Having installed iRa, it is now necessary to configure it to use your surveillance devices. When you launch iRa you will be presented with its main interface, a 6-up view of different video sources (Figure 1).
However, the first time you launch iRa you will not see any video since no devices have yet been configured. To configure your devices, you must go to the settings screen (Figure 2). You can access it by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right hand corner.
The Settings Screen
If you are using recommended devices and your integrator has already configured them to announce themselves on the local network, you may see a list of cameras in the “Auto-Detected Cameras” section. If that is the case, all you need to do is turn on “Show Detected Cameras” and they will appear in the main interface.
Otherwise, you will need to enter the camera configuration details manually. Click on the Groups row to bring up the list of groups (Figure 3).
The Group List
When you manually define a camera, you add it to a group. A group can represent any logical association of different devices. A common scenario would be to group together all cameras at a given facility.
Touching the name of a group causes it to become the currently displayed group in the main interface. The edit button in the upper right corner of the screen allows you to change the order of groups in the list, or to delete them. Touch the chevron button to the right of the group’s name to view the details for that group.
Group Details
This screen (Figure 4) allows you to rename the group. It also displays a list of cameras that are a part of this group. Much like the list of groups, you can hit the edit button to reorder or delete cameras in the list. Touching the name of a camera allows you to view and edit its configuration settings.
Press “add a new camera” to get a list of known camera types. In this case, we will assume that you are adding a new “Axis Video” camera. Selecting that brings up the configuration options for the camera (Figure 5).
Camera Details
Axis devices are the easiest to configure. The only required pieces of information are the IP address and a name for the camera. If the Axis device you are connecting has more than one camera on it, you will need to specify which camera you want.
Another important piece of information is the video resolution to use. For best performance, we highly recommend setting the resolution to 352×240 (the default). Depending on the model of Axis, this resolution may not be supported. In that case you should specify 320×240. Once you hit the save button the camera is ready to go. The video should now appear in the main interface.
