Keeping an eye from afar
A rented photo booth stands all evening without its operator. Three tools tell how it is doing — from the regular email to stepping in remotely. They complement each other; none of them is mandatory.
| Tool | What it does | Needs |
|---|---|---|
| Status emails | Regular report to the inbox: counters, printer, errors | Mail access (SMTP) |
| Management portal | The state of all your photo booths at a glance, plus commands such as a restart or a message on the screen | Account in the portal |
| Remote access to the interface | Opens the admin area of the photo booth in the browser as if standing in front of it | Management portal |
All three need an internet connection at the photo booth. Without a network the emails stay away and no new report reaches the portal.
Status emails#
Found under admin area "System and device settings" > "Access & accounts" > "Mail access (SMTP)", block "Status Reports". They go out through the same outgoing mail server as the emails to guests. Once the mail access is entered and checked with "Send Test Email", only three settings are left:
- Switch on "Enable Status Reports".
- "Recipients" — one or more addresses, separated by commas or line breaks.
- "Interval (minutes)" — how often the report arrives, between 5 and 1440 minutes; hourly by default.
What the report contains is set by the checkboxes below:
| Checkbox | In the report |
|---|---|
| Name the event | The loaded event in the subject and header — helpful with several booths in use |
| Include sessions | Sessions since the last report and in total |
| Printer status | Prints since the last report and the state of the printers, per printer in pool mode |
| AI portraits | AI portraits created and the warning once the set threshold is reached |
| Wireless buzzers (connection and battery) | Whether each buzzer is connected and how full its battery is |
| Name the pending outbox jobs | What is still waiting to be sent |
| State the number of prize draw winners | How many guests have won so far — only while the prize draw is switched on in the loaded event |
| Include errors | The errors since the last report |
| Send error alerts immediately | A separate email for every error, without waiting for the next report — at most one every five minutes |
"Booth name" replaces the computer name in the subject, for example with "Booth 2 — mirror". Anyone running several photo booths can tell at a glance which one is writing.
Management portal#
The portal at portal.rawcapturebooth.app shows all your photo booths with their state: whether they are running, which event is loaded, counters, printers, camera battery and errors that occurred. No pictures are transferred. On top of that there are commands such as "Restart photobooth app", "Restart Windows", "Reset counters", "Show message" or "Start remote maintenance". The portal is available in German and English.
Connecting the photo booth#
- Create an account in the portal.
- At the photo booth: admin area "System and device settings" > "System Settings" > "Remote management". Switch on "Enable remote management"; leave the "Web server" set to "RAWCaptureBooth web server".
- Press "Send test report". The portal only knows the photo booth after a first report.
- Copy the "Setup key" with "Copy" and enter it in the portal under "Add Photobooth".
The setup key is derived from features of the computer and stays the same. Anyone running their own web server instead of the portal chooses "Self-hosted web server" and enters its address and API key.
Remote access to the interface#
Opens the interface of the photo booth remotely in the browser — even behind the Wi-Fi of a venue or a mobile router, without VPN and without port forwarding. That way a layout can be swapped or a printer checked without driving there. It is set up in the portal; at the photo booth only the switch under "Remote management" > "Remote access to the interface" remains. Details under System settings.
What for which purpose#
| Question | Tool |
|---|---|
| Is the booth still running, is there enough paper in the printer? | Status email or portal |
| Learn immediately when something goes wrong | "Send error alerts immediately" |
| Several booths in view at once | Portal |
| Restart remotely or show a message | Portal |
| Change a setting remotely | Remote access |
| Take the state into your own website or system | Status webhook |