From what I can see the Milestone plugins referred to plug-in to the Milestone software on the PC to extend Milestone functionality - so Milestone can then understand the non-standard proprietary camera trigger etc. outputs (the non-standard proprietary outputs that Dahua create to try and tie everybody in to using their [flawed] hardware recording devices - more
Duuuhua than Dahua).
The Axxon plugins I was referring to are instead installed into the camera itself (meaning some Dahua 12MP models) so the camera firmware becomes expanded/extended to do most of Axxon's image analysis in the camera (instead of the PC) and then pass the already in-camera analysed results back to the PC thus dropping the PC CPU/GPU load for video analysis down to nothing - which is a very power efficient way to do video analysis - if only Axxon was stable/worked -
instead the whack jobs in Axxon support department keep pressuring you to pay for Axxon software licenses even while they are remotely watching the failure take place on your PC - why would anyone pay for something that is faulty/does not work?
Which brings me back to
Milestone - we tried it around the same time as Axxon BUT Milestone had several months earlier (before we tried Milestone) decided to delete the ability to record continuously "by design" - there are various workarounds
BUT forcing continuous recording on Milestone (via workarounds) nowadays results in non stop activity being shown on the timeline so you lose motion trigger alerts on the timeline - unless someone replies to tell me that Milestone have now restored the ability to record constantly by design and without workarounds that negatively impact the entire timeline - which would be wonderful - anyone?
WHY is recording constantly / non-stop on some cameras so important?
BECAUSE you need to be able to prove that something did NOT happen.
EXAMPLE an expensive item is being mailed/posted/couriered to your property -
the tracking number suddenly changes to "Delivered" but you were in sitting by the front door looking out of the window and know nobody came near your property all morning - meaning that you have just been robbed by a delivery person of hundreds possibly thousands of Dollars worth of non-delivered property - tracking proves you have received delivery but in reality you physically have received nothing -
with Milestone's new design of no constant recording allowed by design you have no proof - as there was nothing happening to trigger Milestone into recording.
It is very easy to make the argument that the camera missed the delivery person (with all those massive black gaps in the Milestone timeline where nothing took place) and so did not record or even that you disabled the recording to steal your own delivery!
BUT the old way with constant recording (not from Milestone nowadays) you can call the Police, show the Police what time (on delivery tracking) the delivery person pretends they delivered to your property and then sit down and
show the Police as much footage as they like around the time in question re the non-existent phantom delivery person - then show the Police themselves arriving to prove the Camera time and date stamps if there is any doubt as to time accuracy - at which point you either soon get your property back and the phantom delivery person - Thief - off your delivery route / into a whole heap of trouble / arrested and / or a refund with no questions asked -
that is why constant recording ability is so vital - also to stop fake trips and falls claims against your property.
But Milestone have decided to live in their own delusional bubble and have decided for all of us that "by design" constant recording is no longer a Milestone function - considering any cheapo recording system can do constant recording
Milestone have turned themselves into a Millstone round your neck.
Also nowadays with many 10TB Hard Disks on the market 14TB and 16TB Hard Disks available for sale and 20TB Hard Disks released to testing in data centres -
WTF are Milestone playing at with their promotional literature boasting of now suddenly deciding to save hard disk space (when there is now no limited hard disk space problem left to solve) and
according to Milestone thus saving electricity by forcing people to stop recording to HDD continuously -
if Milestone want to save electricity in a meaningful way then Milestone should do in camera firmware extensions like Axxon - that saves a huge amount of electricity.
Milestone bizarrely want to save Hard disk space now it is a non-issue - it is a non-issue because there are now 10TB size Hard Disks filled with Helium (improves electrical efficiency) with their Aluminium case welded shut with a Laser beam (no kidding - to keep the Helium in - Helium is one of the smallest molecules see
Why a Helium Leak Disabled Every iPhone in a Medical Facility - bear in mind those iphones were probably of the waterproof generation and still the dissipated Helium molecules got inside the iphones and shut them down - but I digress)
Could be that Milestone architecture - having been around for quite some time - cannot cope well enough with today's burgeoning 8MP/4K UHD cameras appearing all over the place - suddenly the recording and analysis bandwidth load has gone through the roof - throw in a couple of 12MP detail cameras and suddenly Milestone installations that used to glide along start glitching and hiccuping quite severely -
maybe that is why Millstone have cut bandwidth by effectively banning constant recordings - to sidestep the total rewrite of Milestone that could be needed to cope with 8MP/4K proliferation - even with a successful rewrite what level of hardware would then be needed to cope with video analysis on the Milestone PC at the new total overall bandwidth load imposed by (say) a dozen 8MP/4K cameras - serious hardware RAID cards running several disks and GPU acceleration.
From what I remember at the time Millstone was playing a game of chicken with end users that boiled down to:- giving people using the
free version of Milestone (Free = unpaid Research and Development Department) the ability to use their GPU for Hardware Acceleration - those people were cursing Milestone because nobody could get GPU Acceleration to work properly / stably while the people who had already paid for Milestone licenses were furious that they were not allowed to Hardware / GPU Accelerate their installations because Milestone would not implement it apparently because
Milestone could not make GPU acceleration work (at the time) for the free Milestone unpaid R&D mob - so Milestone were not about to shoot themselves in the other foot and further anger paying customers. Am pretty sure that Milestone was only trying (and failing) to use the GPU to hardware decode H.265 - which implies that Milestone are a pretty incompetent bunch in terms of coding ability if they cannot get Hardware H.265 decoding working pronto.
I did not want to confuse my ask so I did not initially post this but Dahua does offer plugins and custom firmware for Milestone XProtect.
Look here
Find latest technology for your XProtect® VMS | Milestone Systems
- People FlowControl Plugin
- Face Recognition Plugin
- Thermal Body Temperature Monitoring Plugin
- HeatMap Plugin
- People Counting Plugin
- Metadata Plugin <- this is the one provides perimeter & intrusion and tripwire
For example for the Metadata plugin here is the requirements:
Specification
Required Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co., Ltd product(s)
Dahua 7/5 series AI Camera: DH-IPC-HF7442F DH-IPC-HF7842F DH-IPC-HF7442F-FR DH-IPC-HFW7442H-Z DH-IPC-HFW7442H-Z4 DH-IPC-HFW7842H-Z DH-IPC-HFW7442H-ZFR DH-IPC-HFW7442H-Z4FR DH-IPC-HDBW7442H-Z DH-IPC-HDBW7442H-Z4 DH-IPC-HDBW7842H-Z DH-IPC-HDBW7442H-ZFR DH-IPC-HDBW7442H-Z4FR DH-IPC-HF5241E-E DH-IPC-HF5442E-E DH-IPC-HF5541E-E DH-IPC-HDBW5241E-ZE DH-IPC-HDBW5241E-ZHE DH-IPC-HDBW5241E-Z5E DH-IPC-HDBW5442E-ZE DH-IPC-HDBW5442E-ZHE DH-IPC-HDBW5541E-ZE DH-IPC-HDBW5541E-Z5E DH-IPC-HFW5241E-ZE DH-IPC-HFW5241E-ZHE DH-IPC-HFW5241E-Z5E DH-IPC-HFW5241E-Z12 DH-IPC-HFW5442E-ZE DH-IPC-HFW5442E-ZHE DH-IPC-HFW5541E-ZE DH-IPC-HFW5541E-Z5E DH-IPC-HDPW5241G-Z DH-IPC-HDPW5442G-Z DH-IPC-HDPW5541G-Z DH-IPC-HDBW5241R-S DH-IPC-HDBW5241R-ASE DH-IPC-HDBW5442R-S DH-IPC-HDBW5442R-ASE DH-IPC-HDBW5541R-S DH-IPC-HDBW5541R-ASE DH-IPC-HDW5241TM-AS DH-IPC-HDW5442TM-AS DH-IPC-HDW5541TM-AS DH-IPC-HFW5241T-S DH-IPC-HFW5241T-ASE DH-IPC-HFW5442T-S DH-IPC-HFW5442T-ASE DH-IPC-HFW5541T-S DH-IPC-HFW5541T-ASE DH-IPC-HFW5241E-S DH-IPC-HFW5442E-S DH-IPC-HFW5541E-S DH-IPC-HFW5241T-AS-PV DH-IPC-HFW5541T-AS-PV DH-IPC-HDW5241H-AS-PV DH-IPC-HDW5541H-AS-PV DH-IPC-HDW5241TM-AS-LED DH-IPC-HDW5442TM-AS-LED DH-IPC-HFW5241T-AS-LED DH-IPC-HFW5442T-AS-LED DH-IPC-HDBW5442E-Z4E DH-IPC-HFW5442E-Z4E DH-IPC-HDBW5442R-ASE-NI DH-IPC-HFW5442T-ASE-NI DH-IPC-HDBW5242R-ASE-MF DH-IPC-HFW5242T-ASE-MF DH-IPC-HF5242E-E-MF DH-IPC-HFW5242E-ZE-MF DH-IPC-HDBW5242E-ZE-MF DH-IPC-HDPW5242G-Z-MF
I did not bother mentioning this because I figured it would overly complicate any support from Andy due to the custom firmware. The other is it says it is verified with the Corporate version so I doubt it works with the free version.
Here is Dahua's
Wiki docs on this
DahuaWiki
One reason I used Milestone for about the past decade was I configured it to write to a local SSD then automatically move the data in a sequential fashion to HDD via a timed based or capacity based event. My old system used a then new Samsung 830 SSD which I think was nearly Samsung's first consumer SSD line. I think I wrote like 12 Petabytes to it over the years and it still works. Viewing recorded video was very responsive since the disks were not messing with IO from several cameras.
For the cameras I did look at Arecont Vision back in the day as they had big sensor cameras but with the extra cost of the sensor and the huge cost requirements of the optics it was expensive. Bosch had nothing like that back then.
It stops other false detects too like heavy rain, lightning, and of course objects I'm not interested in. You can still enable sending alerts when an object is not detected, if desired.