On The Subject of Alarms

[bigeye]

Hi,
I'm weighing the set of cameras I'll buy to cover my house. I want at least some of those cameras to notify and/or email me when there is a motion trigger. And maybe trigger my homeassistant home automation system to "do stuff".

Looking at the specs, some cameras have alarm outputs while any have none. Does that mean those cameras cannot trigger notifications on movement?

So, if I want decent to good integration with my home automation setup or at least to get decent notifications to our phones, is there a minimum camera range/spec I should be focusing on?


Regards,
Dave

 

[aristobrat]

Cameras with separate alarm outputs would traditionally need to be physically wired (in addition to Ethernet) to something to make use of those alarms.

IMO, it’s a lot easier if you setup a cheap PC running Blue Iris for your NVR. Blue Iris is easy to setup to notify most home automation systems over the network, so no additional wires needed. Blue Iris also can watch the camera streams and do its own motion detection, which has more advanced options to help reduce false alarms vs the built-in motion detection that comes on most cameras.

With Blue Iris responsible for doing the motion detection and home automation notifications, that means virtually any IP cam that you want to use should work. Dahua Starlight/Hikvision Dark Fighter turrets are still usually the best bet for outside cameras when it comes to low-light image quality.

 

[bigeye]

This is interesting @aristobrat. Are there no advantages to the functionality that the cameras offer over blue iris? I did wonder about what BI might be capable of but assumed it would be a poor version of what the better cameras are capable of themselves.

 

[TonyR]

Are there no advantages to the functionality that the cameras offer over blue iris?

When it comes to methods of alert notifications and motion triggers (push notification, e-mail, SMS/MMS texts, audible), I am not aware of any.

I did wonder about what BI might be capable of but assumed it would be a poor version of what the better cameras are capable of themselves.

A very inaccurate assumption.

 

[aristobrat]

This is interesting @aristobrat. Are there no advantages to the functionality that the cameras offer over blue iris? I did wonder about what BI might be capable of but assumed it would be a poor version of what the better cameras are capable of themselves.

Most cameras have motion detection. That can be challenging to tune because about the only option you have is “sensitivity”. A lot of people find that by the time they’ve turned that down (to reduce false alerts), they also start missing real alerts.

Many Dahua/Hikvision models have an additional, better version of motion detection. Dahua calls theirs IVS, Hik calls there’s Smart Events. These add more features like being able to draw tripwire lines/intrusion detection boxes and only alert if motion crosses the lines. My experience if that these are a lot more reliable in reducing false alerts without missing real alerts.

Blue Iris has even more options to tune motion detection and to manage alarms overall. For example, being able to quickly mute all alarms for two hours when I’m mowing the lawn takes two taps on my phone. If I had to go to each camera directly to do that, that’d drive me crazy... esp since the cameras web interfaces aren’t the easiest to do on the phone, and I don’t think their mobile apps let you disable alerts.

 

[bigeye]

Many Dahua/Hikvision models have an additional, better version of motion detection. Dahua calls theirs IVS, Hik calls there’s Smart Events. These add more features like being able to draw tripwire lines/intrusion detection boxes and only alert if motion crosses the lines. My experience if that these are a lot more reliable in reducing false alerts without missing real alerts.

I've just had a look at IVS. Seems that it doesn't work with H.264/265 compression? Compression is pretty essential to managing data footprint so that's not good. Is Blue Iris able to do all of what IVS offers too? That is, should I be bothered about camera "smarts" at all?

 

[looney2ns]

I've just had a look at IVS. Seems that it doesn't work with H.264/265 compression? Compression is pretty essential to managing data footprint so that's not good. Is Blue Iris able to do all of what IVS offers too? That is, should I be bothered about camera "smarts" at all?

Study this if you haven't: Cliff Notes
IVS does indeed work with h.264/265
Blue Iris's abilities are much better than any camera or NVR based detection.
Blue Iris - Video Security Software

 

[bigeye]

Study this if you haven't: Cliff Notes
IVS does indeed work with h.264/265

Oh right! I was going from this: https://www.dahuawiki.com/IVS:IVS

 

[aristobrat]

Oh right! I was going from this: https://www.dahuawiki.com/IVS:IVS

You’re right though, if you enable the Smart Codec feature (which I think gets called h.264+ and h.265+) the camera doesn’t have enough processing power to do that and IVS at the same time.

To @looney2ns’ point, you can do IVS with regular h.264 and h.265.

 

[aristobrat]

Is Blue Iris able to do all of what IVS offers too? That is, should I be bothered about camera "smarts" at all?

IMO, Blue Iris can do everything that IVS/Smart Events can do, and then some. And you don't have to use a web browser with a stupid plugin (that may or may not work) to set it up.

BI also keeps adding new features. The last update laid the framework for being able to optionally send motion detection alert images off to other apps/services for further analyst (license plate recognition, human detection, etc). It'll probably take a bit once that feature is released to get it ironed out, but I'm pretty excited for it!

 

[bigeye]

So taking the implications of this further does this mean that non-optical improvements and features included as they iterate the platform ('5' series vs '4' series for example) don't really matter that much cos I can lean on Blue Iris for all of that?

This has really opened my eyes. Thank you

 

[aristobrat]

So taking the implications of this further does this mean that non-optical improvements and features included as they iterate the platform ('5' series vs '4' series for example) don't really matter that much cos I can lean on Blue Iris for all of that?

At the moment I'm more leaning that way than not, but things are always changing in the IP camera space, so I'd still keep an eye out for what Hikvision and Dahua are up to with their new platforms!

 

[Tibor Makai]

I'm in a similar situation, that I'm about to install my new PTZ camera, and I was wondering, if I should run any of the wires(other than the Ethernet cable-got POE+ switch), that are coming out from the camera?
At the corner of the garage(front of the house), there is no real need for audio, right? I have a 5231R-Z in the porch + a Ring Pro doorbell.