| Software | Be There |
| Publisher | Alan Hart |
| Version | 1.0.1.42 |
| Release Date | 2026-04-07 |
| Required, may also be installed | Microsoft .NET Desktop Runtime 8.0.x |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 10 and above, 64-bit |
Instructions
As a new project, the installer program may display as “Unknown Publisher”. Your browser may initially block your download due as “suspicious” and you may need to click through blue Smartscreen warnings from Windows – please see the animation below. For now, this is unfortunately normal due to the heavy-handed virus protection built into Windows. The warnings may give you pause, as they are intended to, but you can verify my identity as follows:
- My LinkedIn page shows who I am and that I developed Be There.
- Please check that you are on be-there.cam before proceeding with the download.
The installer and application do not contain any viruses, trojans or malware – the code was all either written by me or comes from open-source libraries, and of course my reputation hangs on this being true.
Follow the installer instructions, and you should be ready to go in a few moments …
Changelog
What’s new in Version 1.0.1.42?
- Thousands of new cameras: Many new cameras are in the system, notably from Feratel, Panocloud and ViewSurf.
- Important bugfixes: Some users were not able to use Be There due to a race condition which could occur after registration. This should now be fixed. The code now also handles a corrupted user settings file correctly, and rare crashes in the map should now be fixed. Please get in touch if you find bugs, particularly bugs that prevent you from using Be There.
What’s new in Version 1.0.0.37?
- Major performance improvements: The desktop image is now scaled to desktop resolution rather than maximum resolution (by default – user can configure), and when rotating the wallpaper image, the image is more efficiently cropped first so that a smaller image is rotated. These changes improve speed and also allow even the biggest camera images to be handled without errors (“Telfs – Inntal Center” is 47000 x 5300). User can now control dot NET garbage collection via a “Clearout” slider – slide up to collect garbage less frequently if this helps performance on your system. Image processing was moved to its own thread, which should improve user experience.
- Memory optimisation: Made multiple improvements to thread safety and plugged multiple leaks of threads, GDI handles and OpenCV objects. Some mild optimisation of the map.
- Other bugfixes: Deglitched repainting of the camera “spreadsheet”. Caught problem where users got an error if the zoom/crop form was loaded before the first webcam image. Fixed a bug that could cause an exception when Be There exits in order to load a newer version of itself.
What’s new in Version 1.0.0.3?
- The launch is here, bringing a new login system! User registration has changed and now uses email link verification. Guided setup should now run once you register. Your login information is stored encrypted on our server (no names or plain text email addresses are stored).
- There are now three membership tiers. Be There was always planned to be free for basic use. Unregistered users can try a couple of hundred cameras, and cameras update once per hour. Most people will prefer the Free Registered tier – these users get access to all cams and get a 45 minute camera update rate, and can use filters and favourites. Paid users get the freshest images as soon as they’re available, and access to the map and the Mini Player, and can quickly see how fresh the image is.
When you register, you get a two-week free trial with full access to all these paid features, so you can see if you use them. No payment details are requested for the trial. We hope you’ll miss the premium features – if you do, you’ll see “Upgrade” on the tray menu and the registration form, which opens a special link to the website, where you’ll see pricing and Buy buttons. Payment normally goes through pretty quickly. Paid plans are monthly, yearly and one-time (lifetime). - Live connection to server. Be There now has a live (but very infrequent, low data) conversation with its server. Right now this communication is to establish subscription status and make sure you get the latest updates and upgrades, and in future this opens the door to some tempting ideas, like a live display of which cams are actually live and which are down, syncing your favourites across multiple PCs, or pushing new webcams to you without updating the app. If the server is ever temporarily unavailable, perhaps due to occasional maintenance or network problems, the app should continue to work normally until the connection is restored.
- Cool Tool Tips. For paid/trial users, mousing over the tray icon now displays a helpful indicator of how long ago the current image was captured. For all users, there are also explanatory mouseover tips on the main settings window, in case you weren’t clear on what those settings do.
- Cam Data Update. Cities and towns are now easier to find as they sit in a cluster together, and you can pick this in the guided setup. There were several data edits, including fixing three Iceland cams which had changed URLs. The cameras for Engelberg and Iceland now use a single loading scheme, which should make it easier to add technically similar cams in future.
- Disk cleanup on exit. The map tiles and image caches are now both flushed on exit. The map cache was moved to a more obvious location, adjacent to the image cache. The image cache was also enlarged.
- Robustness. This release involved a lot of testing and bug fixing. The desktop image is now only updated when it (or your crop) actually changed, and I’ve done some work to prevent you seeing an occasional blank desktop after a reboot or resume – so please get in touch with details if you see this happen. You should find that more of the windows now remember their positions when you close and reopen them. When you edit the view with the Zoom/crop window, this now works more reliably, and the Mini player updates its display immediately on “advance” rather than waiting for the desktop image to load. Be There should also now be more robust to a bad configuration file, but please don’t attempt to edit your configuration file – a mistake is likely to lose your settings and log you out. As part of this robustness push, Be There also now depends on the system clock being set roughly right and may quit if the system clock is found to be very badly wrong. You also probably won’t be able to buy a subscription if your clock is set wrong. If you need help setting the Windows clock, please see the FAQ.
- App updates. The application now knows if a more recent version has been released, and will let you know. If you agree to update, the app should quit cleanly and a web browser should open at the download page. The flipside of this is that we need to be able to retire older versions of the application, for example if we need to make major change to the way the server communicates, or for important security updates. So if you prefer to hang on to an old version, fine, but eventually you may have to update.
- Terms & Conditions. Ts & Cs are essentially unchanged, but they now open as an external web page to avoid having to distribute the Web View 2 component with Be There. The original privacy policy wording had had to be written before we had a working web shop or login system, and has now been slightly updated to reflect reality more accurately. We also updated the email addresses throughout the application to use the be-there.cam domain.
What’s new in Version 0.9.7.55?
- As we approach launch, the project has a name – Be There!
- Skaping camera support: Skaping changed their HTML in June 2025 which broke these cameras in Be There. The code has been updated to make them work again. Separately, some Skaping cameras also failed to show an available present day picture when “Best Shot” archive mode has been selected by the owner; the most recent image should now display in these cases.
- There was a large data clean-up. The night-time availability was updated for many cameras, and a handful of cams were removed where image was older than a year. Camera names were reviewed and now include the nearest ski lift where appropriate; elevation is now displayed for higher locations, and you should find that the names have often been simplified and/or shrunk to fit on screen better.
- There was a major overhaul of the way image brightness is managed, as many images were often much too dark. Foggy images are now lighter than they were; snowy images should now be white rather than grey, and overly dark images are now lightened where there is sufficient brightness variation in the image to allow this. There is some judgement involved in all of these changes and I can revisit the subject if people tell me that their desktop images are too dark or too bright. The improved image processing has allowed the “skip dark/off” functionality to be extended to skip images that are unexpectedly foggy or dark upon loading.
- The search function on the main (settings) window is now much more usable and understands a wider range of foreign characters.
- The About function is now more like what you’d expect – it shows the version number and gives you access to the legals (including third party licences).
- The release includes many small changes and bug fixes, including some tweaks to reduce CPU and internet bandwidth and to be even more considerate to cam servers, and improvement to the logic for “Pause mode”.
What’s new in Version 0.9.6.03?
- Added a link button on the map window that opens its current view in openskimap.org. This site allows 3d satellite viewing with ski runs/lifts overlaid; resort, piste and lift names are searchable, and right mouse button rotates the view.
- Major data update. The map positions of almost 400 cameras were painstakingly corrected. You should find that all-good quality cameras are now correctly positioned on the map to within 5m or so.
- A few cameras that have been non operational for over a year were removed. 19 new cameras were added:
- Méribel – Roc de Fer – Top of Olympic – 2290m
- Val Thorens – Cime Caron (new camera)
- Val Thorens – Top of La Bee drag
- Les Carroz – Top of Les Molliets 1860m
- Arêches Beaufort – Top of Combettes
- Chamonix – Refuge Albert 1er #1 (2700m)
- Chamonix – Refuge Albert 1er #2 (2700m)
- Chamonix – Refuge du Goûter (3815m)
- Megève – Nordic area – Chalet de La Livraz
- Saint-Gervais – Folie Douce / Top of Mont Joux (new camera)
- Iceland – Hlíðarfjall-Akureyri – base area
- Iceland – Hlíðarfjall-Akureyri – bottom of Fjarkinn
- Iceland – Hlíðarfjall-Akureyri – Northern pistes
- Dents du Midi – Troistorrents (930m)
- Superdévoluy – Top of Génépy looking South
- Superdévoluy – Top of snowpark 1948m
- Val d’Allos – Centre
- Faschina – near bottom of Guggernülli (T-bar) #1
- Faschina – near bottom of Guggernülli (T-bar) #2.
What’s new in Version 0.9.5.91?
- The app only attempts to set desktop “span” mode if “span” is not already set. This should further reduce the potential for side-effects of editing the registry.
- Some improvements to the dataset including roughly six new cameras and some corrected lat/long locations.
- Added support for Requea webcams. There appear not to be many of these, but they should now work (Chalet Pricaz, Refuge Albert 1er, Refuge Gouter).
- I changed the way a debug log is kept to handle two pieces of asynchronous code trying to access the debug log at the same time. Should affect only debug versions, not the released code available here.
What’s new in Version 0.9.5.73?
- Be There now attempts to ensure that the desktop is in “span” mode, which is required for the desktop image to display correctly. This requires a registry edit, but the key/value in question does not appear to require special permissions, and this should fail silently if the application is unable to write to the registry. This behaviour can be disabled on the settings screen in the event that it causes problems for users.
- Added Engelberg-Titlis to dataset
What’s new in Version 0.9.5.59?
- Added more frequent saving to disk of user settings, to avoid data loss on unexpected shutdown. Registration is saved at registration time. Filters are saved when changed. Favourites, crops and rotations are saved following a successful image load. General settings and the current camera are saved after a successful change to a new camera.
- Added + and – zoom buttons on the map window for users trying to use it with a touchpad.
- Added some protections to improve thread safety on exit.
