2.1. Connecting an IP Camera to AnyCam Software

To connect a camera in the application, a separate page "Add New Camera" is provided. You can navigate to this page by clicking the button with the "+" sign image on a green background:

Figure 2.1.1. Transition to the camera addition page.

On the camera addition page, the user can set the IP address of the video signal source (Figure 2.1.2). The camera's IP address can be entered manually or selected from the list of devices automatically discovered by the application on the local network (Figure 2.1.3).

Figure 2.1.2. Specifying the camera's IP address manually.

Figure 2.1.3. Selecting an IP address from the list of those detected in the local network.

If the video source, camera, or video recorder requires authentication when connecting, you must specify the login and password of the authorized account:

Figure 2.1.4. Specifying the login and password for connecting to the camera.

If login and password are not required for connection, the corresponding option must be disabled on the screen form:

Figure 2.1.5. Disabling login and password verification for connection.

After pressing the "Connect" button, the application will search for video signal sources for the protocols specified in the "Search" field:

Figure 2.1.6. Specifying protocols for video source search.

At the first stage, the application will search for available ports for the user-specified IP address:

Figure 2.1.7. Video source connection. Searching for open ports.

For the discovered open ports, a brute-force of possible connection strings will be performed with testing of video signal availability:

Figure 2.1.8. Video source connection. Connection string search.

If the camera requires authentication to access the video source, but the user has disabled account verification or entered an incorrect login or password, an authentication error indicator will be displayed next to the detected connection string:

Figure 2.1.9. Authentication error indicator.

If the user knows the exact address of the video signal source, it must be specified. In this case, to speed up the process, the user can disable the "Search" option, and the application will only check the connection string specified by the user, without checking open ports or enumerating possible access paths to video signal sources.

Figure 2.1.10. Specifying the exact address of the video source.

If the video source was not found by the application, a connection failure message will appear on the screen:

Figure 2.1.11. Failed connection message.

If a video source is found, the application will switch to video stream viewing mode:

Figure 2.1.12. Video source is connected.

In this case, some camera properties will be assigned default values. They can be edited by the user in the camera properties panel:

Figure 2.1.13. Camera properties panel.