Camect Smart Video Recorder Hub — Quick Start Guide

Quick Start Guide for the Camect Home smart video recorder — covers hardware setup, cloud activation, camera connection, and getting the best experience with alerts and mobile access.

Hook Up Your Camect Home Recorder

• Plug in the network cable first.
• Plug in power — the power LED lights automatically. Allow about 5 minutes for the box to boot.
• If you bought new Amcrest cameras, plug them into the network — no additional configuration is needed at this stage.
• Note: the power connector is in the corner next to the network port, not the hole in the middle of the back edge.

Activation

• Visit home.camect.com from Chrome or Safari on the same local network as your Camect device. Sign in with Google or Facebook and accept the Terms of Service.
• If you don't have a Google account, you can create one using your current email address.
• After accepting the TOS, you'll see your list of Camect Homes (empty at first). Click the red highlighted link to set up a new home — your browser will find your new Camect Home and let you activate it.
• Once activated, you're returned to the home list; after a few seconds it should show your new Camect Home as "<City Name>, <Zipcode>". Click the title to connect.
• If you get a "home disconnected" message, wait several minutes and retry — activation can take a minute to complete.

Connecting to Your Cameras

• Wait for Camect to find your cameras. The "Looking for cameras" message at the bottom disappears when detection is complete.
• Click to provide credentials for any cameras that need them.
• If preinstalled cameras keep reporting incorrect username/password, double-check the credentials, then leave the cameras alone for up to 30 minutes — some brands (especially Hikvision and Dahua) temporarily disable logins after failed attempts and will reconnect automatically once the lockout clears.
• If a camera isn't found, you can add it manually using its stream URL if known.

Once cameras are added, basic setup is complete — Camect begins recording and analyzing video for alerts, sent by email to the address used during activation.

Getting the Best Experience

Install the Progressive Web App

• On Android: Chrome will prompt to install after a few visits to home.camect.com, or use the Chrome menu → "Add to Home Screen".
• On iOS: visit home.camect.com, tap the Share button, then "Add to Home Screen".
• Tap the home screen icon to launch — it runs like a native app with no browser controls. You may need to sign in the first time.

Get Alert Notifications on Your Phone

Camect can deliver alert notifications with a short video clip via Telegram. Install the Telegram app, choose an alias (your phone number by default won't work), then from home.camect.com click your profile picture (top right) and choose "receive alerts in telegram", following the prompts.

UI Tips

• Explore the UI on desktop first — all controls have mouseover tooltips. On mobile, tap the floating "i" button in the lower left, then tap a control to see its tooltip.
• When viewing live video, swipe to pan/tilt cameras that support it.
• When viewing recorded footage, swipe left/right to skip to the next/previous alert.
• Tap the timeline to position the marker, then drag to precisely select the viewing time.

Support

Join the Camect user forum (linked from camect.com/welcome) for questions and community tips, or email support@camect.com for account-specific issues.