The Community Tab
Once you belong to at least one community, a Community tab appears in the bottom bar. Everything the community shares lives here.
The tab only appears once you are a member of a community and have it set to show as a tab. If you have hidden it, everything below is still reachable from More → Manage Communities. See Showing or hiding the tab.
Three views
A small switcher at the top moves between three ways of looking at the same thing:
| View | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Chimes | A grid of recent chimes, newest first — a photo, the camera, and when. |
| Map | The same chimes as pins, so you can see where activity is clustering. |
| Cameras | The community cameras themselves, rather than what they have caught. |
If you belong to more than one community, a filter at the top switches between All communities and one at a time.
Opening a chime
Tap any chime to open it. You get the full photo, the camera it came from, the community, and the time.
If the camera caught several frames, arrows step through them — Camera 1 of 3, and so on.
Escalating to the control room
The main button on an open chime is Escalate to ‹control room›.
Use it when a chime shows something that should not be there. It hands the picture to the monitoring control room as a real report, and an operator picks it up from there.
Escalating is not a "save for later" or a way to flag something interesting. It puts the chime in front of a control-room operator. Use it for genuine concern, not curiosity.
If something goes wrong sending it, the app says Could not escalate — please try again and leaves the chime as it was, so nothing is lost.
Live view
An open chime may also offer a live view of the camera. This appears only when that camera's owner has separately allowed external live view — belonging to the community is not by itself enough.
When a view is empty
The empty states tell you which of several different things is true:
| What it says | What it means |
|---|---|
| No recent chimes | The community is set up and working; nothing has chimed lately. |
| No community cameras | No member has switched chimes on for a camera yet. |
| No communities linked to this site | The site you are viewing is not attached to any community. |
| No approved memberships yet | You have asked to join but nobody has approved you. |
| Waiting for approval | Same, shown against a specific community. |
| Community access blocked | Your membership has been suspended by an administrator. |
| Join this community to view chimes | You can see the community exists but are not in it. |
The map has two of its own: No sites with location when nothing has a position to plot, and Map unavailable when the map cannot load in this build of the app.
Showing or hiding the tab
The Community tab is optional. If you would rather keep the bottom bar short:
There are two ways to the same switch:
- More → Manage Communities, then under Display switch Show Community as a tab; or
- press and hold anywhere on the bottom navigation bar to open Navigation options, which holds the same toggle.
Its own note says what it does: Adds a 5th tab in the bottom bar for quick access to community chimes.
Hiding the tab removes nothing. Every community screen stays reachable through More → Manage Communities.
Related
- What a Community Is
- Joining a Community
- Community Chimes — making your own camera contribute