It doesn't matter if it's the front door, the main office hallway, or your little one's room, a "recycled" camera might be enough, but if you plan to install more complex solutions, you might want to use ContaCam to manage each of them. It's a free, easy-to-use program that can even be accessed from a web browser.
Almost all cameras available on the market come with their own software, despite the high compatibility levels these accessories have today. In general, it's that software that ends up becoming the weakest point of the product, and almost automatically, the user must look for a replacement.
Now, using a camera isn't exactly complicated, but what happens when the plan is to view more than one feed at once? Thanks to the magic of USB and IP cameras, a computer can manage a wide number of devices, but it needs a good program as an ally, and a name that appears frequently on the Web is ContaCam.
How to manage more than one surveillance camera
ContaCam has accumulated several years of development, and its current version 9.9.9 was released on May 2 and is probably one of the most stable released by its creator company Contaware. Unlike other proprietary programs, ContaCam is very lightweight (its installer barely exceeds fourteen megabytes), and all we have to do to configure a camera is follow three steps:
- Establish its usage method (continuous security, interval captures, or manual recording)
- Assign a name
- Establish how data will be saved to the hard drive
The compatibility list of ContaCam is enormous, with dozens of brands in IP cameras, USB cameras, and capture devices via FireWire or other interfaces (PCI Express input cards, for example) that use Windows WDM drivers.
ContaCam is simple enough not to confuse the beginner, but those who want to assign advanced parameters to each of their cameras should be able to do so without issues, and as if that weren't enough, it has a built-in web server, so it's not necessary to be in front of the main computer when checking the cameras. Additionally, ContaCam has many other features that will surely interest you.
- Motion detection
- Detected events are shown in animated thumbnails from your web browser
- You can configure an email so the system sends you alerts with the scenes
- Option to create summaries of the elements created during the day
- Built-in web server with password protection
- Car license plate recognition
- Remote viewing from cloud clients (like Dropbox)
- Audio capture support
ContaCam is available for systems with Windows Vista and later and has translations in several languages, including Spanish.
