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SmartSentry is shaped entirely by Customer feedback
SmartSentry was originally developed in 1999 by Rapid Automation
We're a small privately owned software development company based in Nottingham in the UK. Our background is in digital design and systems engineering with hardware skills in image processing and software skills in C / C++ and assembly language.
From the start, SmartSentry has been shaped entirely by customer feedback. It was first developed to monitor and protect our team rally car simply because there was nothing available in the Windows marketplace at the time. Even though Video For Windows (VFW) was the only technology around at that time, we were pleasantly surprised with the results of our efforts and the simplicity of the code. We decided to publish SmartSentry as shareware in November 1999 at version 0.10. Almost immediately, we received positive feedback and encouragement from downloaders with suggestion for improvements and extra features.
We took on board many of the suggestions and in Dec 2000 we released version 0.15, again as Shareware and this proved to be very popular, there were around 7,000 downloads from various shareware sites during the following 12 months and we had literally hundreds of letters of support and encouragement.
We incorporated one or two specialist suggestions that were published to a limited group of supporters as various flavours of version 0.19x but it was becoming clear that we had reached the limits of the VFW technology by the end of 2001 and started exploring the new ActiveMedia technology from Microsoft (since known as DirectShow).
During 2002 we had less spare time to devote to development, due to a combination of fun spent rallying at club level in the UK and major business commitments on other projects later in the year. Downloads of version 0.15 slowed to a more steady pace during 2002, but the positive feedback continued to roll in so we set aside some quality time to devote to developing the DirectShow version.
The core motion detection code was wrapped into an ActiveX Video Transform filter very quickly with no changes to the original code and released as version 0.20 in 2003. The next year was spent refining the application and user interface with the intention of keeping as close as possible to the original look and feel. The naming convention changed to 2.x to reflect the incorporation of DirectShow and Windows Installer support in 2004.
We continue to shape SmartSentry following feedback from our customers and we're determined to keep the cost for a permanent license for a Home User below 20 US Dollars. To do this we intend to use widely available tools and utilities from third parties to supplement the core functionality. This allows us to focus our skills upon the area of our expertise and avoids us attempting to re-invent inferior wheels.
Current development effort is focused on Remote Monitoring support using XML techniques and Video Streaming capabilities using DirectShow. Using version 2.5 it's possible to operate up to 4 independent capture devices on a modern home PC with remote monitoring support enabled.
We can supply a simple http server on request, but in our opinion Sami Server is the best solution for a Home User and it's available free to download from KarjaSoft at http://www.karjasoft.com/samihttp
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