Compatibility
Which cameras work
Almost any IP camera sold in the last ten years, from any brand. A camera is added in one of two ways: by letting ViewTile find and talk to it, or by giving it the camera’s stream address. What a camera offers beyond video is the camera’s decision, and the app shows exactly what it found.
Cameras that ViewTile can find and talk to
Most brands follow a shared standard called ONVIF — you will often see the name in the camera’s manual or on its web page. With such a camera, ViewTile finds it on the network, signs in with the camera’s own username and password, lists its pictures, and lets you adjust it: the resolution, the picture, the pan-tilt-zoom and the clock.
Before signing in, ViewTile compares the camera’s clock with the phone’s and works around a small difference. A clock that is far out is reported as a clock problem, not as a wrong password.
For the technically minded
- ONVIF Profile S is the baseline; Profile T cameras work the same with newer video codecs; Profile G cameras additionally let ViewTile list and play recordings stored on the camera.
- Sign-in: WS-Security UsernameToken and HTTP Digest, including the SHA-256 variants.
- Discovery: WS-Discovery and SSDP, followed by a sweep of the local network for cameras that answer neither.
Cameras that only give a stream address
A doorbell, a video server, a recorder channel or an older camera may not follow the standard but still offer a stream address — it usually starts with rtsp:// and is printed in the manual. Paste that address into ViewTile and it plays. There is nothing to adjust, because there is nothing to ask the camera.
For the technically minded
- rtsp:// and rtsps:// streams, H.264 and H.265.
- http:// MJPEG streams.
- The username and password are kept in the device’s secure storage, not in the address.
Your network
ViewTile works on the Wi-Fi the cameras are on, and only there. It needs no internet connection and uses none. On iPhone it asks for permission to use the local network, which is its whole job.
It can only find cameras on the network your phone is on. A camera on a separate network in the same building is not found by a scan even if it can be reached by address, and a router set to keep Wi-Fi devices apart from each other (“client isolation” or “AP isolation”) stops the phone from reaching cameras at all. When nothing answers, the app lists these as the likely reasons.
What depends on the camera
Pan-tilt-zoom, saved positions, focus, picture and exposure settings, a wiper, an infrared lamp, motion alerts and recordings on the camera are shown when the camera offers them and left out when it does not. The camera’s own page says which it did not offer.
ViewTile has been developed against a camera emulator and a lab of test streams. Testing against real cameras comes before any store release; a list of tested models will appear here when there is one, and not before.