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Security Spy on second Mac

edited January 2017 in SecuritySpy
I currently use an 8 license version of SS on a headless mac mini. Works great... I have installed SS on one of my desktop macs and can use it to connect to SS on the mini and view the cameras. I have looked around on your site trying to see if there was anyway that I can have the desktop SS open a camera view window when motion is detected. I don't want to record anything as the headless mac mini is handling that, but I would like to have the camera window open on my desktop mac in response to motion. Is this possible without buying a second license for my desktop Mac?

Comments

  • With an unlicensed copy of SecuritySpy, after the 30-day trial period is over, the cameras will be in viewing-only mode, and will refuse to arm. Therefore, actions will not work.

    However, there is a workaround: using the Script Editor application, you can write a script for SecuritySpy on your headless Mac mini that, when invoked, will send an AppleScript command to SecuritySpy running on your desktop Mac, telling it to open the video window. Here is the script:

    tell application "SecuritySpy" of machine "eppc://desktop-mac-name.local"
        activate
        open main video window
    end tell

    Substitute into the script the actual name of your desktop Mac - this is shown in the Sharing system preference. Then save the script to the ~/Documents/SecuritySpy/Scripts/ folder on the headless Mac mini, and set it as an Action for the relevant cameras.

    The only limitation is that this will open the "All cameras" window, not the individual video window for the camera that was triggered (because SecuritySpy doesn't have an AppleScript command to do the latter).
  • Thanks Ben, that's what I thought. Any chance the ability to open SS to just one window via AppleScript could be an added feature someday? It would be nice to know what camera triggered the event and wants to show you... I didn't even try arming the cameras on the desktop as I knew that was a trial only solution. You spoiled me with your iOS app. Now I want something like that on my iMac as well.
  • @doodah - Have you considered connecting to the mac mini from your desktop mac and screen sharing so you are viewing the mac mini version of SS. You can then configure it to open a camera view window when motion is detected. Works for me. My mac mini is 'semi-headless' in that it is connected to the TV via HDMI but generally the TV is off, so I do most SS config via screen sharing via my desktop mac.
  • OK I have added this to the latest beta version of SecuritySpy (currently 4.1b2). Here's an example script that will open the video window for camera 0, wait 10 seconds, and close it again:

    tell application "SecuritySpy"
        open video window camera number 0
        delay 10
        close video window camera number 0
    end tell
  • Thank you. The quality of your software is equaled by the customer attention you give us all via the forum. Few things in life are worth the price of admission, but your software is one of those that has been for me.
  • Great, thanks @doodah - happy to help!
  • I have a related question about remote viewing.

    I have a SS server running on an iMac with a 4-camera license and 3 active cameras right now - two IP cameras (hardware) and the iSight camera of the iMac itself. On the same LAN I have another iMac where I just installed an unlicensed copy of SS to be used for remote viewing.

    In following the manual, it says to add a network device and select the existing SS server using Bonjour, and then set SecuritySpy as the device profile.

    When I click on "Choose Stream", I see only my IP cameras. I can select one of them and it works. (I then repeated this to add the second one).

    How do I add the internal iSight/webcam that is active on the SS server iMac for remote viewing? I didn't see a way to do that.


    Also, I'm not sure I understand the difference between having this second copy of SS pulling the video streams from the existing SS server versus configuring this Remote viewing copy of SS to pull the video directly from the IP Cameras themselves. Since everything is on the same LAN, wouldn't that reduce the load on the SS server or would that be creating higher load on the LAN itself?
  • Hi @Spiv,

    Yes, it's better for this viewing-only copy of SecuritySpy to pull the feeds directly from the network cameras themselves rather than from your SecuritySpy server, to minimise the load on the server. This is easy over the LAN but difficult over the Internet (each camera would need to be port forwarded individually in the router), hence our instructions describe the SecuritySpy-to-SecuritySpy connection, which is easy to set up both on the LAN and over the Internet.

    As for the iSight, this should simply come up in the list when you click the "Choose Stream" button. If not, then it's probably a permissions issue on the server - check that the username/password you are using in the client has permission to access the iSight camera.
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