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Guide

ChitonSight — local cameras without the vendor cloud theater.

A calm how-to for the iPhone companion: live view for HDLiveCam, LookCam, and Ular on your LAN. No ChitonSight account. No ads. No China phone-home. Honest about what iPhone can and cannot do versus a Mac NVR.

Trust

No account · Keychain credentials · Data Not Collected posture when true

Speed

Brand-first Add → Save → Live. Target: first Live under two minutes on Wi‑Fi.

Honesty

LookCam one-session · Demo for Review · iPhone clips ≠ Mac recorder

1. WHAT IT IS

Drop-in companion for three vendor apps people already juggle — not “best RTSP grid on the App Store.”

  • Local / no account — cameras talk to your phone on the LAN; credentials stay in Keychain.
  • No China cloud / no ads — the emotional purchase reason versus OEM apps that phone home and interrupt live view.
  • iPhone = companion — live, add, honest empties. Mac remains the serious recorder / Care-AP reference.
  • Not a clinic product — this guide lives on Optimized Brain as a systems/tools note for builders who care about privacy UX.

2. FIRST 2 MINUTES → LIVE

Happy path on the same Wi‑Fi. Tailscale and Care-AP are not the first-run story.

0:00

Open the app

Finish the short onboarding (or Skip). No signup screen — if you see one, you’re in the wrong app.
0:30

Allow Local Network

iOS will ask. Allow it — LAN discovery, RTSP, and LookCam PPPP need it. The permission string should say cameras on your network, not vague “enhance experience” copy.
0:55

Add Camera

Empty list → Add Camera. Pick brand first: HDLiveCam, LookCam, or Ular.
1:30

Fill & Save

Host / stream path or DID + password. Password lands in Keychain. Optional Probe on LookCam LAN.
2:00

Tap → Live

Open the camera. Chip should reach Live (or Demo Live). If not, use the empty-state guidance — don’t thrash settings randomly.
Tip

Brand order for demos

Fastest demos: HDLiveCam RTSP → Ular RTSP → LookCam PPPP (same Wi‑Fi, vendor LookCam force-quit).

3. HDLIVECAM · LOOKCAM · ULAR

Brand-first add — the differentiator versus generic RTSP viewers.

HDLiveCam

Typical RTSP: host:8554/stream1, TCP on, admin + password. Often the cleanest first Live.

Ular

Typical RTSP: host:554/12, TCP on. Same Wi‑Fi; treat like any LAN RTSP once paths are right.

LookCam

PPPP / DID path on LAN. Password should match what works in Mac LookCam. See the honesty section — one session at a time.

LookCamPro ≠ LookCam. Don’t mix product lines when copying DIDs or passwords.

4. LOOKCAM PPPP — HONESTY FIRST

LAN live on iPhone is the v1 differentiator. Cloud P2P is not the promise.

  1. Same Wi‑Fi as the camera for LAN PPPP.
  2. Force-quit vendor LookCam before connecting — one session; the camera won’t happily dual-host.
  3. Use the same password that works on Mac LookCam. Port 0 is normal for this path.
  4. Cloud P2P / cellular without a tunnel is not implemented as a ChitonSight v1 claim — use Tailscale if you need away-from-home.
  5. Surface failures calmly (offline / session busy) — never panic UX that blames the user for OEM session limits.

5. DEMO MODE

Required for App Review and useful when you have zero cameras in the room.

Where it lives

Onboarding (optional Try Demo), empty camera list, and Settings. Demo streams are labeled — never pretend a sample feed is your driveway.

Why it matters

Reviewers and first-run users need a Live chip without owning hardware. Demo is a product surface, not a footnote.

6. RECORDINGS ON IPHONE

Clips from this app only — not a pocket NVR.

iPhone recordings are clips you capture in ChitonSight. They are not Mac continuous schedules, not Frigate parity, and not a replacement for a desk NVR. Background limits on iOS are real — don’t market continuous multi-cam archive on the phone.

Mac remains the power surface for serious recording timelines. iPhone is check-in + trust + companion live.

7. TAILSCALE (OPTIONAL)

Away-from-home without opening ports or pretending OEM P2P is private.

Use Tailscale MagicDNS (*.ts.net) or 100.x addresses when you’re not on home Wi‑Fi. This is a power-user path — optional, not a gate for first Live.

Support reality: VPN misunderstandings are common. Keep the in-app Tailscale guide short and link out rather than building a full mesh UI in v1.

8. CARE-AP

Mac reference behavior — iPhone should explain empties, not fake failover.

Care-AP (often 192.168.66.1 / .100 in Mac tooling) is how some cams behave when they fall back to their own AP. On iPhone, show a calm empty state when the host looks like Care-AP — join guidance, not a promise that the phone will reconfigure the camera like the Mac Python tools.

WAN-disable / CGI experiments can reboot-loop some LookCams. Best-effort only; the phone never rewrites your router.

9. PRIVACY & PERMISSIONS

Trust is the buy reason — keep it visible on every step.

Permissions

  • Local Network — required for LAN cameras
  • Photos / storage — only if saving clips
  • No account creation flow
  • Nutrition label: lean Data Not Collected when accurate

What we don’t do

  • No ChitonSight cloud login
  • No ad SDK theater
  • No China OEM phone-home as a feature
  • No overclaim of end-to-end encryption on plaintext LAN RTSP

Lab: FIND WORDS stays fully playable. Brain Games live in the footer so the main nav stays systems-first.