CueCam and the Elephant in the (Vo)room

I recently launched CueCam on the App Store you and the feedback I've had has been overwhelmingly positive, so thank you all.

I wanted to address three criticisms I've received, some just genuinely inquisitive and one actually quite hostile accusing me of 'ripping off' another's work (something I'm no stranger to being on the receiving end of with lxkey!) – so apologies for the length of this!

There is an app that has some similar features to CueCam, Vor. But that's a far larger piece of software aimed (I feel) at a different market. And indeed I've used it, and recommended it to others, and will continue to do so!

Vor is a fantastic 'whole production' tool, it allows capture of multiple streams of video, twelve channels of audio, integration with media servers, PSN, QLab, automation systems, cue lights, and much more. It's infinitely customisable (but takes time to set up accordingly) and supports incredibly complex workflows like 40+ cue lists and custom elements for shows like The Twenty Sided Tavern.

CueCam, on the other hand, is decided to allow lighting designers and programmers to quickly record a show (open CueCam, select your desk, point at stage, done) with cues, make some notes, and revisit it later to fix them - something I do a lot after everyone else has gone home and scrolling through an iPad with a recording of it.

It's generally aimed at smaller scale productions, amateur companies, small regional touring etc - the world I know (and built it for) - and exclusively for ETC Eos (because that's what I know and use)

They are priced differently accordingly too, Vor is a subscription costing £250/year on mac or £100/year on iPhone. CueCam costs £35 (one off) - they are not competing in the same world or with the same budgets.

So, anyway...

AI ...  

The other elephant in the room, when people appear with new software today it's always AI that wrote it, apparently. Often rightly so, but there's usually more to it.

Ok, I use 'agentic coding' a bit, but so does any developer today. Auto completion in editors has become so good it's scary, and AI agents can really help identifying odd race conditions and such like and weird language syntax (I'll admit I'm new to Swift!)

AI (Specifically Claude if anyone cares) was also used in the creation of the UI of CueCam Play (I don't do web GUIs!), for example, based on the Mac application which it had access to and gave me a great starting point to work from in TypeScript.

But I did not fire up ChatGPT and say "build me this" – try it if you want, I've got various views about AI in software development. In summary, that it is empowering people to build something for their own needs is a good thing, but that generally it doesn't make code good enough for wider use - I've seen lots of 'web apps' pop up that are clearly AI generated and process personal data with huge vulnerabilities.

But, equally, there's great examples out there of people with a particularly complex problem to solve that historically might have required some convoluted Excel sheet  or Filemaker DB or similar that can now build a single page tool that runs locally that does exactly where they need, and i've seen some where parents (albeit tech-savvy ones already) are using it to build things for their kids for specific things and tailored to their abilities - and that's awesome.

In some ways AI generated applications are the HyperCard of today. And the fact that I know what HyperCard is (and used it a lot) should give you a clue of my own background!

The bottom line is CueCam was not written by AI, but AI tools did help me write CueCam.

Who am I?

(... 2 4 6 0 1 ! ... sorry, wrong show)

Did I just wake up and decide I'm a developer now because of AI?

No, I've worked in software development for 20+ years, if I'm impersonating anything it's being a lighting professional too - I get paid for that much less (both in terms of money and frequency sadly)

My first app on the App Store was in 2007. And I had a much bigger one in 2008 (people even wrote articles about it at the time here, and here being the only ones I can find still online... and O2 threatened to sue me... :D)

Sure, I haven't kept up with app development - my focus has been elsewhere and I didn't really have any great ideas for apps after the first couple - but friends encouraged me to release CueCam.

I've been developing software for other people since 1999 and lighting shows using Eos since 2009 (and the Strand 500 before that, and GSX/LBX Genius 125 before that)

Although I don't do much professional lighting work these days (sadly), I still have many friends in that industry full-time and remain a member of the ALPD. It's a big part of my life, and I wrote CueCam for me first and foremost.

CueCam's origin and evolution

Did CueCam copy Vor (or anything else)? No.

CueCam has its roots in my really imaginatively named showcap which ran on a Raspberry Pi back in 2018 (or thereabouts) when I started using OSC more extensively.  (I think this predates Vor, but I'm not sure to be honest)

showcap was a command line application that recorded a video stream with ffmpeg, and opened a text file. As OSC messages were received it wrote them with a timestamp to the text file.  When a stop command was received another script ran (using php+gd of all things!) that generated an overlay and merged the two together, it was cumbersome and looked awful but it worked and gave me a nice record of old shows. The "markers" of the time were a massive magenta dot at the top right but it served a purpose (I could find them quickly scrubbing the footage)

Fast forward a number of years and it was adapted to use nodejs, mainly as an exercise to myself to learn node better (I also wrote an NDI pixel mapper around the same time). Again, no public audience, just a tool for me, and it now ran on a Pi or my mac (in a browser)

Unrelated, I was asked to help with a simple OSC programming thing, log the up/down time of a show (linked to the theatre website so that tickets went off sale when the show started) and that got me talking to others about things I've done with OSC in the past. Being able to mark a recording from the desk was the 'killer feature' that they thought worthy of an app – and something that was unique.

So, CueCam v1 was built based on concepts from showcap, and moved to iPhone because everyone has one in their pocket and the camera is actually pretty good at recording shows for this purpose.  

the app today...

CueCam bears little resemblance to the hacked together solution of the past. It's a much more polished app, and we're adding more features to it all the time.

The magenta dot became more streamlined markers, with text that could be sent from OSC. The plain text overlay of the Eos cue update got stylised, we thought about how to provide a GUI on the console and started with just passing the screen over NDI (later RTSP, thanks Vizrt (Grr!)) and then evolved to a small status display inspired by what you'd see on a typical camera.

Then the feedback from users in the real world helped improve it immensely;

"Can the overlays be optional?"
 - added clean copy

"We put this FOH, is there any way to stop people poking at it?"
- added OSC lock.

"Would be great to be able to add markers from elsewhere?"
- added Apple Watch support, UDP OSC for QLab / Companion

"Could you support Chapter Markers?"
 - added chapter markers, then went down a rabbit hole of a custom metadata track, created CueCam Play...

All of this happened before it hit the store, hence why a 'fully featured' app was available at launch. It's thanks to extensive testing and a feedback loop of both a few close friends, and a wider public beta we carried out for a few months.

So, hopefully that puts to rest a few things.

CueCam is not copying Vor. I love Vor (even got a Vor sticker on one of my cases!), but it's a different app with a different audience. The two happily coexist and I will continue to subscribe to Vor Production if I need it, but for quickly reviewing lighting from rehearsals, I use CueCam.