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Hikvision Cameras' Notify Surveillance Center

edited June 2015 in SecuritySpy
Is it possible to offload motion detection to my Hikvision cameras and use their "Notify Surveillance Center" to trigger a MD event recording in SecuritySpy as can be done with some other NVR software? That would be awesome!

Comments

  • We haven't come across this before, but it is possible for any device to trigger SecuritySpy's recording using a simple HTTP request. Can the camera send a custom HTTP request when it detects motion?
  • Thanks, that's a good plan I just don't seem to be able to trigger a request that way. It seemed like a good thought at the time. SS's motion detection is preferable anyway.
  • Hikvision's built-in camera "Smart Events" system has come a long way with line crossing and intrusion detection - in their settings there is an option to "notify surveillance center" when an event is taking place...pretty vague, but is security spy able to pick up these "notifications"?

    It looks like others are able to pick up on this network activity:

    https://www.vueville.com/home-security/cctv/ip-cameras/set-up-push-notifications-hikvision-ip-camera-nvr/

    https://github.com/mezz64/home-assistant.io/blob/7e940121cc689c94cd32395b4bf36af5757e1b0c/source/_components/binary_sensor.hikvision.markdown

    See page 176 of http://oversea-download.hikvision.com/uploadfile/Leaflet/ISAPI/HIKVISION ISAPI_2.0-IPMD Service.pdf
  • I have now implemented support for Hikvision camera input ports, PIR sensors and on-camera motion detection in the latest beta version of SecuritySpy (currently 4.1.5b14).

    Under Preferences -> Cameras -> Setup in SecuritySpy you will see some new triggering options, including "camera motion detection" - enable this.

    Then, in the camera, enable motion detection and define an area to detect motion in. You'll also have to set up a schedule in the camera for when it performs this (all blue indicates it will do this all the time).

    You can leave the "Video motion detection" option in SecuritySpy on or off as you choose (it operates independently). Make sure that Motion Capture (and/or Actions) is armed in SecuritySpy for the trigger to actually do anything.

    You don't need to use the "Notify Surveillance Center" option - SecuritySpy doesn't use this.

    Please confirm this works as expected.
  • edited May 2017
    Thats Awesome. Will Test. Thanks for the regular upgrades and updates!
  • edited June 2017
    I have several HikVision DS-2CD2042WD-I cameras. I have been trying this out.

    On first tests, this does seem to work a little bit. The motion detection trips SS's motion and records, but I notice some odd things with the recorded video. (i have "decompress incoming video frames only when required turned on). At first I saw some recordings with full frame rate and then in the middle of one it cut down to what appears to be just the I Frame interval. So the recorded footage is not really usable, my I Frame is 20, 15fps.

    If you could get this working correctly this will be a MASSIVE feature for SS. This allows me to run 4mp cameras with 0.0% cpu usage! (unless I am live viewing things)

    This image shows three cameras. From top to bottom.
    1. 4mp cam, normal
    2. 4mp cam, in 1080p, normal
    3. 4mp cam, using new feature... 0.0% CPU!!!
    http://i1282.photobucket.com/albums/a522/MikeWesner/Other/Screen Shot 2017-06-05 at 12.07.04 PM_zpslqux19wn.png
  • I guess my other problem is that trying to configure the motion capture on this "iVMS-4200" software is pretty horrible. The sensitivity setting seems worthless, if its less than 20 it saves as 0, the grid/drawing thing is very buggy.

    So, thats the downside of this. I have to interact with hikvision software rather than ss. I continue to get i-frame rate video from this.

    I have 6 of these 4mp cams, and I would love to run them at a higher res (rather than 1080 and 15fps), but it just takes the cpu a bit much on this machine. I am using a mid 2010 mac pro with 2 x 2.4ghz quad core xeon, 24gb DDR3 1066mhz ram, AMD radeon HD 7950 3gb. (i dont know if that video card is helping me out at all or not, its an upgrade from a few years ago).

    40% of a core is quite a bit for 4mp at 15fps. The network is all gigabit and seems to handle all this stuff well.
  • mbwesner,

    I have 7 Hikvision cameras, haven't had the chance to try the new SecuritySpy beta yet, but just to comment on your post.

    There is no need whatsoever to use the dreadful ivms-4200 software. All Hikvision cameras have a pretty good webinterface where you can configure all aspects of the cameras.

    Your remark about iframe and frame rate... I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve.
    Every person is different ofcourse, but why would you want a huge resolution and a high framerate ? For me personally, I use 6fps, and have set my iframe to the same interval.
    My cameras are 3mp and I have set them to stream at 720p.
    For security purposes this is more than enough. I've never seen a burglar who runs faster than 1/6th of a second and doesn't get noticed by a camera...
    When watching a movie, I'd love a big resolution and a fluid framerate, but for a security camera ? As long as everything is clear and recognizable, all is good.
    BTW motion blur has nothing to do with framerate, but hikvisions don't have a shutterspeed control, so no matter how high you set your resolution and framerate, you will not get any picture that is free of motion blur.

    Anyway, I don't think that SecuritySpy has any influence on how you set your camera. SS just receives a trigger from the camera that it has detected motion, and SS then starts to record (or whatever you have set up inside SecuritySpy).
    Your camera is just streaming video at the resolution and settings that you have set inside your camera, and SecuritySpy receives this stream.
  • @petecam, I get what you are saying and I don't disagree with anything in particular.

    My point about the recorded video being I-Frame rate... i am just saying that the cameras are putting out 15fps, but when I use SS in the new mode, the recorded video is only recording those I frames (it seems like)... the video is not picking up all the frames that are being sent. When I switch back to normal SS motion detection, i get full 15fps video. I assume this is not intended.

    I agree I may need to tone it down on the res and frame rate.. I already did technically, These are 4mp cameras that can do 20fps! and I am using them at 2.1 (1080p).
  • Also, on the configuration... the web interface doesn't seem to let me setup motion detection at all because the little preview window isn't working. I guess I should try another browser.
  • The problem with SecuritySpy just recording I-Frames when the "Decompress incoming video frames only when required" option is turned on is a bug - we're working on it now and will post back soon!
  • i figured out the web interface.. so ill work with that. Just need to experiment.

    It is nice that in expert mode you can have night and day motion settings be separate.
  • @Ben GREAT NEWS. Any chance that will go to beta within the next week?
  • @Ben that bug also appears to impact remote viewing and screen saver.
  • One last question regarding this issue.

    If that bug is fixed, does that mean that SS will have to decode the video frames to just write it to disk? Or will I be able to record full frame rate to disk with little to no CPU usage?
  • Yes I'll get this done and released as a beta this week so that you can test it. It will mean that SecuritySpy will be able to record at full frame rate without needing to decompress the video (so if you have no video windows open, and no other need for decompression of the video stream like web server viewing, the camera instance should use virtually no Mac CPU resources). I'll post back here when the beta is released.
  • OK this should now be fixed in the latest beta version of SecuritySpy (currently 4.1.5b16). Please test and let me know!
  • @Ben that worked great. Full frame rate recordings using no cpu! It also seems to have fixed a schedule creating crash bug that I ran into yesterday, and a disable camera crash bug.

    At this point this setup is pretty nice, other than I think the motion detection on SS filters out bugs a bit better than the HikVision on camera version. But having all these cameras running with motion and using NO CPU is just fantastic. (This machine does many other things besides just security spy, it runs Indigo (Insteon home automation), plex, various security/monitoring services, logging, etc.

    On my cameras, I can set different regions (boxes) each with its own sensitivity and percentage/coverage parameter. I can set separate day and night settings for each region on each camera. Now, that all sounds great, and during the day I have it tuned pretty perfectly. I can exclude areas with trees/shadow/etc and yet still catch just about everything. I caught a rabbit running across my driveway yesterday!

    However, bugs... at night... just a nightmare for the hikvision detection. I have the sensitivity way down and its still just constant falses. Now, what I need to probably go for next is 1. off camera IR and 2. off camera PIR sensors. But for now I may just have to live with tons of falses, or use continuous mode (Which is fine, but I don't want to re-encode to a lower frame rate, so its going to eat disk.. 1TB should last a few weeks?)

    Anyway.. thanks for the quick updates and new HikVision features, this really makes for a great setup.
  • BenBen
    edited June 2017
    Great to hear it works well!

    Bugs are a difficult problem with cameras with built-in IR lighting. You'll get far better results using a separate IR light instead of the camera's IR light. Also, these separate IR lights are typically a lot brighter and will cover a much larger area than built-in camera IR lights, so you get other benefits too.

    If you want to use SecuritySpy's motion detection while not using much CPU, there is another way: add the camera's low-resolution substream as a separate camera in SecuritySpy, and turn on motion detection for this. Then you set this to this trigger the main stream when motion is detected. This way, only the low-res substream needs to be decompressed. The downside is that it does use up an additional camera slot in your SecuritySpy license, but you might want to do this for the one or two cameras that are most affected by false-positives caused by bugs, at least until you sort out the lighting.
  • edited June 2017
    I only have an 8-camera license and am using all 8 currently. Not sure I want to swing the $200 for more but I might at some point.

    @Ben I do think I spoke too soon about the video. I have discovered an issue.

    edit: it may be only on my DS-2CD2442FWD-IW cameras.

    If I have camera windows up, this problem does not exist.

    Without the windows, the resulting m4v files seem to be somewhat corrupt. The mac finder preview doesn't really play them at all, i see the progress bar moving but the image is frozen. If I open in VLC, I get a grey glitched video for a second and then the timeline jumps by minutes, 5, 11 minutes, that might depend on that last recording. Then it plays the video correctly for the motion captured clip. The SS web remote viewing can't play them well either.

    Looks like I have to leave the preview windows up still to use this. I am not sure why I didn't notice this yesterday during testing. I tried 1920x1080, 2304x1296, 2688x1520 and at different frame rates and such, but these were the same settings I had during yesterdays tests.
  • More testing, it does seem to just be my indoor box cameras, DS-2CD2442FWD-IW.

    I just had a motion capture with the preview window open and its still corrupt video. This latest file wont even play in VLC. Just shows a single frame, wont play.

    Any suggestions @ben on how to debug this?
  • just to add, one is wired, one is wireless. They both exhibit the same issue. I do notice an occasional blip where the wifi one will drop out, but it picks back up fine (i almost expect that for wifi cams, and i only have one on its own ssid). The machine is mostly idle (all the outdoor cams are 0% cpu now and working great). It must be these new box cams.
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