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:)

IP CAM Controller Android v1.3.4 is on Google Play today

Tap to center is a great selling point of this app honestly However TTC is not always supported for some cameras (because hardware or firmware restriction), so this version introduce a work around for TTC - tap to move. How it works? Fairly simple:

There are 8 directions above: as the yellow and green arrows show. Most PTZ cameras support at least 4 directions and some of them support 8. So for PTZ cameras, this version provides tap to move on 4 or 8 directions depending what camera you are using. If you want the camera moves left, tap on any area near spot A; if you want up, go for B, and so on.

In such way, you no longer need to swipe around on the screen but a single tap is good enough to drive your camera moving. Furthermore, this will work on multi-view screen as well - each camera image become your virtual joystick!

Add your first camera

Launching the app at the first time, it will automatically navigate to create new camera screen.

1) Choose a camera type most close to your IP Camera; sometimes you need to try all types of your brand, e.g. Foscam user is suggested to test each Foscam type in the app in order to find out which one work the best for you.

2) Type in a camera name you like.

3) If your camera is a DVR, you may need to input a camera no which is normally corresponding to stream no, channel no etc.

4) Hostname or IP address of your camera. In order to access your camera over the internet (e.g. a 3G network), you must use internet IP address, but not internal address like 192.168.1.x. This kind of address only work at home when you are connected to home WiFi.

5) The port no where your camera is hosted on. If your camera is behind a WiFi router, you will probably need to configure port forwarding on your router.

6) Type in username and password of your camera (not the router) and choose the quality and image resolution.

7) Tap the "save" button at the bottom of this screen.

Add more cameras

Tap the "+" icon to add another camera

Then you will enter the camera setup screen again, just do the same as you set up the first camera, and don't forget to tap the "save" button to save it.

Edit/Delete a camera

There is a menu icon on the right upper corner of each camera in main screen, tap on that and select "Edit Camera" to edit the camera; or "Remove Camera" to delete a camera.

There are some other options in this menu:

• delete the selected camera
• edit the camera
• refresh the snapshot
  snapshot is not supported for all cameras, in case it's not supported for your camera, it will display the default camera icon
• share camera access with friends and family. The app will generate an encrypted hyper link which you could send it to friends via SMS, email etc. The person who receive the link could open IP CAM Controller and view your camera instantly. This is extremely helpful when your friend has difficulty to set up the camera. Click here for more info about sharing. 

Grouping

 The grouping (or multi-view) icon will appear when you have more than 1 cameras, tap on that to add a new camera group

Editing a grouping is straightforward as below screenshot shows: 

Add your first camera

a) Tap the "Setup" icon in main screen

b) Input camera info and save it

1) Choose a camera type most close to your IP Camera; sometimes you need to try all types of your brand, e.g. Foscam user is suggested to test each Foscam type in the app in order to find out which one work the best for you.

2) Type in a camera name you like.

3) If your camera is a DVR, you may need to input a camera no which is normally corresponding to stream no, channel no etc.

4) Hostname or IP address of your camera. In order to access your camera over the internet (e.g. a 3G network), you must use internet IP address, but not internal address like 192.168.1.x. This kind of address only work at home when you are connected to home WiFi.

5) The port no where your camera is hosted on. If your camera is behind a WiFi router, you will probably need to configure port forwarding on your router.

6) Type in username and password of your camera (not the router) and choose the quality and image resolution.

7) Tap the "save" button at the bottom of this screen.

Add the 2nd camera

a) Tap the "Setup" icon again

b) Tap the "new" button and do the same as you set up the first camera, and don't forget to tap the "save" button to save it

Edit a camera

a) Press and hold on the camera you want to edit, then choose "edit" (this is new menu item from v2.5.3, older version please go to step c) from the pop up menu.

b) Update the camera info, then tap the "save" button 

c) Alternatively, you can tap the "Setup" icon in main screen and then choose the camera from "My Cameras" list; then go ahead, but don't forget to tap the "save" button at the end. 

Delete a camera

Press and hold a camera in the main screen, then choose "delete" from pop up menu.

Add a multi-view grouping

 a) Tap the "Multi View" icon in main screen

b) Tap the ellipsis (...) from bottom, then choose your cameras from the list

c) Tap the "save" icon (only for paid version, free trial could not save the view) 

d) Input a name for the grouping

e) The view will then be saved for further usage

The new version (BTW Microsoft finally support 4 digits version number) contains a new function - to share your camera's snapshot to social networks (Facebook and Twitter at the moment). How to do it? Pretty simple...

1) tap the share button (the 4th button at the bottom)

2) Choose which social network you would like to share

3) One off: if this is the first time you choose the social network, you will need to input your username and password of Facebook (in this case) and authorized my app to post update on behalf of you

4) then input the message (a.k.a status update), and share

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.

After several months development, I'm so happy to announace the official release of IP CAM Controller in Google Play for Android phones

Comparing with WP version, it has less functionalities in Android, but it's a wonderful start and all functionalities will be coming soon!

Here is the link for details: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zexu.ipcamera

I'm glad to annance that the v2.0 has been released to marketplace:)

V2.0 Relase Note
* App upgrades to Mango
* digital zooming
* pin camera to start and live tile update
* support new cameras: TP-Link, COMPRO, Level One, WansView,LogiLink
* new language: Swedish
* gesture support for pan and tilt scan
* Alarm and IR toggle for foscam, light toggle for axis

the new version is now based on the Mango WP7, that's why you will have those cool features like pin to start and live tile.

Recently I received a couple of great ideas from users (thanks, really!):

• Live Tile support
  haven't made up the details, but one thing for sure is that the snapshot could be pin as icon or background
• Pin the camera you created on IP CAM Controller to start screen
  this is really cool! Extremely fast to access to your camera, it's really one tap does the job. Moreover, you could use the camera snapshot as the back tile backgroup. (In Mango, each Tile has front one and back one, they are dynamically switched by the phone automatically)

However, as some of you may or maynot know, the current app is developed on earlier SDK (what we called 7.0 version) so that it's compatible with Mango and non-Mango (such as NoDo) devices. The above two features cannot be supported until the project is upgraded to SDK 7.1 (Mango SDK).

Once the project has been upgraded, the app is still available for non-Mango users, but they will not receive any update nofitication from marketplace, in other word, their IP CAM Controller will stick with existing version (v1.13) and not able to upgrade to any newer version until their phones are being upgraded.

I don't know how many people are still using earier version of Windows Phone, so I made a poll here, to collect your opinions and what phone you are using.

Please click here for the vote