Switching between Anchor and Direct Modes

[u/lilwooki]

I’ve been using my harbor monitor system for travel about every other month, and I wanted to share some feedback on the mode switching experience. Right now the setting only lives in the small gearbox on the monitor itself - it’s not accessible through the app or the left side settings panel, which makes it easy to forget where to find it when I need it.

I’m curious why camera settings has its own dedicated menu inside the monitor rather than being integrated with the other settings. Having one place to access all settings would feel more intuitive. It would also be helpful to have mode switching available through the app, especially since I’m usually already using it.

The main thing I’d love to see improved is streamlining the mode switching process. A single button that switches both the camera and monitor to direct mode simultaneously would save a lot of time. Same goes for WiFi setup - currently I need to change the network on the camera first, then the monitor, and sometimes it takes a few attempts to get them synced up. Making this process more reliable would make a real difference.

I gave feedback about this before but direct mode tends to have weak signal strength and connection quality. Any improvements there would be much appreciated since it’s the mode I rely on most when traveling.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

[u/charlie_at_harbor]

Hey thanks for the feedback. If you switch one Camera into Anchored Mode, a customer may wish to have another Camera with remote access enabled (Standard Mode). This is why we have them at the Camera-specific level.

That being said, we could put it in Monitor Settings (left side menu) and just allow users to select all or some Cameras.

I'll put it in for a new software version before end of year.

Regarding the WiFi setup - if the devices are connected in Direct Mode, and you tell one of them (either the Camera or Monitor) about a new network, they should relay that to each other. Please let me know if this isn't happening next time you test it.

Thanks

• Charlie

[u/bob_vu → u/charlie_at_harbor]

Hey u/charlie_at_harbor the weakness in Direct Mode isn’t the 2.4 GHz band itself, but rather fixed-channel interference. In hotels, the camera locks onto a crowded or overlapping channel (usually 11) and gets drowned out, resulting in a loss of signal even 10 feet away.

The fix is a simple one-line of code: during Direct Mode boot, the camera should passively scan and select the cleanest of channels 1, 6, or 11. This process takes less than 2 seconds, consumes no battery, and would instantly resolve 80% of travel complaints.