The other day, while spending a couple hours in line to get the new iPhone 4, my friend Mike showed me something pretty impressive on his iPhone: his entire house via remote web cameras. Using a $5 iPhone app called iCam and some cheap webcams scattered around his house, he was able to setup a great remote security system that we could view over wifi or 3G.
We happened to be waiting to get our iPhones at a Rogers video store that carried videogame gear….turns out the Xbox 360 camera that comes with the In The Movies game kit (I got it on clearance for $24 but have been spotted cheaper) works perfectly on a Mac…in my case, my new Mac Mini Server that I picked up a little while back.
So I bought the camera and the app and as soon as I got home, I set it up…well, I may have played with the new iPhone a little bit first.
To make it all work, you need to download some software for your computer (Mac or PC). It’s a free download from the makers of the iPhone app:
It’s pretty straightforward to setup, just ensure that a camera of some kind (built in iSights work fine) before running the software and ideally, the computer will be on all the time. In my case, my Mini is a file/web server so it’s on all the time.
You choose your video/audio sources, create a username and password that is unique to you. You can give your camera a name and set the motion sensitivity settings…you can leave these at the defaults to start. The rest of the shots are screenshots taken from my iPhone. The great thing about this app is that you can easily configure it remotely on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. The computer based software can also be accessed from any java capable browser, but that’s not a cool as from your phone.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed the iPhone/iPad app, you simply enter the username/password from your Mac/PC setup and it should just find it and start up the camera – no firewall or proxy settings necessary. By default, it launches with four windows (as it supports up to four cameras) so just tap on the window that has your camera source in it and it should go full screen.
Tap the screen and you’ll be able to adjust a number of settings, including the motion sensitivity and push notifications. If you have pets or lots of outdoor light in the room that you have the camera setup in, you’ll need to adjust this. The motion button will light up green when it detects motion.
I love the notifications that pop up on my iPhone. I simply swipe to unlock my phone, and it takes me straight into the webcam view without doing anything else.
If you choose to record motion events, you’ll be able to view them remotely as well:
The motion events are basically stills capturing the motion and you can play them back like a timelapse movie directly off your iPhone remotely.
All in all, it’s a pretty simple, yet effective security camera system for about $30 for the camera and app…and you may already have a camera so it’s only a $5 investment.
Last week, I travelled across Western Canada with a few folks from WOMWorld/Nokia, Michael, April, and Daniel in a RV as part of a cross-Canada promotional tour for Nokia’s latest N-Series smartphone (on Rogers in Canada), the N97 Mini.
We started our trip in Vancouver, ending up in Calgary just in time for the Stampede with stops along the way in Salmon Arm, Lake Louise, Emerald Lake and Banff among other points of interest.
Unfortunately, and ironically, for a good portion of our road trip, we were in the mountains and had no cell (voice or data) reception at all. This was fine with me as it gave me a chance to explore the phone itself (being relatively new to Nokia and it’s Symbian OS) as well as take in the landscape as a passenger for a change instead of being the driver.
The N97 Mini is a slick little smartphone in a candybar style form factor that is smaller (although slightly thicker) than my iPhone 3GS. It’s been out for about six months in the US so there are plenty of reviews around. I thought I’d focus on a few things that interested me about the phone.
The Camera
With an onboard 5 megapixel camera, with autofocus and LED flash, it’s pretty capable and similar to the iPhone 4. Here’s a number of photos I took while travelling around in the RV:
I really liked the depth of field possible with this camera:
I really liked the quality of the images taken with the camera although I found it a little sluggish to use but fairly consistant to an average point and shoot camera which it could easily replace. I found the flash to be pretty decent and to work slightly better than the iPhone 4 which always seemed to suffer for ‘white eyes’ when I used it briefly.
It is also capable of shooting video (with the flash working as an always on light), although only in standard definition. It also has a front facing camera but it’s very low resolution. I never had a chance to try out the video calling features but hope to in the coming weeks while I still have the loaner phone.
Navigation with Ovi Maps
Nokia also includes built in navigation software that is pretty slick.
Three features really stood out about it beyond the standard functions you’d find in a Garmin or TomTom unit:
You can choose and download your maps to the device using desktop software so you don’t need a network connection to use it (especially useful if in a foreign country without data)
Using the Ovi Voice app, you can customize a large portion of the navigation system using your own (or anyones) voice. One of the tasks we were given on the trip was to customize the RV’s phone with our own voices so we had a lot of fun with it as it asks you to record over 50 different phrases and words that it integrates into the navigation…if the RV gets lost along the way, I think they can blame us for having too much fun with the feature.
map updates are free for the life of your phone
Another nice touch is that the N97 Mini comes with a window suction cup mount in the box which makes it even easier to use as an in-car nav system and speakerphone.
Build your own Nokia apps without coding
Nokia recently announced a web based app builder for it’s Ovi Store. Basically it allows you to make a self contained app that pulls in any rss feed you want…so I made one for this site:
It’s pretty basic but it worked pretty well and took all of 5 minutes to create an app, followed by a 24 hour approval process before showing up on the store.
A few other Likes/Dislikes
I liked:
great form factor that is very comfortable in hand and slips into a jeans pocket easily with possibly the best flipout keyboard I’ve ever used on a smartphone…small enough to be hidden well, comfortable enough that I might actually type on it…also has a satisfying click sound when folding away the keyboard
Nokia’s app store (erm, Ovi Store) has a surprisingly deep amount of apps, games and themes – many things that on Android require rooting or jailbraking on the iPhone – although I haven’t had that much time to fully explore their usefulness
true multitasking by simply press’n'hold the ‘wonky button’ (Tom’s British, you know) method for closing running apps
decent battery life…although we were using these phones constantly, they managed to last about a day with heavy use
I didn’t like:
the Symbian OS feels dated and slow compared to Android/iOS…truly feels like the Linux of the mobile world…fine if you’re into command lines but not so much if you’re into a snappy GUI
the phone got very hot while charging or using as a wifi hotspot (or both as we usually used it on the RV), thanks to the metal back plate
some of the apps were pretty pricey…Gravity, seemingly the best (if not only) Twitter client for Nokia was $10
the video mode suffered from an auto exposure strobing effect that I found annoying…I didn’t find an option to lock it in place, just switch it between a few presets
constantly being prompted to ‘go online’ or being told that what I’m about to do would incur data charges or simply being offline & having to press a button or 3 to get an update…no matter what settings I changed, I couldn’t make it stop or stay online. I just wanted to be always online like I can with Android or iPhone. Perhaps this is a holdover from the past when data plans didn’t come in 6gb blocks for less than a mortgage payment
It was a lot of fun to spend time in the RV with other mobile geeks, learning about the phone while travelling around. Tom, our host, mixed things up on a daily basis by giving us challenges to perform using the phone…including dropping us off in an empty parking lot in downtown Calgary. It was early in the morning after a late night at the Stampede then they drove away leaving us with some coordinates to use with Ovi Maps to find our way to breakfast. Fortunately it was only a few blocks to walk but a solid and fun challenge.
I made a couple of timelapse movies during the trip…here’s day one where we travel from Vancouver to Salmon Arm with a brief stop at the Othello Tunnels:
Heading Home
The RV dropped us off at the airport in Calgary and was continuing on out East with a fresh batch of mobile geeks they’d pick up along the way.
While waiting to fly home back to Vancouver, we were entertained at our gate, Stampede style (captured by the N97 Mini), much to Daniel’s chagrin:
All the photos (many taken with the N97 Mini) I took on the trip can be found in my Flickr set.
Huge thanks to my hosts, Tom Hall and Donna Suffling with WOMWorld/Nokia, Chris our awesome RV driver, and my travelmates: Michael, April, and Daniel.
Yesterday, at the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple unveiled the latest version of the iPhone:
You should watch the design video if you haven’t already seen it…it’s quite the update that I of course am looking forward to getting.
Unfortunately, as of this writing, we still don’t know when the new model will be available for Canadians.
It comes out in the US (and a few other countries) on June 24 with 18 more countries by the end of July and to everyone by the end of September. Most people are expecting this means Canada will get it in July…but there hasn’t been anything specific that says or implies this.(Canada will get it in July – thanks Allen!) All the Canadian carriers have updated their websites with few details other than ‘coming soon’ or promises of more information in the ‘coming weeks’.
Considering this is the third model available in Canada, third year in a row, which is now supported and sold by at least 3 major cellular carriers, I’m left wondering if it’s going to be an upgrade nightmare like it has been in the past.
I know Apple controls the marketing and distribution very tightly so my belief is that the carriers really don’t know (or can’t say) anything until the last moment. AT&T has already begun notifying it’s customers via a text message that lets them know how much it will cost to upgrade to the newest model.
This is smart. It lets each customer know exactly, in advance, if they are eligible to upgrade and how much it will cost – including any additional fees. This isn’t a randomly received text that looks like a marketing pitch, the customer can request a confirmation via SMS by dialing a number and they’ll get a response immediately.
I just hope the Canadian carriers are paying attention and don’t let us down a third time.
My 3GS upgrade process was very frustrating thanks to conflicting account information (Rogers’ system said I was eligible for an upgrade when I called in but the dealer computer system said I wasn’t when I tried to pick up the device) that took many hours of wasted time to resolve followed by a similar process when my wife wanted to upgrade – both situations required intervention at a higher level with help from Rogers social media team whom I engaged via Twitter to get resolution. They were very helpful but it shouldn’t have had to get to that point…and I know I’m not the only one as many friends encountered the same situation and had to spend time wading through the system.
I’m also left wondering what will happen to the data plans in Canada. AT&T has been changing around their offerings (lowering the included allotment for minimal decrease in price). Will the Canadian providers do the same now that we could start chewing through those 6gb plans now that our phones can record bandwidth chomping HD video with a one click button to uploads to YouTube?
I guess we’ll see in the ‘coming weeks’.
Update (June 15, 2010): Looks like something I was hoping for (2nd last paragraph) has happened…Today, Apple updated the Canadian Online iPhone Store (and presumably other countries) to indicate that they will be selling fully unlocked iPhones if you order them from Apple directly:
Of course, these unlocked phones will come at a premium but for those that are contract adverse, travel internationally frequently or just want freedom to move between carriers this is very welcome news. No longer will the cat and mouse game for unlockers matter to people that buy their iPhones this way.
As I mentioned previously, I’ve been playing with the extremely hard to find iPad Camera Connection Kit and photos taken with my various cameras.
It’s a simple set of two dock connecting devices, one for SD cards and the other for USB, not unlike a USB SD card reader I have (in the middle):
When you first connect one of the adapters to the iPad, it automatically launches the Photos app and displays a new tab called ‘Camera’ and begins to load image thumbnail previews:
You’ll also notice that it there is also a ‘Places’ tab – I didn’t have this tab before connecting the camera kit and it plots all the geotagged photos on the iPad on a map:
Once the previews are loaded, you can select which photos to import or import all of them:
Once the import is done, you can then choose to keep or delete the photos:
The photos are now available in your camera roll in the ‘All imported’ album with the most recently imported batch in a ‘last import’ album. Any videos in your imports will also now be playable, as long as they are in the correct codec/format that the iPad can understand. I found that videos shot with my cameras varied but the files, while not playable, would be playable when I synced the iPad back to a computer, on the computer.
A side benefit of the video support, especially when travelling, is that you can load up a huge SD card with iPad playable movies and just import the ones you want. Once you watch them, delete and load more. It saves the steps of loading them into iTunes (assuming you made/ripped them yourself – DRM’d/rented movies won’t work this way) and having to allocate space for them during syncing. This also means you may not really need that 64GB iPad since you can literally just save a gig or two for movies and add/remove as necessary. This would have been handy during my trip to Hawaii but I didn’t have the camera kit yet.
From here, you can simply view and email your photos like normal. That’s pretty much all there is to it. But I’d like to be able to apply some post processing to some of the photos and have found that CameraBag for iPad is the most interesting app currently out. I first wrote about CameraBag for iPhone two years ago and have been very impressed with the new version for the iPad.
Once CameraBag is launched, you can select your camera roll to import photos via the top left icon:
Using the options on the bottom right, you can process the original photo in any of the preset modes:
as well, you can mix and match the borders and crops as you’d like or choose ‘Vary’ for a random effect combination:
The settings popup lets you choose the size of the saved image as well as modify the list of filter options:
I’m pretty happy with the results of this super portable combination:
If you’re into photography and have an iPad, you’ll definitely want to pick up a camera kit…it even supports RAW files. Too bad it doesn’t work with the current iPhone 3GS – it would be pretty awesome to be able to upload straight off the camera to the internet via just the iPhone.
Maybe the next OS update (or hardware revision expected to be announced next week) will allow this.
I just got back from a Hawaiian vacation. Before I left, I waffled on what camera gear to bring. I had previously purchased a waterproof ‘bag’ that would fit my Kodak Zx1 camera but wasn’t too jazzed about using it since the back of the bag was blue rather than clear so while I’d be able to use it, I wouldn’t be able to see the screen while shooting.
The day before I left, I decided that I’d buy Kodak’s latest HD camera in the Zx line, the PlaySport (aka Zx3) which has a lot of the same features of the Zx1, except that it’s waterproof (to 3m/10ft), shoots in 1080p (@30fps) and has electronic image stabilization.
I had read some reviews and everyone seemed to agree it was perfect for snorkelling and similar water sports. I was impressed with a few videos I came across so decided to pull the trigger and bought one just before we left.
I am SO glad I did. Take a look at these clips…ideally in 720p HD, which is how I shot them (at 60fps) to see why:
I’m still blown away by the quality of this ~$150 HD camera…especially since it’s waterproof…many point & shoot camera manufacturers sell waterproof housings for their cameras for that price (plus the camera cost).
I was also impressed by the quality of the 5 megapixel still images the camera took:
Considering it was always around my neck while I was in the water, I was able to get still shots I wouldn’t normally get to take with my regular cameras without some kind of expensive protection.
My only gripes with the camera are:
weird underwater audio – obviously, there isn’t much to record underwater, but there is a lot of strange digital noise mixed in with the recorded audio of my Darth Vader breathing and ocean gurgling
the ‘H2O’ mode doesn’t stick when set – this seems to improve the underwater audio quality but unless you leave the camera on the whole time, I had to manually set it to this mode every time I powered on the camera. Definitely not ideal.
battery life – didn’t seem to last as long as the AA’s in my Zx1 do. As it uses the KLIC-7004 Li-Ion battery pack, it wasn’t as convenient to swap batteries like the Zx1 – unless I bought a second battery
wrist strap – seems like it would have been better to include a neck strap for in water use – I just clipped the included wriststrap to a lanyard I had to accomplish the same thing
Despite the issues above, I still think it’s a great camera. Hopefully a firmware update can address the H2O mode audio issue.
I wish I had went with my original plan to just use this camera and my Nikon P6000 point and shoot camera on my trip…the one day that I decided to not ‘get wet’ and take my DSLR out for photo ops, I managed to slip on a rock on the shoreline and while trying to save my DSLR which was in my hand, my camera bag containing my 35mm and 10.5mm fisheye lenses went for a quick dip in the ocean…the 35mm is electronically dead and the fisheye will probably seize up soon. Also two batteries for the P6000 (also in the bag) got nuked in the salt water. Then, moments later, while I was assessing the damage done, a ‘rogue’ wave soaked me (I was still on the shoreline) and completely killed my iPhone 3GS.
Yeah, it was an expensive and depressing day. Next beach vacation, it’s the PlaySport only for me.
Update: Here’s another video (with clips from the above ones) with about 99% footage shot with the PlaySport (the turtle in the sand clip was shot with my P6000):
which has a lot of the same features of the Zx1, except that it’s waterproof (to 3m/10ft), shoots in 1080p (@30fps) and has electronic image stabilization.
