Ask HN: Review my startup, camonduty.com

[camonduty]

Cam On Duty is a service that allows you to transform ordinary webcam for example into a home monitoring center. To do it you don’t need to have complicated IT knowledge (everything is done automatically), additional hardware to store recordings or even a PC computer. Video live stream and recording are available from any part of the world thanks to cloud storage. This also makes recordings safe and available at any time. Our distinctive feature is support of PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) cameras. This allows you to control remotely where the camera is directed and track objects in real time.

We are looking for feedback about the functionality and general usability of our web (camonduty.com) and iPhone app. Also every tip describing a way to improve our service would be much appreciated.

[VuongN]

The site looks good and I love the demo. I think it's gutsy that you guys have the demo cam showing yourself. It's definitely a refreshing idea.

I do notice a few small problems:

1) when you go to demo page and actually view the demo cam streaming the user information menu up top (Login/Register etc.) looks fine. But going from demo page to the home page once more somehow shows the menu as "logged in"--the menu says Logout, even though you shouldn't be logged in to see demo. In any case, it must be something to do with session or the simple loggedin/out logic.

2) In the demo page, dialog box on deleting cam or adding cam will actually be covered by flash. This is a pretty common issue and I believe the solution is to set the flash w-mode: opacity or something of that sort. It has been a while since I worked with drop down menu and flash :)

A suggestion: instead of control buttons of up/down/left/right-- you can definitely add immediate improvements to the experience in 2 levels: 1) bound the keyboard shortcut which should be quite simple. Just trigger the click even on the appropriate button. Don't forget to have a small delay so you don't crash the darn device

2) enable dragging of the video: I'm "thinking"... when the video is loaded, cover the video with a low opacity div (1px gif of 0 opacity?) then bound a mouse listener to the box. Again, you can move the cam according to the mouse movement by checking mousemove and then on delay trigger the click even on your already bound control button. In fact, the easiest would probably have 9 div arranged in this manner:

[1][2][3]

[4][5][6]

[7][8][9]

if mouseenter 5 do nothing... if mouse enters 1 trigger left+up button click, 9-down+right, 8-down and so on.

I hope this makes sense. I'm simply looking at the demo and assume the real experience is probably the same and could be improved.

Other than that, things look great. Best of luck to the team!

-V.

[camonduty]

Thank you for your comments!

Ad 1 & 2: we are working on it.

Ad PTZ control: we actually implemented "touch to rotate" feature in iPhone app (it should be available in App Store soon, we are waiting for review). Basically you tap the screen and camera centers itself to the point you tapped. It seems to be more intuitive than the click solution you proposed, but we would like to see iPhone users opinions first. Keyboard controllers seems to be a must have :)

[camonduty]

Ad 1. We used wmode = "transparent" and it works. Thanks again.

[VuongN]

Of course, you would have to put in reasonable delay and wait time for each interaction. You don't want to crash stuff! :)

[jatofire]

Nice site and idea. My only criticism is that if you have a plan called "unlimited" it should be just that. Whilst the difference between unlimited and what you offer in you "unlimited" plan is very small, it would be enough to turn me away from the service. I believe for the small upgrade the "unlimited" plan needs to be unlimited it would be worth it. When I viewed the site there was only one cam live on the demo. Either all or none dude. There are a lot of services on the net now and the only ones that will survive are those that can achieve the extra %1 of polish. Great job guys.

[camonduty]

Thank you for your input! We are still tuning our business model and we totally agree with you about the naming problem here :) Still, you can enjoy free service till the end of July.

[daveasaurus]

I liked the demo, but why do I need to purchase the specific webcam? Is there any plan to create a service that works with regular built-in (Macbook) webcams?

[camonduty]

Our core business is to allow user to install standalone IP camera without a need to leave his machine (without worrying about PC power consumption etc), we're aiming to match post-PC paradigm here :)

After all enabling PC built-in (or USB) cameras would be a nice to have feature and we're thinking about supporting standard webcams in the future.

[youngdev]

Looks like you are only supporting 1 web-cam? I recently purchased a IP PTZ cam from fry's which came with its free Android, iPad and web based application.

How are you planning on competing with those?

[camonduty]

Yes, currently we're supporting only Foscam FI8918w IP camera. We're are working on supporting more, could you please share link to the camera you purchased so we could take a closer look? Thanks in advance.

About the software that comes with your camera; is it cloud based software? If not than you have to configure your router manually so you could access the camera when you are outside your network. For many non-technical people it could be the problem and Cam on Duty aims to solve that, enabling camera monitoring here is as easy as few iPhone taps :)

[yashchandra]

clickable http://camonduty.com