Easy Pro web user interface
Use the Quick Start Guide first if you have not browsed to the camera.
Introduction
All edgertronic camera models feature a unified and intuitive Web Browser User Interface (Web UI). Browsing to the camera's IP address will access the Web UI, which, for most users will be the primary method of camera interaction.
To use the Web UI, you only need a laptop or other device that runs Google Chrome and can access to the camera's ethernet port. No internet access is required.
Please use the Google Chrome browser. Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge and Safari are NOT supported.
Components of the Web UI
Figure 1. The Web UI is used to configure, control, and view all edgertronic camera operations. The major elements of the Web UI are described below.
Button Box
The Button Box appears in the upper left corner by default, but can be dragged to any location. The Button Box will auto-hide after a user settable delay and can be un-hidden by moving the cursor.
The Camera Control Buttons are state dependent and only appear when that function can be activated. In the example above, the buttons are, L to R, Playback, Download, Settings, Eject, Help and Trigger.
The Storage State window displays free and used space on the currently active storage device (SD Card or USB)
Click on a button below to find out what each camera control button does.
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| Playback | Download | Settings | Eject | Help | Trigger |
Preview Window
The Preview Window contains a real-time display of what the camera is capturing and is used to adjust exposure, focus and composition.
If you have enabled any video overlay elements, they will be displayed in the live preview so they can be taken into account as you frame the video.
Active Settings
The Active Settings window appears in the lower right corner by default, but can be dragged to any location. The Active Settings and will auto-hide after a user settable delay and can be un-hidden by moving the cursor.
The Active Settings displays the camera settings currently in use.
Progress bar
The Progress Bar displays the Pre-trigger and Post-trigger buffer status, with the Trigger Point as the boundary between the two buffers.
Calibrating Camera State
Figure 2. To optimize image quality, the edgertronic camera will perform an automatic calibration, when settings and/or temperature changes warrant. If a full calibration is required, a shutter will cover the sensor, take calibration frames, and the camera will adjust its internal settings. Once complete, the camera is again ready to capture optimal video.
Notice that the Calibrating Camera state is displayed at the top of the Button Box. Camera States are displayed, as a caution to the user, when the camera is not ready to be triggered.
In the Calibrating Camera State, the Camera Control Buttons are hidden since their actions are not allowed until the calibration completes.
Pre-trigger State
Pre-trigger is a powerful feature that lets the user capture and save video prior to triggering the camera. Pre-trigger works by keeping a user selectable number of frames in a ring buffer and discarding the oldest frames as newer frames come in. With Pre-trigger, random and unpredictable events, like lightning strikes, can be easily captured.
Figure 3: After Calibration, and if the camera is configured for Pre-trigger, you will see a 'Pre-trigger fill' message and the green progress bar will grow, right to left, from the trigger point. The camera can be triggered before the Pre-trigger buffer is completely full, but the Pre-trigger buffer may not contain enough frames to capture the entire event of interest.
Figure 4: Once the Pre-trigger buffer is filled, the camera will discard the oldest frames as new frames come into the Pre-trigger buffer. At this point, the Pre-trigger buffer should contain enough frames to capture the entire event of interest. Note that the Camera State field is blank, indicating that the camera is ready to be triggered with a full Pre-trigger buffer.
When the camera is triggered, all the frames in the Pre-trigger buffer, plus the Post-trigger frames will be processed, compressed and saved to the storage device. Pre-trigger allows events prior to the trigger to easily be captured. The Pre-trigger buffer will need to be long enough to account for reaction time or any other delay from when the event occurs until the camera is triggered.
Post-trigger State
Figure 5. When the trigger occurs, the camera will stop saving to the Pre-trigger buffer and begin filling the Post-trigger buffer. During this time, a magenta progress bar will grow, left to right, from the trigger point. When the magenta post-trigger buffer fill progress bar gets to 100%, the camera will stop capturing video frames and start saving the Pre-trigger and Post-trigger frames to a video file.
Saving State
Figure 6. When the post-trigger buffer has filled, the camera stops storing new video frames and begins saving the captured video frames to a file. Saving the file can take a while as the H.264 encoder runs at about 30 frames/second for larger frame sizes. The save progress bar is displayed in blue below the capture progress bar.
While a save is in progress the display is occasionally updated to give you a visual clue as to how much of the captured video has been saved.
No matter what frame rate is used for capturing, the timestamps used when saving the frames are adjusted for a 30 fps playback rate.
Truncating
Figure 7. As video saving is progressing the display is updated to show which captured frames have been saved. If you captured extra video past the action of interest, you can press the orange Finish button box in the web user interface to discard all unsaved frames and truncate the video. The video saved up to that point will be saved in the file. The camera will do a calibration if needed and then the camera is ready to capture another video.
Configuration Dialog
Pressing the wrench in the button box brings up the configuration dialog. There are several user selectable tabs across the top. The items in each tab are described in the sections below.
Settings Tab
Figure 8: Pressing the wrench in the Button Box brings up the Settings (or last selected) modal tab. Other selectable tabs appear across the top and are described in the sections below.
The Settings tab contains a column of values you have entered (requested) and another column of the actual values that will be used by the camera (allowed). The camera always tracks both your requested values and the actual values that will be used. Each time you exit the settings modal window, the requested values are saved and used the next time the camera is powered on. When a captured video is saved, an additional file, called the metadata file is also saved, where the metadata file will contain the settings actually used when the video was captured. The values in the metadata file match the allowed column values.
There is an interdependency between some of the capture parameters allowing you to specify some parameters with the camera returning the maximum value possible for all the unspecified values. If Horizontal and Vertical requested values are left blank, or both specified but not attainable, then the allowed values will mimic the aspect ratio as closed as the allowed values will permit. You can play "what if", by repeatedly providing requested sets of parameters (where some can be left blank) and the camera will provide the allowed set that will be used. You can try multiple parameter requests until you are happy with the allowed parameters. For example, if the horizontal dimension is critical to the video capture, you can specify the width and leave one or more less critical setting blank. The camera will calculate the maximum allowed values for the blank settings given the specified width.
The negotiation uses a priority scheme to resolve setting conflicts. Please see the Dependencies listed below:
| Field | Data Type | UI Mode | Dependencies | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sensitivity | integer | All | Not dependent on other arguments | ISO sensitivity Typical 'Sensitivity' Values : 'Film Speed' 1600-25600 ISO (6400-102,400 mono) for SC1, SC2, SC2+. 1,200 to 19,200 ISO For SC2X |
| Shutter | inverse is an integer | Al | Not dependent on other arguments | Shutter speed (1/exposure time) of each frame. Use a higher shutter speed to allow a higher frame rate. |
| FrameRate | float |  |
Always dependent on Shutter and conditionally dependent on Horizontal, Vertical if specified | Frames per second of the entire capture, including the pre and post trigger sections. The higher the Frame Rate,the slower the motion. |
| Duration | float | |
Always dependent on Frame rate, Horizontal and Vertical resolutions | Duration of the entire video capture, including the pre and post trigger sections. |
| Pre-trigger FrameRate | float |  |
Always dependent on Shutter and conditionally dependent on Horizontal, Vertical if specified | Frames per second of the FIRST multi-rate capture section, captured BEFORE the trigger event. |
| Pre-trigger Duration | float | |
Not dependent on other arguments | Duration of the FIRST multi-rate capture section, captured BEFORE the trigger event. |
| Post-trigger1 FrameRate | float | |
Always dependent on Shutter and conditionally dependent on Horizontal, Vertical if specified | Frames per second of the SECOND multi-rate capture section, captured AFTER the trigger event. |
| Post-trigger1 Duration | float | |
Not dependent on other arguments | Duration of the SECOND multi-rate capture section, captured AFTER the trigger event. |
| Post-trigger2 FrameRate | float | |
Always dependent on Shutter and conditionally dependent on Horizontal, Vertical if specified | Frames per second of the THIRD multi-rate capture section, captured AFTER the Post-trigger1 section. |
| Post-trigger2 Duration | float | |
Not dependent on other arguments | Duration of the THIRD multi-rate capture section, captured AFTER the Post-trigger1 section. |
| Horizontal | integer | All | Conditionally dependent on Frame rate if specified | Horizontal resolution in pixels. Fixed at 1920 on SC2X. |
| Vertical | integer | All | Conditionally dependent on Frame rate if specified | Vertical resolution in pixels. |
| Horizontal Offset | integer | |
Not dependent on other arguments | Shifts frame horizontally |
| Vertical Offset | integer | |
Not dependent on other arguments | Shifts frame vertically |
| Save Mode | enumeration | All | Not dependent on other arguments | Save Mode options available to select what happens after a video has been captured: Automatic capture then save, review before save, Background save, and LIFO save. |
| Shot Count | integer | All | Always dependent on Frame rate, Horizontal and Vertical resolutions, Duration, and Save Mode | 'Shot Count' is the number of shots you can take with these settings.The camera captures videos as triggered until the shot count is reached, then the captured videos can be reviewed or are automatically saved, depending on the Save Mode setting. Shot count is ignored when Save Mode is set to Background save. |
| Overclock | enumeration | All | Only available on SC1/SC2+/SC2X Models. Not dependent on other arguments |
Overclocking allow the sensor to operate faster than the maximum design speed. A selection of overclock amounts from 'Off' being operating within the CMOS sensor's documented capabilities, and clock rate increasing A, B, C, and D for higher levels of overclocking, ranging approximately 10% to 40% faster. As a rule of thumb, we have observed good results with overclock C. |
| Sub-sampling | binary | All | Only available on SC1 Models Not dependent on other arguments |
Skips every other pixel and and every other line when the resolution is 1/4 or smaller of the maximum resolution. This effectively allows you to get a larger field of view when the camera is configured at a lower resolution. Works well with monochrome cameras. Some color artifacts may be present when enabled on color cameras. |
If the desired Frame Rate is faster than that allowed by the Shutter value, then the maximum allowed Frame rate will be used. The desired Horizontal and/or Vertical size may also be reduced to meet the requested frame rate.
If a parameter is not specified, or if a parameter is in conflict with a higher priority parameter, then the largest possible parameter value that remains consistent with the higher priority values is used.
Options Tab
Figure 9 & 10: Camera configuration features that typically are not changed often are found in the Options tab.
| Setting | Legal Values |
Description |
|---|---|---|
| Camera Name | Text string | Allows multiple cameras to be identified by name rather than network IP address. The name will be used as the webpage HTML header title. If you mouse over the tabs in your web browser, you will see the camera name. |
| Genlock | Off Source Receiver External |
Synchronize frame capture across multiple cameras. Genlock is a multi-camera arrangement where a genlock source camera provides timing signals to one or more genlock receiver cameras. It is also possible to use an external timing source to control frame capture. |
| Force Monochrome |
Off, On | Capture grayscale images instead of color images. Color cameras only. |
| Video Encoding |
High, Medium, Low, Custom |
Tradeoff Video Quality versus file size. The video encoding quality setting allows you to configure the camera to create smaller video files with the trade off of sacrificing video image quality. |
| Save View | On, Off | Controls if the progress of the save can be monitor by viewing the webpage displayed image. When disabled, reduces time to save a captured video. For heavy use cases, camera's reliability is improved by disabling live view as there is a known bug in the software library provided by the SoC vendor. |
| Auto Exposure | Off Saturation Average |
Adjusts the camera's shutter speed to compensate for variable lighting conditions. |
| Trigger Debounce |
Off On |
If debounce is on, a 5 ms debounce delay occurs between the falling Trigger edge and when the camera processes the falling edge. With debounce off, there is no delay and the falling edge is processed immediately. |
| Gamma Correction |
Off On |
For enhanced video post-processing, the camera's gamma correction can be disabled.Gamma correct must be applied somewhere in the workflow to get excellent image quality in the dark regions. If in doubt, leave Gamma Correction on. |
| Review before Saving |
Off On |
Review before saving allows you to capture one or more videos (depending on multishot setting) and once the videos have been captured, you can review the captured video, frame by frame, before saving. You select the starting frame to save and the ending frame to save. This allows you to discard leading and trailing portions of the video that are uninteresting thus reducing the time it takes to save a captured video. |
| Status Timeout |
0 - 120 | Seconds until the button box, current setting box, and multishot box (if in multishot mode) automatically hide during live preview. Moving the mouse causes the boxes to appear again. |
Overlay Tab
Figure 10: You can selectively enable four different overlay elements.
| Frame Number |
The trigger frame is frame zero. Frames prior to the trigger event have a negative frame number and frames after the trigger frame have a positive number. |
| Notes | User supplied text. The Notes text can contain ampersand & parameters that are expanded when the video is being saved. The white buttons insert ampersand parameters into the Notes field. |
| Settings | Key camera settings including ISO, exposure, and frame rate. |
| Logo | User supplied logo. The logo is put in the lower right corner of the video frame. |
A complete description of Video Overlay explains each of the for user controlled overlay elements in detail.
Figure 11: Example video frame with all four overlay elements enabled. The text overlays are in the lower left of the video frame and the logo is in the lower right.
Favorites Tab
Figure 12: After working hard to get the camera configured just right for optimal video capture, you can save those settings so the set can be reactivated at a later time. The web user interface allows six different sets of favorite settings to be saved and restored.
The feature is fairly obvious to use, just click on one of the six favorite boxes and then pick either load or save. A full description for the Favorite Settings feature explains all the details on how to use to keep track of your favorite camera settings.
About Tab
Figure 13: All the details about the unique aspects of your camera are displayed on the About tab. You can set the camera's clock to your host computer's clock by clicking on the Sync Camera Time (UTC) button. If you experience a problem with our camera, please include the information in the About Tab with the description of your issue.
Video playback
Figure 14: You can playback the last successfully recorded video file that is on the installed storage device by clicking on the blue play camera control playback button. Pressing the blue play icon opens a modal overlay window over the web page. You have controls to play/pause and change the location in the file where playback will occur. You can also put the video playback in full screen.
Video download
You can download the last successfully recorded video file that is on the installed storage device by clicking on the blue camera control download button. The video file will be saved to your host computer, typically in the Downloads directory.