C cenaly.com
Start free
Cenaly Camera Early access

A spare Android phone becomes a recording camera for your location

Cenaly Camera turns a phone into a camera for the till or the floor: it keeps a rolling archive on the phone itself, streams live video and pairs with Cenaly Hardware Bridge over the location’s Wi-Fi. The same app on a second phone is the viewer.

What it does

Rolling archive

Continuous recording in 30-, 60- or 120-second segments; when the archive reaches its limit (1 to 16 GB), the oldest segments go first. SD, HD or Full HD, 10/15/30 fps, sound optional. It can record without a bridge too.

Motion-aware storage

“Smart storage” keeps segments with motion longer and deletes still ones first; “Motion only” keeps just the segments where something happened. Motion is detected on the phone itself.

Clips of risky POS operations

With loss control on, the POS asks the camera for a clip around a risky operation — a few seconds before and after; the camera cuts it from the archive and uploads it, protecting that part of the archive from deletion until then.

Viewer mode

A second phone in Viewer mode lists the location’s cameras with their online status and plays live video and the archive through the bridge — over the local network, no internet needed.

Control from the dashboard

The Hardware page shows each camera’s state (recording, archive, battery, Wi-Fi); settings are changed and the camera is restarted from there — through the cloud, without going on site.

Secure pairing

Pairing with the bridge is TLS-only, with a code you compare on the bridge PC; the bridge takes video from the phone only over HTTPS pinned to the camera’s own certificate.

Runs 24/7

Records with the screen off, starts again after a reboot, keeps Wi-Fi from sleeping; a watchdog restarts recording if it stops.

Limits, honestly

  • Video is watched in the app’s Viewer mode on the location’s network; the web dashboard manages cameras but does not play video.
  • The archive is kept only on the phone: if the phone is lost or reset, its recordings are lost too. Only clips of risky POS operations go to the cloud.
  • For round-the-clock recording, exempt the app from battery optimisation (and turn on Autostart on Xiaomi/MIUI), otherwise the system may stop it in the background.
  • Recording people on video may require a notice or consent under local law — that is the business’s responsibility.
  • App interface: English, Russian and Georgian.
  • Android versions are distributed as an installation file right from this site — they are not on Google Play yet; iPhone and iPad versions are released through the App Store. Features were tested on emulators and test devices; acceptance in working venues is still in progress.

How to install

  1. Open this page on the Android device itself and tap “Download APK”.
  2. Open the downloaded file. On the first install Android asks to allow installs from this source (your browser) — allow it.
  3. Tap “Install” and wait until it finishes — the icon appears on the home screen.
  4. Launch the app and sign in: email and password, or a QR code issued by the web dashboard.

Updating works the same way: download the file again and install it over the old one; your sign-in is kept.

Sign-in

The same account as the web dashboard: email and password, a QR code for a shared device, and an authenticator code if two-factor protection is on. Staff only see the locations of their role.

Help

Other apps

All apps →