Jerry Huang apps and developing apps

A new cool way of controlling your camera had been introduced in the latest updates: sensor mode. After turning on the sensor mode, the app will use your phone's Accelerometer Sensor to detect which direction you are tilting and so trigger a Tap to Center (or Tap to Move if your camera doesn't support TTC) command.

Tapping the "direction" button to activate sensor, hold your phone horizontally, then tilt to a direction the camera will move toward that. The above video is using WP8 as sample, the feature is working the same way in other platforms (Android, WinRT). In android, to activate sensor mode, should tap the "compass" icon instead:

This is actually interesting and it extends a lot of possibilities. Imagine that you can put your phone on something constantly shaking and so trigger a random patrol on the camera. Another idea which I haven't think it through is that if you have something more advanced like a robot-car, so that your robot could somehow control another camera.

Thanks to our lovely Japanese translator - Xu Zewei - a handsome Chinese student (BTW he's single at the moment) who is studying in Japan, the latest Android IP CAM Controller has support for Japanese!

Check out on the Japan GP page:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zexu.ipcamera&hl=ja

In addition to Japanese support, this version align with WP version (as promised:)) - Changing PTZ behavior from "double tapping" to "auto stop moving" for those "keep moving" style cameras, such as: Foscam, EasyN, Tenvis, Sony, Bosch, X10.

Thank you for all the participants! The beta has completed and new version v2.5.5 has been released to Windows Phone market.

I'm planning a major PTZ behavior change in the next release (WP first, Android might probably follow afterward), for those "keep moving" camera types like:

Foscam,
EasyN,
Tenvis,
Sony,
Bosch,
X10

These cameras have a common feature that camera won't stop moving until reach the dead end or send an extra stop command for it. In the app (both Android and WP), you will have to tap twice on the screen in order to stop your camera. This doesn't bring too much trouble when you just use tap to move or trigger Left, Right, Up and Down directions. But it becomes very annoying when using zooming, because you just couldn't be quick enough to activate the 2nd zoom command - either by using pinch to zoom gesture or selecting zoom in/out command from the menu. Moreover, for a new user, normally she/he don't know about this feature and consider it's a problem of my app - I have received tons of emails about this, and I have to explain again and again.

There are several work-around for this type of camera actually, and believe me, I have evaluated all them and I have made my decision to: send the stop command in background automatically after 1 second.

if you are using my Windows Phone IP CAM Controller and happen to own one of the those camera above, and would like to experience the big change, please kindly click the link below and leave me your Windows Live ID using on the phone. I will send you the beta afterward.

http://www.jerryhuang.net/contact.aspx

You will receive a link from me, and what you need to do is just to tap on that link with your phone then install. You will have 2 "IP CAM Controller" in your app list after installed, and they won't fight each other. So don't worry about affecting the production version.

The latest IP CAM Controller Windows Phone and Android version now support an interesting camera - not really a camera or more than a camera. See this link for more about Rovio: http://www.wowwee.com/en/products/tech/telepresence/rovio/rovio

Rovio is a mobile robotic camera - the "camera" can not only PTZ, but actually MOVING! So my app is working a little bit different from other cameras. IP CAM Controller is using tap-to-move to support Rovio. But instead of pan and tilt, the 8 directions have different meaning:

Above snapshot is from Windows Phone, but it works the same in Android. As you can see, the 8 spots have been re-defined as following:

Center: stop Rovio, let's say you previously tap the Home position and then during Rovio is finding its way back to dock, you can tap center to stop it if you change your mind

Left, Right, Up and Down: these 4 spots are for moving to corresponding directions.

Upper left and Upper right: changing the head positions: middle or up. Rovio actually support 3 head positions but here only support 2, "head down" is missing because you can use "home position" in order to restore head to original position.

Lower left and Lower right: these 2 are using to rotate camera.

Interesting, isn't it?

Thanks Anton from Russia for providing testing Rovio:)

Multi-View has been enhanced from this version, and free to use for trial users (while the new grouping functionis for paid version only).

How to use:

1) tap "Multi View" icon

2) select cameras you would like to put into your view

3) tap save button (at bottom) and enter a name to save current grouping

4) done

Note:

• Multi View is mainly for people who own many (at least more than 1, obviously) camera, with which you are able to view multiple cameras in one screen at the same time. You can even control each of them by tapping on image from this view!
• Grouping is even more powerful if you want to have different views for different group of cameras, e.g. a view for cameras in building #1 another for building #2, etc.

Finally, IP CAM Conotroller becomes the no. 1 IP Camera software in the Music & Video category, or ranking at top 18 in the category (US market) today. In the meanwhile, v1.13 has just been released.

I want to say thank you to all users (most likely they are parents like me). I'm so much appreciated for all your support in the past few months. As a result, I removed the time limitation on free trial from v1.13 version. Instead of having 3 minute limit on viewing for free trial users, there will be an ad bar showing up. The ad will be completely removed plus capacity of accessing multi view afte purchase. I hope this is acceptable for you.

The v1.13 starts to support multiple languages: Simplified and Traditional Chinese, German and Spanish (beta). Swedish will be coming in the next release, and maybe French:) If your language hasn't been listed, and you are happy to become an volunteer, please do contact me!

Tap to Center - the camera will center on the position where your finger tap on the screen

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Finally, my first Windows Phone 7 application published! 

Search "ip cam control" in the Marketplace with your Windows Phone device!!

At the end of below page, I provided a windows version to test if my app compatible with your camera. Please have a try if you are interested.

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