Everstra Capture — Release notes

Every release since the first version, newest first.

v0.5.0 2026-10-14
  • Security: FTP uploads (Star Trail, Timelapse, Intraday) went out unencrypted until now — user name, password and recordings could be read by anyone on the network path. Uploads now use encrypted FTPS by default, with the server certificate checked; implicit FTPS and SFTP (the server's host key checked against the fingerprints you enter, before the login) are the alternatives. FTP without encryption stays available for trusted local networks, with a clear warning.
  • Update note: Jobs that already uploaded via FTP keep doing so unencrypted after the update, so no upload stops — their FTP settings show a notice. Switch them to FTPS (the FTP service of most NAS devices and web hosts supports it) and use “Test connection”.
  • Security: Other apps installed on the camera could until now reach this app's internal endpoints directly, without the camera's login check — the app's FastCGI socket was reachable for other local processes, a side entrance past the web server. It is now closed: access goes only through the camera's web server and its login.
  • Security: A licence is now accepted only in the form this app's own page sends it. Until now a web page on another site, opened in the same browser while you were logged in to the camera, could send the camera a licence file in your name — it could not install a forged licence (every licence is checked against this camera), but the way in is now closed. If you install licences with your own scripts: send {"license": "<file content>"} with Content-Type: application/json.
  • New: The FTP settings start with the protocol, in order of ease: FTPS (encrypted, the default — usually just server, user and password), SFTP, FTPS implicit, and FTP without encryption last. A short note under the choice explains what it means. “Test connection” saves the job, then writes and deletes a small test file on the server — login, encryption, directory and write permission in one go; the last upload or test result is shown next to it. For SFTP, “Fetch fingerprint” asks the server for its key (no login, the password is not sent) — compare it on the server and take it over with one click.
  • New: For a server with its own (self-signed) certificate there is “Allow unverified certificate (not recommended)” — it appears after a certificate error or on “Server uses its own certificate?”, and the connection stays encrypted. Star Trail's FTP upload now has a port field too. The Interfaces page shows each job's protocol and warns about unencrypted ones.
  • New: The storage-warning e-mails — warning, reminder and test e-mail, subject and body — and the names used for the internal storage and the SD card can now be edited and pre-filled from a language list (12 languages); until now they were fixed English text. The default stays English, word for word as before.
  • Privacy page: the exports now show the encryption that the page shows — the CSV has one line per FTP job and the columns “protocol” and “encrypted”, and the PNG marks every connection that travels without encryption as “unencrypted”.
  • Change: The port field of an FTP connection now holds the protocol's standard port — 21 for FTP and FTPS, 990 for implicit FTPS, 22 for SFTP — instead of being left empty. It follows when you switch the protocol; a port you typed yourself stays.
  • Change: The language choice for a single text is now a small globe at the end of the field instead of a full list under every field — the page is tidier, and the list that fills all fields of a panel at once stays where it was.
  • Change: The light/dark choice is now kept on the camera, as in Everstra Live — it is the same in every browser. A choice this browser had kept until now is taken over once.
  • Notices on the settings pages behave the same in every Everstra app: a success or info message goes after a few seconds, a warning or an error stays until the next message, so it cannot vanish before it is read, and a new message no longer hides a fresh error early.
  • Fix: When deleting recordings was cancelled and a later deletion confirmed, the cancelled one was carried out as well. Every confirmation now runs only what it asked about.
  • Fix: Restoring a backup shows the camera's reason when it refuses the file, instead of “Network error”.
  • Fix: A remote directory entered without a leading slash (e.g. “upload/cam”) was joined to the server name and the upload failed with “Could not resolve hostname”; it now works with or without the slash. An FTP user name containing a colon was cut in two at the colon. The clean-up after an upload (keep at most N files / days) opened a new connection for every file it deleted; upload and clean-up now share one connection.
  • Fix: E-mail subjects with umlauts, accents or Cyrillic letters would have gone into the mail header unencoded — some mail servers reject such mails or show broken characters. Subjects are now encoded as the mail standard requires (RFC 2047); a plain-English subject looks exactly as before.
  • Fix: Text settings longer than their field were cut at a byte count, possibly in the middle of a character; they are now cut only between whole characters.
v0.4.0 2026-10-11
  • New: Online activation. In the License tab, “Activate online” lets the camera fetch its licence key itself, in one click. The camera contacts activate.everstra.com once — only when you click — and sends its hardware ID, its model, its firmware version (e.g. 11.11) and the module name, plus an e-mail address if you enter one for a copy of your key. The hardware ID is used only to sign the key and is not stored. Offline activation with a key file works as before.
  • Privacy: Activations are counted anonymously — only the module, the camera model, the firmware version (major.minor) and the day of activation, without time of day, to keep Everstra working on the cameras and firmware in use; no hardware ID, no IP address, no e-mail address. The License tab lists what is kept and what is used once and discarded. The privacy policy on everstra.com and the app's Interfaces page now list the activation connection. In operation the app does not contact Everstra.
  • Licence: After an online activation the key is shown in the app and can be downloaded as a file; after a reinstall on the same camera it can be loaded again without any server contact. The licence agreement (EULA) is updated to version 1.1 accordingly.
  • Licence: The app reads the new licence format issued by the online activation. Existing licence files remain valid — nothing to do.
  • Licence: A licence key can also be pasted into the License tab instead of choosing a file. Licence files are now named with the camera's hardware ID and end in .lic (everstra_<module>_license_<hardware ID>.lic); existing .dat files still work.
  • New: Update notifications (optional, off by default). Switched on in the License tab, the camera fetches a small file with the newest version number from updates.everstra.com once a day and shows a banner on every page when a newer version — or a security update — is available, with its release date and a Download button; a regular notice can be dismissed for that version, a security notice cannot. “Check now” in the License tab checks at once. Nothing about the camera is sent: no hardware ID, no model, not even its version. Switched off, no connection is made.
  • Licence: Without a valid licence the start page now says so at the top — above every tab — with a button straight to the License tab; the notice on the editor pages links there too.
  • Licence: While the app is licensed, the License tab offers the licence key at any time — “Show license key” and “Download license file” (everstra_<module>_license_<hardware ID>.lic). The camera reads its own licence file; no server contact. So the key is never lost, even after an online activation without e-mail.
  • Privacy: The Interfaces page lists the update check as a connection of its own — on or off, and what it sends.
  • Fix: A licence file that is rejected on upload no longer touches the installed licence — before, a rejected file could delete a valid licence.
v0.3.3 2026-10-03
  • Security: An internal security review of Everstra identified weaknesses in how Everstra Capture handles credentials for e-mail, FTP uploads and stored files. All of them are closed with this release. Automated tests now guard against these cases.
  • Security: E-mail notifications only attempted to encrypt the connection and did not verify the mail server's certificate. They now require an encrypted connection and verify the certificate. If your mail server uses a self-signed certificate, you can allow it explicitly in the e-mail settings.
  • Security: Files containing credentials (FTP and e-mail passwords) were readable by other processes on the camera. They are now readable only by Everstra Capture.
  • Security: Browsers could fill the camera's own login into the FTP fields. These fields are now excluded from browser autofill.
  • Security: A malformed internal message could write camera access data to the system log. This is fixed.
  • Fixed: On very slow connections, a network timeout could crash Everstra Capture. Network requests no longer rely on signals for their timeouts.
v0.3.2 2026-09-11
  • New: Everstra Capture is now an officially Axis-signed ACAP application. The package is countersigned by Axis Communications, which verifies its origin and integrity — it installs even on cameras configured to reject unsigned apps (AXIS OS 11.11 and later).
  • New: verified authenticity — the Axis signature establishes a trust chain from the camera's firmware to the application, so the device can confirm the package's origin and integrity. This is a key requirement for use in professional and corporate camera networks.
  • Changed: migrated the build to ACAP Native SDK 1.15.3 and manifest schema v2 — the technical prerequisite for Axis signing on AXIS OS 11.11.
  • Changed: declared OS compatibility as AXIS OS 11.11 up to 13; the app installs across this range.
  • Improved: smaller, cleaner release binaries — debug symbols and internal build paths are now stripped from all shipped binaries.
  • Improved: the bundled media engine is now built without any network code, matching Capture's file-only design.
  • Fixed: the application now reports its correct version (0.3.2) in the system log and in exported backup files.
v0.3.1 2026-08-18
  • Fixed: the recordings timeline now opens on the most recent day that actually contains footage, instead of always jumping to today — so continuous recordings started the previous evening are visible immediately.
  • Fixed: the "clean up empty recording groups" function is now safeguarded against removing groups that still hold recordings, including when the camera is briefly unreachable.
  • Improved: the interface now loads faster thanks to smaller, optimised assets.
v0.3.0 2026-08-17
  • New: the Privacy page — an always-available overview of every connection Everstra Capture itself opens, built from your actual configuration, showing each interface's status and the data it exchanges.
  • Capture contacts no third-party service at all, and the page states this plainly. The interfaces it opens are your own destinations — FTP upload and the SMTP server for storage warnings, which you configure and control — and local interfaces on the camera.
  • The FTP entry is explicit that Capture also removes files on the target as part of retention: Capture remains the only part of Everstra that deletes anything.
  • Connections are grouped by kind with targets masked; secrets such as passwords are never shown.
  • Export the overview as PNG or CSV, with automatic refresh and a clear "last updated" time. The page is always available and never counts against your license.
  • The report is backed by a build check that fails if any connection the code can open is missing from it, so a forgotten outbound path cannot silently slip past the overview.
  • Under the hood: interface and styling assets now carry a content hash, so a normal reload always shows the current version after an update.
v0.2.0 2026-08-16
  • New: the Recordings page. Continuous recordings made by Everstra Live are shown as periods rather than as the camera's internal segments, by day, week or month, with the stretches that were never recorded clearly visible.
  • Export any stretch as a single playable file, as MKV or MP4. Where it spans several of the camera's internal recordings, the parts are joined without re-encoding.
  • Retention: keep recordings for a chosen number of days, drop the oldest when the card fills up, or cap how much of the card recordings may use. This applies only to recordings; other capture jobs are untouched.
  • The storage overview now shows recordings as their own slice, so you can see what they use.
  • Delete a single recording or everything in a period, with confirmation. Capture is the only part of Everstra that deletes anything.
  • Recordings of a stream are told apart from other material on the card at a glance.
v0.1.4 2026-08-12
  • Several UI improvements.
v0.1.3 2026-07-27
  • Media Manager: video clips in the archive now load on click instead of all at once — the list stays responsive and no longer shows endless loading spinners over slow or remote (VPN / Tailscale) connections
  • Media Manager: always-visible fullscreen button on the video player
  • Fix: large file downloads now stream in chunks instead of being read fully into memory — no memory pressure when downloading multi-hundred-MB clips
  • Encode throttling: timelapse and intraday encodes run at lower priority and single-threaded, keeping the live stream smooth while a video is being built
  • Slimmer app log: encoder output no longer floods the system log; only encode start and finish are logged, with the last lines of encoder output kept for diagnosis if an encode fails
  • Removed an outdated info banner on the Modules page
  • Recordings are always clean camera images — any active overlays (graphics, text, ticker) are excluded from captured stills and videos
v0.1.2 2026-07-26
  • Third-party notices now list only the components actually bundled in this module
v0.1.1 2026-07-26
  • Storage overview: pie charts now sized and laid out correctly
v0.1.0 2026-07-25
  • Initial release of Everstra Capture
  • Long Term Capture: scheduled snapshots on an hourly or custom rhythm, configurable date range, capture window, resolution and storage location, up to 3 concurrent jobs
  • Startrail: automatic nightly star-trail composite timed to sunset/sunrise, configurable dilation, raw frame archiving with recompose from the archive
  • Timelapse: scheduled or continuous interval capture encoded to H.264 MP4, time-window/daylight/night/lookback triggers, automatic splitting of long runs, independent frame and video retention
  • Intraday: rolling video windows, replaced automatically block by block
  • Media Manager: one shared library across all four modes, tagged by mode and job, filtering, ZIP download, deletion
  • Storage management: live free-space overview for internal storage and SD card, configurable warn/stop thresholds, optional email notification when free space drops below the warn threshold
  • FTP upload for finished Timelapse videos, Intraday clips and Startrail composites, with independent remote retention
  • 7-day trial, free license activation
  • Supported: aarch64 and armv7hf

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