically setup to maximum level. If you don't hear anything from the camera, where you setup the siren, there will be probably some problem with the speaker (I guess?).