Netcam Studio 1.3.6.8 - Push Notifications

Another nice update with something to play with :smile_cat:

It has been announced for a long time, it’s finally possible to play with Push Notifications and SMS notifications.

To do so, you need at least this version 1.3.6.7 and you need to enable our (experimental) Netcam Studio Central.

Modify the file NetcamStudioX.exe.config in C:\Program Files\Netcam Studio - 64-bit

In the appSettings setting, modify the value of EnableCentral to true

Restart Netcam Studio X and you’ll find a new icon in the top menu bar looking like an electric plug, this enables you to create a new Netcam Studio Central account or to login.

If you are not connected to NCSC then Push Notification & SMS notification features will not work.

Once you are logged in, you can create new rules (ideally onMotionFinished) in the Rule Manager that will trig PushNotification or SMSNotification as action.

For SMS ensure that you use the format 41xxxxxxx where 41 is the country code in my case as phone number (no 00, no +).

For Push Notifications, you can select the target users, this requires that you have logged in in Netcam Studio Mobile using this User account and have been in the settings of Netcam Studio Mobile to enable Push Notifications. It’s a bit complicated and will be simplified in the next version of the mobile app by automatically registering mobile devices but it’s not the case in v3.4.8 so it requires this extra step.

Please note that there are currently limit quotas and that it’s purely for testing at this stage, it may be broken or stop working at any time since we are still working on this part. Also for the accounts that you create, we may reset the database at any time meaning that you will probably have to register again later when it will be officially available.

The current quotas are the following:

  • Push Notifications : 200 / day
  • SMS: 5 / day

Actually SMS is pretty expensive so it should be limited to new alerts that we will put in place such as low disk space / lost connection to a camera but will apparently not be usable for alerts notifications due to the price it costs for sending each message.

Push Notifications seems to be a much better option and normally we will be able to provide unlimited Push Notifications to users with a license (still to be confirmed) for at least 1 year.

Also changed in this version: Possibility to disable logging to HDD (at the same place in appSettings).

64-bit version:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x2imt9ghqxwnwak/ncs-inst-x64.exe?dl=0

32-bit version:

Android Client that doesn’t require to manually activate push in Netcam Studio Mobile after login in (however you still need to allow the app to receive Push Notifications the first time):

I upgraded earlier today, and now all my time lapse recordings no longer work. NCS shows them being 30 seconds long each, but the video files are all 0kb, How do I roll back to the older version? Just reinstall it?

The log is showing “Exception Detail:MjpegRecorder :: InitVideo has not been called.” on every motion activation.

Start installation file of version 1367 again and use the option Remove. Download and install the official version again.
-Henrik

I confirm the Timelapse problem (it’s probably also in 1.3.6.5) and it will be fixed ASAP.

Hi there, I’m running the service version of Netcam Studio, so experimenting with push notifications is only possible with X at the moment?

Otherwise very exciting!

No it must be enabled in X but then should work as well from Service version once configured… It’s just the login / register screen which have not been added to Netcam Studio Client but they will be soon…

Updated the package on Dropbox with a version which should fix the problem.

Please uninstall, download from dropbox and install the latest build. Your settings should be preserved even after uninstalling.

Thanks

After testing, I confirm that it doesn’t work in Netcam Studio Service at this time but it will come very soon.

No problem! I was able to register for NCSC and modified the config file for the service to switch this on, but yes I see a server error when trying to send the push notification.

Currently I use a custom email notification to send a Pushover alert to my phone. This works pretty well. What differences are there with the native Push notifications? Will there be controls over frequency / grouping? Snapshots sent with notifications?

Thanks for your hard work.

After login in the first time, i have noticed that it’s required to restart netcam studio. It’s actually registering the instance on startup but not directly after login in. If the instance is not known then the server will refuse to issue Push notifications. Definitely also something to fix for the next release so that it’s directly usable…

As for snapshots I think it’s not available for iOS so not sure if it will be implemented but maybe we will at least for Android. Regarding controls on frequency It’s something that I will probably put in place on the back-end but currently the back-end if not really ready for being able to give access to users (despite it will be possible to login there in the future to have access to more features).

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Updated to 1.3.6.8 with a couple of fixes / improvements and thanks to @Henrik about 7-8 new templates.

In case of exceptions with recording in MJPEG (Background-Encoding mode) please give a try to this update and report if it helps.

Hello,

Is there an update installation ?
The ncs-inst-x64.exe ask to uninstall old version before install the new one. What about the configuration ?

It’s because it’s already a 1.3.6.x that is installed however configuration is kept even when uninstalling.

This is an awesome feature Steve and excited to help test it out! Sadly my NCSC is failing to register/login. It’s pushing a JSON error. Thoughts?

Yes the server restarted last night and ncs central failed to restart automatically. it should be ok now.

I asume this is no longer working… is it?

my.netc.cam is not responding when you want to activate you account.

We have just tested and the server is running and a new account could be created. So try again.
-Henrik

I can’t get this to register, either. Gives error code:

Error: The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state.