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An electron app for viewing a nest cam feed in a tiny, always-on-top window.

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electron-nest-cam-viewer

An electron app for managing and viewing Nest Cams.

Available for MacOS Download v0.0.2

Screen Shot 2020-05-14 at 11 13 24 PMScreen Shot 2020-05-14 at 11 29 11 PM

How to Use

Get the sharing url for a Nest Cam. It looks like https://video.nest.com/live/xXXxxXxXXx This can be set up in your camera's settings, where you can share it publicly or with a password. Either will work with Cam View. (There are also a lot of publicly available nest cams of things like birds nests and doggy daycares that you can find with a google search)

Next, launch Cam View, click '+ Add Camera', and paste in the sharing URL. If it's public, Cam View will show it in the main window and add it to your Cameras list. If it requires a password, it will prompt you for the password. (The password is stored securely in MacOS' keychain)

Pop-out Cameras

You can pop-out a camera into its own window, which will always remain "on top". I like to put these in the corner of my display while I am working.

Remove Cameras

Each camera on the list can be removed by clicking the trashcan icon.

Contributing

This is an open source project I started so I could have a better experience viewing my nest cams. I'd love contributions and bugfixes if you would like to help out. Check the issues to see what needs work.

Local Development

  • Clone this repo
  • Install dependencies: yarn
  • Start the dev server: yarn dev

You will see a settings page where you can enter your camera id and password. The camera id is a string of upper and lower case letters and can be found in the shared camera url: https://video.nest.com/live/{camera-id}

The program will check to see if your camera id and password are valid, and will add the camera to the cameras list. You can open a viewer window by clicking the camera id in the list.

How it Works

The electron app is simply a different presentation of the existing nest cam sharing pages. When you enable sharing (with or without password), the feed is available at https://video.nest.com/live/{camera-id}. This app is simply loading these shared camera URLs in smaller windows (using electron's BrowserView and BrowserWindow features. It also persists the user's camera list, persists passwords for password-protected cameras, and provides a pop-out view for cameras that always stays on top in MacOS.

electron-store

Non-sensitive data is persisted using electron-store and lives in: /Users/{username}/Library/Application Support/cam-view/config.json