Externally control recording

Here are explained the ways to control ContaCam's recording state / sensitivity without the user interface. It works also in service mode because the registry/ini file is used to communicate with ContaCam. This solution allows live controlling ContaCam while it is running, but also when it is not.

• When changing the motion detection sensitivity the pre and post buffers are kept
• If the settings are stored in an ini file then modify DetectionLevel under your CAMERA_ADDR section.
• When using the registry the wanted path is:
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Contaware\ContaCam\CAMERA_ADDR\DetectionLevel

CAMERA_ADDR

is a long hardware address for USB/DV/PCI devices and the network address plus port and mode for IP cameras (do not invent those addresses, just get them from the ini file or registry)

DetectionLevel

0: OFF

10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90: increasing motion detection sensitivity

100: continuous recording

Example 1: we could increase the sensitivity at some times of the day through a windows task scheduler entry:

Program: reg.exe
Arguments: add "HKCU\Software\Contaware\ContaCam\CAMERA_ADDR" /t REG_DWORD /v DetectionLevel /d 60 /f

at other times and with another windows task scheduler entry we would lower the sensitivity:

Program: reg.exe
Arguments: add "HKCU\Software\Contaware\ContaCam\CAMERA_ADDR" /t REG_DWORD /v DetectionLevel /d 30 /f

Example 2: a start/stop PIR detector attached to the computer which on detection-start increases the sensitivity through the following .bat file:

@echo off
reg add "HKCU\Software\Contaware\ContaCam\CAMERA_ADDR" /t REG_DWORD /v DetectionLevel /d 100 /f

and on detection-stop decreases it running the following .bat file:

@echo off
reg add "HKCU\Software\Contaware\ContaCam\CAMERA_ADDR" /t REG_DWORD /v DetectionLevel /d 0 /f

Example 3: a start only PIR detector attached to the computer which on detection executes the following .bat file:

@echo off
reg add "HKCU\Software\Contaware\ContaCam\CAMERA_ADDR" /t REG_DWORD /v DetectionLevel /d 100 /f
timeout 5
reg add "HKCU\Software\Contaware\ContaCam\CAMERA_ADDR" /t REG_DWORD /v DetectionLevel /d 0 /f