Camect Smart Video Recorder Hub — Advanced Features User Guide

User guide for the Camect Smart Video Recorder Hub, covering advanced features of the live video player, alert configuration, and privacy architecture. This guide assumes your Camect Home recorder is already activated — see the Camect Quick Start Guide for initial setup.

Live Video Player Controls

Each camera's title bar includes, left to right: a disable slider (stops recording and hides the camera), an alert bell (jumps to the most recent alert), the editable camera name, a settings wrench, a share button, and a "popout" button for a larger high-resolution view. On Android or Chrome desktop, double-click the image for full-screen high resolution.

Live View Overlay

• Pan/tilt/zoom controls appear only for cameras with those capabilities.
• Timestamp shows "live" while fresh video streams in, or the actual time if the feed is stale.
• Timeline defaults to the last 12 hours; use zoom controls or the mouse wheel to change duration. Dark green = motion, light green = interesting alert, red = uninteresting motion (if enabled), light grey = video present, black = no video.
• Second-level timeline (activated via the "double caret") lets you jump the main timeline anywhere in history without repeated zoom in/out.
• Quick preview (clock icon) rapidly plays through the timeline period, slowing down for alerts.

Playback Controls

When reviewing recorded footage: speed controls (top left, separate speeds for alert vs. non-alert video — default 1x for alerts, 4x otherwise), timestamp (top right, click to sync other players), alert-related controls, playback controls (skip 5s back/forward, pause, return to live), and clip controls ([ / ] to set clip start/end, then preview/share/download the clip).

Configuring Alert Behavior

• Home settings (cog wheel, top right) control home-wide defaults for all cameras.
• Camera settings (wrench icon on each camera) override home defaults — uncheck "use home settings" to customize a specific camera.
• "Me" tab (under home or camera settings) controls per-user alert delivery — e.g., disable email alerts if you prefer Telegram.
• By default, only the device owner receives email alerts; other users must opt in.

Improving Alert Accuracy

• Rate alerts with thumbs up/down to train what you want to see. If rating more than 5-6 alerts per camera, consider adjusting alert zones instead.
• Turn off alerts per-camera: disable "send alerts" but leave "detect alerts" on to preserve the ability to seek by alert later, or disable "detect alerts" entirely to save processing power.
• Share incorrect detections with Camect (via email "please help Camect learn" link, Telegram thumbs-down, or web UI) to help retrain the AI — most users see improvement within 2-3 rounds over 2-3 weeks.
• Manually mask out problem areas: create a new rating with "+", mark it thumbs-down, choose "area of the image" as the reason, and draw the exclusion zone.

Alert Zone Example

To catch cars in a driveway but ignore cars on the street: draw a "notify" zone that extends to the edge of the roadway, driveway, and yard (so a car entering/exiting is always fully inside the zone). Draw an overlapping "do not notify" zone covering the public street, sidewalk, and neighbor's yard. Always draw zones with an example frame showing the actual event in view, not an empty driveway — Camect needs the full object contained in the box to correctly classify it.

Troubleshooting: Missed Alerts

If activity fails to produce an alert, check these four causes in the UI:

1. Auto-suppressed: Too many similar alerts occurred recently, so Camect temporarily throttles them (shown as an envelope with a slash). Rate the alert as interesting to restore delivery.
2. Merged into a prior alert: Continuous activity (e.g., a car and then a person stepping out) may be treated as one alert since Camect needs a brief gap with no motion before sending a new notification.
3. Deemed uninteresting: Previous thumbs-down ratings suppressed this type of alert — enable "show uninteresting alerts" in the filter to confirm, then rate thumbs-up to reverse, or delete the old rating.
4. Detection failure: Often caused by video below 5 fps (commonly from a weak WiFi signal). Objects will appear to jump rather than move smoothly. Share a clean clip with Camect to help improve detection.

"At Home" Mode

Activated automatically when your phone is detected on the home network (Android: 5 min absence to exit; iPhone: 20 min, due to background sleep behavior). Configure via home settings > the mode bar > "At Home" section: choose trigger devices, cameras that pause alert detection, and cameras that stop recording entirely while home.

Miscellaneous

• Power off: Tap the power button and wait up to 30 seconds for the blue LED to turn off, or hold for 10 seconds, or unplug.
• NAS storage: Camect supports NFS or CIFS network storage, addable from home settings > disks.
• Cloud settings backup: Optional, with encryption available (don't forget your encryption password).
• Home Assistant integration: Experimental — see github.com/camect/home-assistant-integration and github.com/camect/camect-py.

How Your Video Stays Private

Unlike typical cloud services, home.camect.com sends your browser a web app that connects directly to your Camect Home device via WebRTC — video is not routed through the cloud. If a direct connection isn't possible, an encrypted relay is used (the relay cannot decrypt your data, but performance may be reduced — indicated by a cloud icon).

You can also access Camect entirely independent of the internet: connect directly to port 443 on the device's local IP, or use local.home.camect.com for automatic local redirection. Local access requires a local account — a default "admin" account is created using the userid portion of your activation email (e.g., activating with foo@gmail.com sets the local admin password to "foo"). Additional local accounts can be created via the "users" tab in home settings.