Install & Permissions

CaptureKey is distributed through PortalKey under Software. Install the APK the same way you install other Shatterproof Android apps; after the first install, the app keeps itself current through its built-in update check. On first launch, Android will prompt for:

• Notifications - Allow these. They carry messages from Operations and other photographers, and they power the persistent SMID notification.
• USB access - Requested each time a camera is attached. Check Always allow / Use by default on the dialog so it doesn't pop up mid-event.

No storage permission is needed. Imported photos live in CaptureKey's own app folder, and the optional Import Photos menu item uses the system file picker.

Sign In

If you aren't signed in, the app opens directly to the login screen. The normal tabs and top bar are hidden until you authenticate.

There are two ways in:

1. Username & password - Your normal Shatterproof Media (PortalKey) credentials. You don't need a separate CaptureKey account, but the account must be staff level or above.
2. Scan Login QR - Scans a one-time login code generated for you in PathKey by an admin. Each code works once and expires, and it can carry the event you're scheduled for so the app lands directly in it. Handy for handing a pre-staged phone to a photographer without typing a password.

Your session is remembered until it expires, so you can close and reopen the app without signing in again. A login also triggers an immediate update check.

Pick an Event

Each event is its own sandbox. Assignments, photos, messages, and notes from one event never leak into another, and a device is attached to one event at a time.

After sign-in the app resolves your event in this order:

1. The event this device was already using (survives app restarts and sign-outs).
2. The event suggested by the server — the active event nearest to now that you're on the roster for — or the event embedded in your login QR.
3. Otherwise, nothing loads until you pick one yourself.

• To pick or switch manually, go to Session and tap Choose Event / Change Event. You only see events you're rostered on or have assignments in.
• If a photo imports while no event is loaded, the app forces the event picker open so the photo can be filed correctly.

Connect the Camera

CaptureKey speaks USB directly to Canon EOS cameras. No extra drivers, apps, or cables beyond a standard USB connection to the phone.

1. Plug the USB cable into the camera, then into the phone.
2. When Android asks which app should handle the USB device, pick CaptureKey and check Use by default.
3. The app starts a tether session; if it doesn't, open Session, expand the Camera card, and tap Connect.
4. The camera icon in the top bar turns green ("Listening") within a few seconds.
5. Trigger a test shot. It should appear on the Capture tab almost immediately.

Typical Flow

Most events follow a loop like this:

1. Activate an assignment: tap its row on the Path tab (use the filter box to jump straight to a number), or tap Select on the Capture tab.

2. Shoot your photos. Every capture that arrives while this assignment is active is imported, quality-checked, and automatically tagged with it.

3. Tap Complete on the Capture tab (or on the Path overview card). The assignment is marked complete for the whole event, its photos queue for upload, and the app auto-activates the next open assignment on your list — a banner announces which one.

4. If a location has nothing to shoot, use Mark No Photos from the row's ⋮ menu on Path. That completes the assignment and flags it; if a photo is later retagged or uploaded onto it, the flag clears automatically.

5. If someone requests a return, you'll get a notification and the assignment moves to the Return Requested section in Path. Re-activate it, shoot, and complete it again.

You can practice this exact loop hands-on in the Interactive Demo before ever plugging in a camera.

Capture Tab

Capture is your home base during the event. It shows the newest (or selected) photo from the camera, its quality results, its assignment tag, and its upload state.

Elements:

• Active Assignment card - The assignment new photos will be tagged to. Complete finishes it and jumps to Path; when nothing is active, Select takes you to Path to pick one.
• Photo preview - Tap to open fullscreen (pinch to zoom, pan). Long-press and drag left to delete the photo — the red trash background confirms before it commits. Crop guides and face boxes overlay here when enabled.
• Quality notice - An amber card lists any issues found: blink detected, soft focus, over/underexposed, face near edge of frame. See Photo Quality Checks.
• Recheck Quality - Re-runs the quality analysis on the current photo, using the current settings.
• Assignment badge - The assignment this photo is tagged to. Tap it to retag this single photo; retagging does not change your active assignment.
• Upload badge - The photo's live upload state. See Upload States.
• Image Data - Opens a dialog with the photo's app metadata (photo ID, managed filename sequence, original camera filename, camera identity, tag source, upload state, quality issues, …) and its EXIF data. Text is selectable for copying into a report.
• Photo Note - Free text attached to this single photo. Notes sync to the server with the photo.

New captures automatically become the displayed photo. To review older photos, pick them from the Gallery — tapping a thumbnail there opens it here.

Gallery Tab

Gallery shows the photos imported to this device. Use it to review, retag, or delete in bulk.

Elements:

• Thumbnail grid - Each card shows the filename, assignment badge, upload badge, timestamp, and any note. A warning icon in the corner marks photos with quality issues. Tap a photo to open it on Capture; long-press to start multi-select.
• Uploaded toggle - By default the grid hides photos that have finished uploading (the header shows how many are hidden). Tap Uploaded to show or hide them.
• Selection mode - After a long-press, tap to add or remove photos. The header shows the count and exposes Retag and Delete.
• Retag - Reassigns every selected photo to the same target in one step (or clears their tags). Useful if you shot someone into the wrong suite.
• Delete / Delete All - Always confirms first. Deleting a photo that was already uploaded only removes the local copy on the phone.

Path Tab

Path is the event-wide view of every assignment — the same list everyone else on the team sees. Pull down to refresh it from the server.

• Session overview card - Event name, venue, when your path session started, plus Active / Total / Completed counters. When an assignment is active you also get Complete Active and Clear Active buttons here.
• Filter box - The fastest way to find an assignment. It opens with a number keyboard (assignments are usually numbers); tap ABC to switch to text and search by name. Matches filter every section live.

Assignments are grouped into sections:

• Your Assignments - Open items assigned to you.
• Return Requested - Items someone asked for another pass on. Treat as higher priority.
• Unassigned - Fair game for anyone to pick up.
• Skip List - Red rows with a SKIP flag. Do not disturb unless Operations tells you otherwise.
• Other Assignments - Assigned to someone else. Visible for context.
• Completed - Finished rows, with who completed them and when.

Tapping a row activates it on this device. The active row is highlighted with an Active chip. Activating a Skip-listed row is allowed but shows the red warning styling.

Row actions (⋮ menu):

Not every action shows on every row — the menu adapts to the assignment's state.

• Assign to Me - Pulls the assignment onto your list, replacing the previous owner.
• Complete Assignment - Completes without needing to activate first.
• Add / Edit Note - Free-text note on the assignment itself, visible to the whole team.
• Show Retrieval QR - If the event has a media-code URL configured, shows a QR guests can scan to retrieve this location's photos.
• Mark No Photos - Completes the assignment and flags it as having no photos.
• Request Return - Flags the assignment for another pass and notifies the photographers involved plus Operations.
• Reopen Assignment - Moves a completed or return-requested row back to open — and assigns it to you.

Session Tab

Session holds everything that isn't part of the per-photo, per-assignment loop: the event this device is attached to, the camera connection, upload status, and the activity log. Pull down to refresh.

• Event Session card - The active event with photographer, venue, event start, and session start, plus Assignments / Completed / Unread counters. Change Event opens the event picker; Export Session starts a transfer; End Session opens the wrap-up dialog.
• Camera card - Connection state with Connect / Disconnect buttons, a status line, the imported-photo count, and the connected camera's identity (name, stable ID, serial, USB IDs) — useful when reporting a misbehaving body. Also holds the Delete From Card After Import switch (off by default; removes the camera copy only after a successful import).
• Uploads card - Appears whenever photos haven't finished uploading. Summarizes counts by state and expands to per-photo rows with progress bars, error text, attempt counts, and per-photo Retry / Cancel buttons, plus Retry All. See Upload States.
• Session Activity - A running log of what the app has done (imports, uploads, assignment changes, sync results). The newest entry always shows; expand for history.
• Test - Sends a test notification through the server to this device. Use it to verify notifications end-to-end before an event.

Settings

Open Settings from the user menu (your profile picture, top-right). Settings are grouped into collapsible sections:

General

• Dark Mode - Dark theme throughout the app.
• Lock Rotation - Keep the app in portrait on this device.
• Notification Sound / Vibration - Per-device alert behavior for incoming notifications.

Display & Power

• Keep Screen Awake - Keeps the screen on while a camera is connected.
• Dim When Idle - With Keep Screen Awake on, dims the screen after a configurable idle timeout to a configurable brightness. Touch the screen to wake it back up.
• Notification Check Interval - How often the app polls the server for new notifications. Faster uses more battery and data.
• Update Check Interval - How often the app checks for new releases in the background. A check also runs at every login.

Photo Quality

The quality-check controls — see Photo Quality Checks for what each does. These fields can be pre-set per event by the server:

Admin

Visible only to admin/super accounts: edit the device SMID and add the SMID widget to the home screen.

Notifications & Messages

Everything event-wide — messages, return requests, upload failures, system notices — shows up behind the bell in the top bar. Unread items bump the badge and animate the bell, and (depending on your settings) play a sound or vibrate. The app checks the server on the configured interval.

• Unread notifications are listed first; read ones collapse into a Read Notifications group.
• Tap a notification (or Mark Read) to mark it read; Mark All Read clears the badge. Read state is per-photographer and syncs to the server.
• Reply on a message opens a pre-addressed response to the sender (Operations or the photographer who wrote it).
• Send Message - Compose to Everyone, Operations, or a specific photographer on the event. Two quick presets fill common bodies: Please visit this suite and Need reprints.

Offending faces are outlined on the Capture preview so you can see exactly which face triggered the flag. Use Recheck Quality on Capture to re-run the analysis after changing settings.

All of these live in Settings → Photo Quality, and each field may be pre-configured per event by PathKey (shown with a From PathKey caption).

How assignments read on the Path tab:

End Session

End Session is the event wrap-up for this device. Reach it from the user menu or from the Event Session card on the Session tab. It sends a recap summary to the server, then clears all event-scoped data — including every imported photo file — from the device.

Readiness blockers

The dialog will not let you confirm while any of these are true:

• An assignment is still active - Complete it or use Clear Active on Path first.
• Photos not uploaded - Anything Held Locally, Queued, Uploading, or Failed blocks the end. Retry failed uploads from the Session tab.
• Workflow updates still syncing - Pending local actions (completes, retags, notes) must reach the server first.

Recap notes

Use the notes field for anything Operations should know: which suites had issues, what equipment misbehaved, guest feedback worth logging. The text is stored with the session summary on the server.

What happens on confirm

1. The app sends the session summary (assignments completed, photos imported/uploaded, camera identity, device SMID, recap notes) to the server. The call is idempotent — a retry won't create duplicates.
2. On success, every imported photo file is deleted from the device and all event-scoped state is cleared.
3. You stay signed in, back on the Session tab with no event loaded — ready to pick the next event or hand the phone off.

Transfer Session

Export Session on the Session tab packages the device's session — a manifest plus every imported photo — and serves it over the local network for a print station or another machine to download directly, without going through the server.

1. Make sure the receiving machine is on the same network — connect it to this phone's hotspot, or put both on the same Wi-Fi. The dialog has a shortcut to the phone's Hotspot / Wi-Fi settings.
2. Tap Start. The phone starts a small local web server and shows a QR code plus the download URL.
3. Scan the QR (or enter the URL) on the receiving machine. The dialog tracks progress: waiting → transferring with a percentage → complete, and counts how many times the bundle has been downloaded.
4. Tap End Transfer when done. The dialog blocks accidental dismissal — the server keeps running until you end it.

If a transfer is interrupted, just rescan the QR to retry. The service also announces itself on the network via mDNS (_capturekey._tcp) so compatible receivers can discover it automatically.

SMID

The SMID is the Shatterproof Media ID label for this device. It rides along with every uploaded photo and the end-of-session summary so Operations can trace which phone shot what. The camera body has its own SMID, resolved server-side from the inventory system by camera serial number.

Ways the device SMID is displayed:

• In-app readout - Small text under the top bar, always visible while signed in.
• Home-screen widget - Shows the SMID large, with buttons to display it as a QR code and to open this manual. Add it from Settings → Admin (Add SMID widget to home screen) or from the launcher's widget picker.
• Persistent notification - A silent, ongoing notification shows the SMID even when the app is closed. Requires notification permission.

Editing: only admin/super accounts see Settings → Admin, where the SMID can be changed (1-10 uppercase letters, numbers, underscores, or dashes). It is a device/app setting — it survives logout and event changes.

App Updates

CaptureKey updates itself from the Shatterportal software channel:

• A check runs at every login and then on the interval set in Settings → Display & Power.
• You can check manually any time: tap the logo → Check for Updates in the About dialog.
• When an update is found, Download & Install fetches the APK and hands it to the Android installer. The install prompt is the normal system dialog.

The installed app must be signed with the same key as the downloaded APK or Android rejects the install — relevant only if a device somehow ended up with a debug-signed build.

Sync & Conflict Rules

Multiple photographers touch the same event at the same time. CaptureKey's model keeps things predictable:

• Active is device-local. Two devices can have "the same" assignment active. Each only tags the photos it sees.
• Complete is event-global, last write wins. The server records whoever completed it most recently. Completing also clears any skip flag and any pending return request on the row.
• Assign to Me wins the row. Reassignment replaces the previous owner, even if the row was already on someone's list. Last write wins; there's no locking at event scale.
• No Photos clears on new photo. If a photo is uploaded or retagged onto a No Photos assignment, the flag drops automatically. The assignment stays completed unless someone reopens it.
• Reopen takes ownership. Reopening a completed or returned row also assigns it to whoever reopened it.
• Skip is operator-managed. Operations sets and clears Skip through PathKey. Photographers see the red warning but can shoot it if instructed.
• Local writes are optimistic. Actions apply instantly on your device and sync to the server through an outbox in the background. Your own pending changes are overlaid on the server data so they always appear applied.
• Refresh protects your outbox. When the server has newer data but this device still has unsynced changes, a banner appears and the app waits instead of refreshing over them. A manual pull-to-refresh in that state asks for confirmation first.

Canon Camera Notes

CaptureKey talks to Canon EOS bodies directly over USB using MTP plus the Canon EOS event stream (a native libusb/PTP layer handles what Android's MTP API can't). Tested bodies include the R100 and the T5i. Other recent EOS bodies should work but may need a firmware check.

Compatibility notes

• Canon R100 - Works.
• Canon T5i - Works, with broadened handling for older Canon EOS event variants. If the status says "Listening" but no captures arrive, power-cycle the camera and reconnect.
• Other EOS bodies - Generally fine. If a specific body misbehaves, expand the Camera card on the Session tab, note the camera name / stable ID / USB IDs shown there, and send them to Operations.

Capture destination

Leave the camera set to write to its SD card. CaptureKey pulls copies. Writing to the card keeps a physical backup and is faster on tethered bursts than writing over USB.

Delete from card

If you turn Delete From Card After Import on (Session tab → Camera card), the app deletes each successfully imported photo from the card. This only runs after CaptureKey has the file and has registered it for upload. It does not run on failure.

Offline Behavior

Short-lived events often happen in venues with bad networking. CaptureKey is local-first:

• All workflow state is persisted on the device, scoped to your photographer and event. Camera capture, import, tagging, and quality checks work with no connection at all.
• Every event-global change you make (completes, retags, notes, no-photos, returns) is queued in an outbox and synced to the server in the background. The Session Activity log reports each sync as it lands.
• Photo uploads are handled by Android's WorkManager: when the device is online it drains the queue; when it's not, it waits. Failed uploads retry automatically the moment a network connection returns.
• Nothing needs to be pressed when the network comes back — outbox actions and uploads both resume on their own.

Camera / USB

• If the camera icon is red, open the Session tab, expand the Camera card, and tap Connect. The status line under the buttons says what the app is waiting on.
• Unplug and replug the cable — phone end first, then the camera end.
• Power-cycle the camera. Canon bodies sometimes need a full off-on after the USB permission dialog is dismissed.
• If Android keeps popping the USB permission dialog, check Always allow / Use by default.
• Swap to a known-good USB cable. Charge-only cables will not work.
• If the camera name reads wrong or "Unknown" on the Camera card, screenshot the card (it includes the stable ID and USB IDs) and send it to Operations.

Uploads stuck

• Confirm the phone actually has a data connection. Wi-Fi drops can hide.
• Open the Session tab's Uploads card. It shows exactly which photos are in which state, plus the last error and attempt count for failures.
• Failed uploads retry automatically when connectivity returns; Retry All forces it immediately.
• A single Upload Failed photo does not block the others. Several failing in a row usually means a connectivity or account problem — check the error text.
• If photos sit in Queued for minutes on a good connection, toggle airplane mode off and on. Android occasionally pins background work to an unavailable network.
• Photos showing Held Locally under an assignment you finished usually mean the assignment is still active — complete it or clear the active assignment on Path.
• As a last resort, sign out and sign back in. Local photos, tags, and pending sync actions survive sign-out.

Sync / Data

• If Path looks stale, pull down to refresh. If a banner says a refresh is waiting on unsynced changes, give the outbox a few seconds to drain (watch Session Activity) and try again.
• If two photographers appear to have the same assignment active, that's expected — active is device-local.
• If a No Photos flag disappeared from an assignment, someone retagged or uploaded a photo onto it. That's by design.
• Never clear the app's data in Android settings during an event — it deletes the outbox and un-uploaded photos along with everything else. If something seems wrong, call Operations first.

General

• Keep the phone plugged in or on a battery pack. Tethered capture drains battery quickly — the Dim When Idle setting helps stretch it.
• Turn on Lock Rotation if the UI keeps flipping when you hand the phone around.
• For persistent issues, note the photographer username, event name, assignment number, and approximate time, then send it to Operations. The device's SMID (under the top bar) and the Session Activity log help the server side pick up the thread.