It’s Time To Pay

[Paul Love]

My gut....

If one hasn’t, I think it’s time we paid for the annual subscription and or lifetime etc etc. 

Camect does what you promised. 

Tough times out there. 

We want you to succeed. 

It’s getting better every update. 

And. My goodness, the level of support you give on these forums is off the charts. Like 50% of enquires end up in user error. And you are so nice about it. I couldn’t be. Kudos 👍

Who’s in?

[Rob M]

What is the current annual/lifetime subscription cost? Anything special for early supporters?

[CamectArup]

$249/lifetime or $59/yr  to cover all the cameras that you use with your device. That's the campaign pricing, and is the "early supporter" price. As we move to regular retail channels the pricing will very likely have to be higher due to markup by the middlemen. 

We haven't started enforcing the subscriptions yet, but we do plan to do that in the near future. 

[Robert Spendlove]

Where is the "like" button for Paul's comments?   Give me a +1.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

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[Russell Singleton]

Hi Arup,

How do I determine exactly what was included with the perk I chose when I funded the original campaign? I seem to remember that I purchased an offering that included worldwide access to unlimited cameras for 1 year and then I’d have to renew? The current perks, no longer match those that were originally offered. When I look at the receipt I received, it seems to suggest that I only have worldwide access to two cameras for life. Does this mean than when you enforce the subscriptions, I’ll need to buy one now as opposed to a year after I received my device?

Regards,

Russell

On Mar 25, 2020, at 22:04, Robert Spendlove <roberts...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/camect.com/d/msgid/forum/CAH%3Dy5exGbqCTmHp1Re2T-CRMY5ZyULVrNx3mrb%2BKDmjrgwoz_w%40mail.gmail.com.

[CamectArup]

I just looked up your IGG contribution. You chose the device alone, and it includes full service for life for your first 2 cameras only. The 1-yr full service for all cameras, and lifetime for all cameras,  are addons offered after you chose the device-only perk -- so you probably remember seeing them, but you didn't actually select either of them. So yes, when we enforce the subscription, you'll have to get a plan if you want to have the subscription features on all cameras rather than just 2. All cameras will continue to operate fine locally even if you choose not to do this.

We'll provide at least a few weeks warning in the UI before we turn on enforcement (and that will also offer instructions on how to add a subscription if you want one) so no one should suddenly lose access to their cameras when it happens. 

Also, IGG doesn't allow us to modify perk descriptions at all after a perk has been chosen by a backer, so what you're seeing today should be exactly what you saw when you backed the campaign. Every time we do anything (e.g. add a new batch) we have to create a brand new perk that only applies to people that back after we publish the new perk. 

[4K]

In my opinion, Camect is not ready to offer a paid subscription due to its complicated user interface and numerous false alerts. I'd like to see Camect work on improving the user interface to make it easier to use and to offer simplified alerts to improve accuracy such as from focusing on what is most important to the most people ("delivery vehicle" for FedEx, UPS, USPS, Amazon, DHL, and Royal Mail, "small animal" instead of cat, dog, fly, mouse, rabbit, raccoon, skunk, spider, and squirrel, and "large animal" instead of bear and deer). This could become the default setting for new users, with a beta option for those who want to enable the others (so the user would understand the beta version might confuse a dog and a cat, but on the default mode "small animal" should be accurate and cover both). After that, I'd like to see Camect offer their standard pricing, but offer a beta subscription where all alerts are enabled by default and each time there is a false alert (not due to user error) the user can submit it to Camect in exchange for a free one-day extension of their subscription. If they end up having one false alert each day their subscription would then be free. This is a good compromise since customers paying full price would receive more accurate alerts (if my assumption that simplified alerts would increase accuracy is correct) with an easier user interface, and beta users willing to submit their footage would receive free service in exchange for helping and for the inconvenience.

[CamectArup]

You are certainly entitled to your opinion and to your privacy and I am sorry to hear that we feel that we've failed you. For the benefit of other readers, I would like to point out that you signed up to the forum 4 hours ago, using an email address that hasn't filed any bug reports or reports of incorrect alerts -- so we don't have any context for what your experience has been. 

If you really are getting "numerous false alerts" and, as stated in one of your other posts, are really trying to help us, please share some actual details of what is going wrong for your use case. There's no way we can make things better based on general claims. 

[4K]

I'm not considering your service as having failed me at all, actually it's really impressive! It's just, in my opinion, not ready for a paid subscription yet. I've made a much longer post explaining a lot of what could potentially improve the service here: https://groups.google.com/a/camect.com/forum/#!category-topic/forum/0EH10pd818Q

If you could improve the user interface and help make the object detection more accurate (even if it's as simple as "small animal", "large animal", "vehicle", and "delivery vehicle") that's enough to move to a paid subscription in my opinion. My suggestion for a beta subscription is to help encourage people to share data with you to help improve Camect, and in return they can receive a free extension of their subscription. If someone, such as myself, does not want to share the data they'd need to pay for the subscription.

Do you have anyone set up in a really busy area or are most of your users in a quiet residential neighborhood? If you aren't getting a lot of reports of false alerts maybe it's because there isn't enough activity, but that is just speculation on my part.

[CamectArup]

I've seen the other post, and we do appreciate the feedback. We are already working with a UI design firm to see how best to proceed with the UI, but it will take time. 

We are definitely not getting many reports of people experiencing lots of false alerts. People do submit plenty of data to help improve the system because they see that their submissions do actually help, but as far as overall alert quality goes, we get many more compliments about overall quality than we do complaints.  

Of course, overall stats don't make your situation better. If you haven't been submitting clips to show examples of the problems you're experiencing, we encourage you to do so so that we can try to help improve your experience. 

[4K]

I'm glad to hear you're working on the user interface! I'm looking forward to seeing the improvements.

I'm not comfortable sharing my own data, but read that you had connected a public stream to show off the capabilities of your system. If you'd like to set one up for forum members to connect and monitor maybe you could get even more helpful data. I'd spend some time working with that, and with limited user capabilities it shouldn't cause much concern. It's just an idea that can allow people such as myself that aren't comfortable sharing personal data to still help the company.

[CamectArup]

The alerts demo is at camect.com/alerts-demo. It's just a completely uncustomized system hooked up to some cameras out of our control that are streaming publicly to Youtube, and gives people a sense of what sorts of alerts we generate out of the box from input we don't control. The alerts (all of them, good and bad) are sent to a public google group. Feel free to point out any problems you see with the alerts there. 

[Will Stillwell]

I just looked at that demo.  If you click on any alert video it opens to a Camect but says not authorized.   

~Will

On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 11:56 PM CamectArup <ar...@camect.com> wrote:

The alerts demo is at camect.com/alerts-demo. It's just a completely uncustomized system hooked up to some cameras out of our control that are streaming publicly to Youtube, and gives people a sense of what sorts of alerts we generate out of the box from input we don't control. The alerts (all of them, good and bad) are sent to a public google group. Feel free to point out any problems you see with the alerts there. 

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[CamectArup]

On Friday, May 8, 2020 at 9:03:09 AM UTC-7, Will wrote:

I just looked at that demo.  If you click on any alert video it opens to a Camect but says not authorized.   

~Will

That's intentional. We didn't want the whole world to have access to the system, but rather just to be able to see the alert emails to see what sorts of things are being detected.   

[4K]

This one has been detecting a person even if there isn't a human in the scene (clip #2, #3, and #4). I'm not sure if that's a statue of a person but my guess is that's what the system is detecting. It has also missed the golf cart altogether just seeing the person that wasn't there (clip #1 and clip #3): https://groups.google.com/forum/embed/?place=forum/camect-alerts-demo&theme=default&fragments=true&showsearch=false&showtabs=false&hideforumtitle=true&hidesubject=true&parenturl=https%3A%2F%2Fcamect.com%2Falerts-demo%2F#!topic/camect-alerts-demo/7naCp4XfhvY

Maybe this isn't the best example to show off the system because the person-like object and golf cart is messing it up.

[4K]

This one was excellent though!

https://groups.google.com/forum/embed/?place=forum/camect-alerts-demo&theme=default&fragments=true&showsearch=false&showtabs=false&hideforumtitle=true&hidesubject=true&parenturl=https%3A%2F%2Fcamect.com%2Falerts-demo%2F#!topic/camect-alerts-demo/kEo1IWa9CIs

On Friday, May 8, 2020 at 2:56:27 AM UTC-4, CamectArup wrote:

[CamectArup]

On Friday, May 8, 2020 at 3:54:31 PM UTC-7, 4K wrote:

This one has been detecting a person even if there isn't a human in the scene (clip #2, #3, and #4). I'm not sure if that's a statue of a person but my guess is that's what the system is detecting. It has also missed the golf cart altogether just seeing the person that wasn't there (clip #1 and clip #3): https://groups.google.com/forum/embed/?place=forum/camect-alerts-demo&theme=default&fragments=true&showsearch=false&showtabs=false&hideforumtitle=true&hidesubject=true&parenturl=https%3A%2F%2Fcamect.com%2Falerts-demo%2F#!topic/camect-alerts-demo/7naCp4XfhvY

Maybe this isn't the best example to show off the system because the person-like object and golf cart is messing it up

It's actually detecting the person in the golf cart, no the statue. I just checked all 3 cases. The golf cart itself is less reliable because we have not trained the system on golf carts. It sometimes happens to be a truck and sometimes it is not. If we considered it a truck and added it to the system we could certainly do it reliably, but so far no user has really cared about golf carts. 

Note also that this isn't supposed to be "showing off" the system per se ... It's supposed to be giving users an honest preview of what they'd get out of the box with no configuration. If we wanted to make it look as good as possible, these aren't the cameras we'd have picked. 

[4K]

Thank you for explaining. It's impossible for me to know what the system is looking at without the green box around what triggered the alert. It's noticeable that it isn't consistent in its recognition. If it always detected the golf cart as a car or truck or always detected the people in the golf cart that's one thing, but it doesn't.

Oh, and "showing off" might not have been the best choice of words, "system demonstration" might be better, sorry about that. It still doesn't seem like having it on a golf course is the best choice since that's not a common use case. If you could choose a camera with a more common background it's still not misleading anyone it would just be a more accurate representation of what the average user would see.

Also, my other post on another possible inaccurate alert was not approved but these were. Just in case the issue was on my end I'll mention it was just that a dog was detected but it was actually a squirrel (but again without the green box it's impossible for me to know what triggered the alert, maybe there was a dog somewhere): https://groups.google.com/forum/embed/?place=forum/camect-alerts-demo&theme=default&fragments=true&showsearch=false&showtabs=false&hideforumtitle=true&hidesubject=true&parenturl=https%3A%2F%2Fcamect.com%2Falerts-demo%2F#!topic/camect-alerts-demo/DZ5-LdGX5RA

If my post not getting shown is on your end maybe you could approve it for me. I'm sure you're busy with a lot of other stuff and post approval wasn't required at first so maybe that requirement could be removed after a while when you see it's not my intention to bring the company down but rather to give constructive criticism as my first post was titled. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

[4K]

Thank you for that. How would you like them reported to you if they're not correct? Also, it would help if you could give us access to the system to see the green box to understand what the prompted the system to give an alert. For example, on this it said dog detected and I've looked and can't find one: https://groups.google.com/forum/embed/?place=forum/camect-alerts-demo&theme=default&fragments=true&showsearch=false&showtabs=false&hideforumtitle=true&hidesubject=true&parenturl=https%3A%2F%2Fcamect.com%2Falerts-demo%2F#!topic/camect-alerts-demo/DZ5-LdGX5RA

It would waste your time for us to post an example like that if there is actually a dog but we couldn't see it. If we had access to the system so we could see the green box we would know if it is really an inaccurate alert or if we just didn't see it. I've seen there are different permissions so maybe you could give forum members access with the most limited permissions (just to view an alert and report it if it is inaccurate).

Also, there isn't much activity on there. If you can set up anything connected to YouTube there is a lot you can add to help train the system. This could really help if you aren't getting enough false alerts to train the system.

I'm just not comfortable sending in my own data even though it would help so if working on monitoring something like the group you linked to would help I'll spend some time there to help contribute to improving the system.

On Friday, May 8, 2020 at 2:56:27 AM UTC-4, CamectArup wrote:

[CamectArup]

Some of your posts are getting held for moderation because you're a new user, and I'm approving them in between doing other things.  I found the message that was missing. 

Thanks for the report of the dog which was really a squirrel. I've submitted that as an example to add to the training. 

I've shared the two cameras with you that generate the alerts, along with what I think are enough permissions for you to be able to see the green box. I have not added permissions for you to be able to rate the alerts (which would be required for you to be able to submit wrong examples yourself) because I don't want you to inadvertently rate alerts and potentially change the behavior of the demo.  For any wrong alerts you see please let me know, either here or at sup...@camect.com if you just want to send a list of examples. 

As far as picking cameras, we were limited to what we could find publicly streaming live on youtube or elsewhere. Most cameras streaming live to youtube are in busy touristy areas where we can't do an interesting demo because all you'll get are a constant stream of person alerts. The other problem is that many are movable cameras, and sometimes they're also often much farther away from the subjects than in a typical home. (e.g. The top of a tall building.) 

The "AXIS 4K" one seemed reasonably close to the scenery at many suburban homes, and in particular has plenty of wind, rain, and bugs to show we don't misdetect on those. 

The golf course was just another location where we could show some vehicles, with objects of interest not overly far away,  and show that the statue is not misdetected as a person. It used to have a lot more activity before Covid-19 happened. 

If you're aware of any publicly accessible cameras that approximate the scenery of cameras at your own location, we're happy to try adding one and see it will help whatever issues you have been seeing. We could draw exclusion areas as needed, but we wouldn't put it into the demo if we do that. 

[4K]

Thank you for approving the posts.

Thanks also for giving me permission to access those two cameras. I'll check to see if anything else is incorrect (but will ignore the person, car, and truck detection when the golf cart is there).

Yes, that is an issue with a lot of what's streaming on YouTube but I'll check to see if I'm able to find anything else that might work since you're open to that.

Agreed, the AXIS 4K is an excellent example.

[4K]

These should have similar activity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-a3rKAi7DA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faJbWVaDRdk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKW2RA5NQeI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bemL8llXbt0

Do you think any of those are a good choice?

On Friday, May 8, 2020 at 11:33:20 PM UTC-4, CamectArup wrote:

[CamectArup]

At first glance, the scene in the first one seems like a perfectly good example scene. Is this similar to the sorts of scenes you've had problems with? 

I don't understand the attraction of the 3 cat cameras. It seems like it would just produce a whole bunch of cat alerts. Are you unhappy with the quality of cat detection?

For the first camera, it's not one I'd have picked for the public demo because I have doubts about its long-term availability. Although the text says that it has been active since Dec 2017, notice that youtube says it started streaming on March 28 this year ... so it probably goes offline from time to time. (I had that problem with a few other cameras with decent scenery before I found the two we're using now.)  If it turns out to be reliable it's something I would not mind eventually adding to the demo. We should try it first for a while though, as I don't want to have to clean up the public group if we get rid of the camera. 

For now, I could add it to the demo system but with the shared camera model I just realized there's no way for me to turn on alerts for you. (This is a limitation we'll have to think about how to fix.) For the time being I'd wind up creating a mail filter to forward to you, which is how the alerts to the group work, and you'd still have to report the bad alerts and then have me submit them. 

How would you feel about simply adding this youtube stream to your own system, and then reporting any errors the regular way, i.e. via the "please help Camect learn" link? That will submit the data directly so it's ready to be added to the training, and would save me the work of having to submit each clip after you report any issues you see.  Reporting a clip like this would not share any other data about your system or other cameras on it. (It just creates a file in Google Drive and shares the file with us, producing a notification about the file shared. The file is on your Google drive, so you can examine what it sent.) 

[ZzyzxOh]

I am not in an urban area but I have reasonable traffic throughout the day and a dozen camera sources.

First, I have cameras that were decent visual performers but had awful interfaces. In some cases the camera vendor would expect a certain version of a browser so their outdated plug-in would work and I basically put the recordings on a card in the camera and wrote scripts to retrieve them. A crude way to extend the life of a poorly supported camera. That all "went away" with Camect and those memory cards are all repurposed and the cameras contributing members of the infrastructure. What was once old is new again.

Second, I have intentionally installed numerous brands. I don't want any single problem to tank my ability to "see". I have kept my first and second generation Nest cameras because of their form-factor (you can place one on a window sill) and show me anyone who is going to Nest to capture the video and make it seem transparent when you are stuck with a Cloud-based camera. (Watch for my future posting of Nest cameras for sale now they've proven they really do make all your decisions for you at Nest.)

Third, the resolution of the display is what matters to me. I've been using external IR lighting for exterior cameras where I can and I've caught some amazing scenes. The other night my family and I watched a moonscape I accidently caught while reducing my alert settings. It was two minutes of the moon coming from behind clouds into view and disappearing again. You had to see it to believe it. But for me, I was removing cars as an alert because there are just too many car alerts and I only care about FedEx, UPS, USPS and Amazon on my street these days. No dogs, people, bicycles or small animals. For those alerts, I have other cameras looking closer to the house.

So, everything in life is a work in progress. The foundation work here on Camect is so far beyond what I see offered at any consumer price that I now have two units, both with Lifetime. For me, this means I want them in business. Your mileage may vary, of course. And it should.

[4K]

Yes, the first one is a great example but if there was a lot of traffic it might make it hard because of so much motion if that limitation is still in place where the motion must stop for a while, but checking now during the day it doesn't seem too busy. I've noticed that Camect will confuse a dog, cat, squirrel, and rabbit, and depending on the shadows and wind it might see something that isn't there. I'm hoping the videos with the cats might help with that.

I totally understand the concern on the reliability. It actually doesn't even show a start time on my end for the first one but does on two of the three cat cameras so it's not consistent (maybe it's a bug on YouTube's end).

I don't want to add anything else to my system right now. If having me report false alerts is worth the trouble of you adding a separate device on your end I'll connect to that and report them to you. It's basically free labor, and over time you might find more people wanting to help out too if either they don't have enough false alerts on their own to report or they're just not comfortable sending their own data, so it might be worth adding the option to allow people to report false alerts on the demos to allow people without an account to report them too.

I'm not trying to tell you what to do, and hopefully it's not coming across that way. There's a lot that easy for me to say as a user but maybe not easy to implement on your end. There is a recent example of a user requesting a change in the timestamp in which you responded: "We'll fix this, although it will be a while as it's a little more work than what you're probably imagining."

So if there is something you can't do right now it doesn't make me think any less of you or your company. It's easy for me to click the report button all day long, but if someone asked me to design that report button and it's functionality it's not something I'd even attempt.

[4K]

I've had a similar experience with the bad user interface and browser plug-in requirement and agree with you that Camect eliminated this problem.

Have you decided on a Nest replacement yet? Do you plan on going wired or continuing with a wireless connection?

I've never really considered IR lighting, but I'll look it up now that you mentioned it. Maybe you're getting so few false alerts because you have a lot of them disabled. If you enabled them all for a day you might have a lot that were misidentified or totally false. How has FedEx, UPS, USPS, and Amazon detection worked for you?

Yes, agreed, Camect is much better that the alternatives at this price-point. I'd like them to succeed too, but still don't think it's ready for a major release (as in for sale on Amazon with hundreds or even thousands of units going out each month). It took me a long time to find Camect. If more people knew about it and could receive it in just two days it'd take off! There is so much potential with this company, not just for the average consumer, but also commercial applications with something as simple as vehicle and person counting.

[AAron nAAs]

I would suggest you have the green "alert areas" outlines appear in your demos (like the captures in that "alerts-demo").

It would be helpful for diagnostic (ie: is there really a dog somewhere in this video? or I see a golf cart, but it says person detected?!?)

But best of all, it's really impressive to see!

On Friday, May 8, 2020 at 2:56:27 AM UTC-4, CamectArup wrote: