From the start I wasn’t exactly sure where I wanted to go with this release until I was contacted by a startup. They want to put an IP camera and an Apple TV in each of many rooms (I’m intentionally being vague here so as not to say too much). Someone outside the room would be able to monitor each camera, be alerted to motion, and then communicate with the person in a room via the Apple TV.
As they described what they wanted to accomplish, it occurred to me that Streamie was already like 90% there. The missing 10% includes things like remotely initiating a remote stream to a device (which is now a supported feature), and somehow conveniently combining streaming from an IP camera (to see and hear) while streaming to an Apple TV (so that the person in the room can see and here you).
Will this all eventually pan out into a technology licensing deal, or a rebrand-and-resell thing? I have no idea, but this new Broadcast feature is pretty cool. I’ll create a demo video at some point. Basically, if you grab your iPhone (for instance), you can go to the Members screen, choose Options and find the new Control option. With this, you can (among other things) tell all of your devices to start receiving a Broadcast from one of the cameras on your iPhone. When you finish the broadcast, the state is automatically restored on each device.
This release also includes a number of bug fixes, specifically some stability improvements, so hopefully it’ll run reliably for months on end. Oh. Also, I’ve got some preliminary support for ONVIF license plate reader cameras.
- ONVIF-based PTZ used to work flawlessly and then I introduced concurrency, and it started acting all wonky. I believe all of those issues are now resolved. The wonkiness was particularly pronounced when your connection to the camera was slow.
- The Add-a-Camera screen waits for all sources to load before displaying them, so I've reduced the timeout for talking to a UniFi host from 60 seconds to 10 seconds. In most cases it should either be immediately accessible or the connection attempt should immediately fail. For those rare other cases, this puts an upper limit on the pain.
- Fixes a terrible issue of leaking sockets that happened within the ONVIF Device Prober which would eventually either lead to a crash, or to everything mysteriously not working until you closed Streamie and opened it again.
- You can now "speak text" as a Control feature when viewing a Member of your account.
- I've replaced the 1 second buffering delay when remote streaming to zero seconds. It was there to make the video smoother, but I've decided that lower latency is the better way to go.
- When you're away from home, you can still access your NAS recordings within Streamie, however I found numerous issues with this feature which are now resolved.
- Adds a new "Broadcast" option as a Control feature when viewing a Member of your account. If you're using an iPhone, iPad or Mac (basically anything that supports AVCapture), you can choose a built-in camera on your device, and then signal to a remote device that it should start streaming. From the Members screen you can do this "in bulk" to all of your online devices, effectively broadcasting to all of them simultaneously with just a few taps. Video works at the moment, and audio support is forthcoming. This feature prefers local network connections and will fallback to relay connections if there's no way to direct connect, so it should "just work" no matter what.
- Adds a new "Streamie" option to the Options menu when viewing a Member of your account. If the Member is a device that supports AVCapture, you can remotely choose a built-in camera on that device to start streaming to your device, effectively using your remote iPhone, iPad, etc., as a camera on-demand without having to explicitly create each such camera.
- You can now rotate and flip a camera while streaming it, with the change being saved back to the underlying camera source. At the moment Streamie does not support combining rotation and flip, so don't do both. I'll add that support eventually, but it's annoying and I don't want to do it right now. That's what point releases are for. I need an intern.
- Improves the visibility of unread support messages with a more reliable app icon badge, a highlighted Help tab, and an alert when you navigate to the Help tab.
- Improves ONVIF event handling of license plate reader events, so that they won't just accumulate without bound, as though each event were something to which you might want to apply an action.
- Adds a Search feature to the Events tab that references all of the metadata for each event, so you should be able to textually search for almost any value associated with the event.
- Improves ONVIF event actions with parameter evaluation. Any property of the event can be referenced in the parameter string of the action by using a "$" prefix, like "License plate: $PlateNumber" (assuming it was a license plate ONVIF event).
Streamie provides a best-in-class user experience on your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Apple Silicon Mac, with an intuitive user interface that makes it simple to discover, stream, record, monitor and share your HomeKit, Google Nest, Ubiquiti UniFi Protect and ONVIF-compatible IP and RTSP cameras. Streamie keeps you informed with motion event notifications and it works with most cameras using its advanced audio and video codec support. You can watch your cameras from anywhere, record 24/7 to your private NAS, remotely manage multiple locations, device permissions and seamlessly synchronize settings across your devices; configure Hubitat smart home automations, live stream to YouTube and rely on the in-app technical support system when you need help (but you can also reach us by phone). Download Streamie today. Lastly, Streamie is solar powered!