Introduction
Your EdgeVis encoder has multiple alarming mechanisms that it can utilise:
Your encoder's built-in Safezone 2D motion detector
Your encoder's built-in Object Detector
The ability to pass through ONVIG Profile S/T triggers from your camera
You can use these EdgeVis triggers within your VMS to create alarm rules. One of the most useful use cases is to be able to use event-driven recording - for example, with SafeZone 2D you can:
Begin recording when Safezone 2D detects motion
Stop recording when Safezone 2D no longer detects motion (or after a fixed period of time)
This allows you to make significant cost savings as you will no longer be streaming and recording 24/7 within your VMS.
In many VMS, you can also use the EdgeVis triggers to initiate a playback window within the VMS viewing client or alarming system, to draw attention to your VMS operators.
Multiple video input warning
It is possible, when using an encoder, to configure multiple input cameras on an encoder, but a lower number of output video streams. For example, you have two input cameras, and one output stream.
This would present as one output feed within VMS Gateway (and EdgeVis Client), and it is up to the user to select which camera is displayed in the output video stream.
If you enable analytics on both cameras, this presents VMS Gateway with an issue - it may receive alarm triggers from both cameras, which could interfere with the alarm rules within your VMS. For example, an alert triggered on the second camera could force your VMS to start/stop recording, despite it currently receiving the video from the first camera - and subsequently record the wrong footage.
To avoid this issue, only alarm triggers from the currently selected camera are transmitted to your VMS.
As a consequence, we strongly recommend that if you use this feature, you limit your encoders to one camera per EdgeVis output stream - this stops your users from switching input accidentally, and stopping alerts getting through to VMS Gateway.
Prerequisite - set up EdgeVis to generate the necessary triggers
Once you have set up your encoder, connected it to the server, and added your cameras, you should enable your desired analytic/trigger :
ONVIF Profile S/T triggers
(You must create an alarm rule for your desired trigger, as per the article; otherwise, the encoder will not send the trigger).
The easiest way to test that your trigger is working is to:
Create an alarm rule within EdgeVis Server for your encoder/trigger. Set the NOTIFY section to alert yourself.
View the stream within EdgeVis Client, and monitor the alarm events.
Deliberately fire your desired trigger, and monitor for the incoming alarm notification within EdgeVis Client.
Trigger mappings within your VMS
When creating an alarm rule within your VMS, it will present a list of triggers that you can use to fire your alarm rule. The names your VMS uses will differ on the type of EdgeVis trigger you use, and will likely not match the names used within EdgeVis.
You may have to experiment with various triggers to determine which trigger within your VMS maps onto your EdgeVis trigger.
As an example Milestone uses the following trigger names for:
Safezone 2D
Motion Started
Motion Stopped
Object Detector
Object Presence ([Obect type]) - Start
Object Presence ([Obect type]) - Stop
ONVIF Profile S/T triggers
These are prepended by (Dynamic) and are generated on demand, and usually take a form similar to your camera's originial ONVIF topic.
Example: Using event-driven recording using Safezone-2D triggers
This section will show you how to configure Milestone XProtect to:
register for the relevant ONVIF events from VMS Gateway
create an alarm rule that runs when the relevant trigger arrives from VMS Gateway
These principles will apply in any VMS you wish to use.
Register for the relevant ONVIF events
(This assumes you have already added your VMS Gateway to Milestone, and that recording is enabled).
This step is performed in the Milestone Management Client.
From the left menu, under the Server section, select Recording Servers.
From the middle section, open the VMS Gateway device, so that it lists all of the cameras (which are really encoders in EdgeVis). Click on the desired encoder (use the preview at the bottom to help).
The right panel will now show the options for the encoder. Click the Events tab along the bottom:
Click the Add... button and select Motion Started (HW), then select OK:
Repeat the above step, but select Motion Stopped (HW) this time.
The configuration window should now show both events listed:
IMPORTANT: To save these changes you must change the tab underneath the above list. To receive the Save prompt click on another tab button (e.g. Info or Settings). You should select Yes in the next prompt:
Milestone is now registered to listen for the two Safezone-2D alerts that VMS Gateway will now send (when triggered).
Create an on-demand recording alarm rule
This step is also performed in the Milestone Management Client.
From the left menu, under the Rules and Events section, select Rules.
From the middle section, right-click on Rules and select Add Rule...
This will open the rule editor:
In the bottom box, click the event hyperlink. In the resulting Select an Event, go into the Devices section, then Configurable Events, and select the Motion Started (HW) event:
In the bottom box, click the devices/recording server/management server link. From the resultant dialog, move the desired encoder over to the right window:
Your rule section should now look similar to this - click Next to move to the next step:
The next page shows Select conditions to apply - we can ignore that. Click Next again to continue.
The next page shows the actions to perform:
Click two boxes:
Start recording on <devices>
Make new <log entry>
Click the 'log entry' link in the bottom section. In the resulting dialog, click the Device name and Event name links, so your Text to log: looks like this:
After selecting OK select Next again to take you to the next step. The editor will automatically put an entry for a 'stop action', based on Motion Stopped (HW) - click Next again and it will automatically put in the action of stop recording. Your final rule will end up looking like this:
Click Finish to save and activate the rule.
Checking the rule works
There are two ways to see the rule in effect:
Gaps in recording where there is no motion
From within the Milestone Smart Client, if you open the encoder for live playback, you will notice that there are gaps in the recordings in the timeline along the bottom:
This means that the video from the encoder is only being recorded within Milestone during motion events, saving you recording disk space.
The relevant log entry in the Server Logs
From within the Milestone Management Client select Server Logs from the left menu, then Rule-triggered logs from the tabs on the right panel. This should list the events that have been received from your encoder, when the rule fires:
