EdgeVis includes a powerful alarm management system that allows users to set alarm rules that perform actions (e.g. start recording) on a desired alarm trigger and then use the server’s communication abilities to notify the appropriate users. Additionally, it is possible to apply a weekly schedule to all alarm rules that can easily arm/disarm the alarm system.

R-Series encoder can further enhance their alarming capability by utilising low-power sleep modes in order to save battery power. While both features can be used independently, for R-Series encoders the combination of both allows for long-term battery-based deployments that utilise sleep modes to conserve battery and alarm rules to waken the encoder during periods of activity.

EdgeVis has two features that allow for sophisticated alarming capabilities:

While both features can be used independently (and are both documented in the following sections) the combination of both allows for long-term battery-based deployments that utilise sleep modes to conserve battery and alarm rules to waken the encoder during periods of activity.

EdgeVis Server contains a central alarm management service that monitors incoming alarm triggers from encoders, matches them against a set of user-definable rules and, if matched, performs alarm actions on the encoders and notifies end users that a rule has been matched.

These rules are stored and managed on EdgeVis Server, with a simple rule editor built into the server’s web management interface. It allows users to create rules that follow this simple logic:

Individual encoders support different kinds of triggers and actions; the rule editor will automatically detect the encoder's capabilities and settings to ensure only valid options are shown to the user.

The following sample rules provide examples of the different ways the alarm management rules can be utilised.

Example 1 - Sending an SMS to a security guard when a SafeZone-edge camera alerts

Example 2 - Send all team members an iPhone alert if the encoder is overheating

Example 3 - Start recording and move the camera to preset 2 if RDC ground sensor 1542 detects a vehicle

There are a number of steps a user must perform to create alarm rules:

The following sections explain each step in further detail.

To create an alarm rule on EdgeVis Server it is necessary to connect the encoder to the server. This is done in the normal way by:

Once the encoder is connected to the server it is usually necessary to enable the alarm triggers and sensors that will be used within any desired alarm rule.

Within the EdgeVis Server web interface open the encoder’s configuration page. In the Lifecycle Management section, select Alarm triggers, to present the alarm trigger options for your encoder model.

Some triggers are always on (e.g. a camera disconnected alarm), while some have options within the encoder configuration options (e.g. enabling RDC ground sensors).

For triggers with configuration options, these must be enabled for the appropriate option to appear within the Rule Builder interface

While a user is running EdgeVis Client they will always receive a notification in-app when a rule is matched. Additionally, users can enable additional notifications methods when they are not running EdgeVis Client:

If enabled on the server, a user can choose to be notified using any or all of these options. Before creating a rule, it is advisable to edit the users who will receive alarm notifications to enter the appropriate contact details.

To edit a user’s communications options:

However, sometimes it is desirable to disable notifications for a server. This can be done by modifying the list of devices from the Push Notifications page. This lists all devices the user has registered to receive alerts.
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Untick the Enabled column to disable alerts for a specific device. For devices no longer in use, it is possible to tidy up this list using the Delete tick box – but be aware that if the device reconnects at a later date notifications will be automatically re-enabled.
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A user configured for multiple communications methods will be contacted via each method when a rule is matched.

Once the prerequisite steps have been carried out, a user with the appropriate role/permissions can now create alarm management rules. This user must have a role that contains the ‘Edit the encoder's alarm rules’ permission against the desired encoder.

Within the EdgeVis Server web interface open the encoder’s configuration page. In the Lifecycle Management section select Alarm rules to present the alarm rules currently assigned to the encoder (if any).

Existing rules will be listed, with both a user-supplied ‘friendly’ name and an auto-generated summary of the rule.

To create a new rule, select the Create Alarm Rule button.

This presents three initial options:

On selecting Add alarm trigger the resultant dialog will show the various categories of trigger inputs supported by the encoder – this list will differ depending on the capabilities of the encoder:

The list will contain a number of these trigger types:

If any of the above categories are not presented when adding a trigger then the capability is not available on the encoder. If the category is greyed out then the encoder requires the user to enable the appropriate settings (e.g. if Ground Sensors is disabled then the user must enable ground sensors in the Alarm Triggers section).

Upon selecting a category, the next section will display a list of available triggers or sub-options (again greyed out if not currently enabled). For example, selecting Tamper will display the encoder’s tamper triggers:

Some options include further sub-options. For example, by selecting Ground Sensors it is possible to further customise the trigger parameters.

For Ground Sensors it is possible to narrow the detection criteria to:

It is possible to add multiple triggers to an individual rule. This allows triggers to be chained together to create what is commonly referred to as an AND rule. For example, IF (trigger 1 is activated) AND (trigger 2 is activated) then the rule should fire.

By default, when adding multiple triggers, they must fire in the order they are added. In the above example, trigger 1 must fire FIRST, and then trigger 2 must fire within 5 seconds to be considered a match. Use the arrows at the side of the trigger to reorder the triggers.

It is possible to change the trigger processing behaviour by clicking the Must be triggered… message above the triggers.

This allows the user to:

The main benefit of using a minimum activation time is to minimise false alarms, as this takes into account how quickly a person/vehicle can move from one sensor to another – two sensors triggering at the same time shouldn’t be humanly possible.

For example, when trying to detect a person approaching on a path, a combination of two ground sensors can eliminate false detections (e.g. people moving around inside the area being protected)

By placing a second sensor 50-100m outside the perimeter, a rule can be created that says:

Only alert if:

This should now only alert if a person approaches the perimeter but will ignore people who are walking inside the area (as trigger 1 doesn’t alert), and people who walk past outside without approaching (as trigger 2 doesn’t alert).

For the desired rule select the trigger type and any desired options. This should then extend the rule page to include two new sections: ACTION(S) and NOTIFY:

The purpose of these sections is:

Both of these sections can contain multiple items; however, it is necessary to add at least one item in at least one of these sections – otherwise, the rule has no output!

The following list explains the various actions that are possible to add to a rule - many of which revolve around recording. Most encoders have two recording modes (visible within the encoder’s configuration page under Recording settings):

The encoder must be configured appropriately to ensure the desired alarm actions behave as expected.

The final section in an alarm rule allows a user to send a notification that the rule has triggered to any number of EdgeVis users. There are four options:

Select the desired notification method, and enter the desired recipients:

It is then possible to enter a free-form message (and subject for e-mail), while using special tags to perform a smart activation-time replacement within the message. To insert one of these special tags into your message, select the tag below the text entry field:

There are a number of aspects to be aware of when utilising notifications:

Users who normally put their encoders to sleep can use a notification to keep the encoder awake for a short period of time (default - 10 minutes), to allow time for a user to:

After 10 minutes the encoder will return to sleep – this can be overridden by any EdgeVis Client viewer (currently viewing the video stream), who can utilise an on-screen prompt to extend the sleep timeout by another 10 minutes.

On supported encoders/firmware, the Override wakeup time action can be added to a rule, in order to change the initial 10-minute timeout to any value between 1 second and 1 hour.

Be aware that the alarm management system will allow users to create rules that contain triggers, actions, or notifications that are already referenced in other rules.

Additionally, should the same trigger be reused in multiple rules it will match with every rule – it does not stop processing rules on a first match.

This can create circumstances where two users can create competing rules – e.g. have two rules that fire on the same trigger but set the camera to different PTZ preset positions. It is up to the user to review existing rules and actions to ensure that the system behaves as expected.

On encoders with Safezone-2D capabilities, it is possible to use a combination of two different triggers to help eliminate false positives.

For example, a user who has deployed ground sensors may find that they are unable to place the sensors in a location that only captures the desired intrusion and will occasionally trigger incorrectly - generating a false positive alert. In this scenario using a combination of triggers can help. For example, in this ground sensor scenario, both of the following alarm rules would be useful in determining if an intruder is approaching:

Used individually, both rules could be fooled - by people passing by the ground sensors, or if someone steps outside the entrance. The combination of both rules would help eliminate false positives, by only alerting if the ground sensors detect a person, followed by the Safezone-2D alert of a person near the entrance.

On a mains-powered deployment, it is possible to add both of the triggers into one rule, by setting a minimum/maximum activation time to ensure the Safezone-2D detection happens at an appropriate time after the initial ground sensor trigger.

However, on a battery deployment, the encoder is normally asleep, making it impossible to use Safezone-2D unless the encoder is powered (and using a significant amount of power). The next section describes how to achieve the same effect.

In a normal battery deployment, it is usual that the encoder is put to sleep to conserve battery, and is preconfigured with a set of rules that:

This assumes that most triggers are external to the encoder and use minimal power. However, using the Safezone-2D video analytics is quite power-hungry, as it requires the cameras to be powered and the encoder to be performing computationally expensive analysis – potentially using many Watts.

For this reason, it is not possible to use Safezone-2D when the encoder is sleeping. To do so requires using another trigger, such as a ground sensor, to wake the encoder up first. To utilise Safezone-2D on a battery deployment we recommend the following steps:

In this scenario rule 1’s only purpose is to keep the encoder awake for the period required to perform video analytics, before returning to sleep. Rule 2 is the rule that should be used to perform ‘actions’.

While alarm rules require an external event to trigger the rule, it is also possible to create a list of actions/notifications that happens to a specific schedule. To view a list of an encoder’s scheduled actions, select the Scheduled actions item from the encoder configuration page in EdgeVis Server.

Creating scheduled actions is very similar to creating alarm rules, and swapping alarm triggers for scheduled timers. The action and notification options are identical to the options described in the previous sections, and it is possible to have multiple alarm rules and scheduled actions assigned to an encoder.

Scheduled actions can be set to occur:

Scheduled actions are more commonly used to perform maintenance tasks (like sending a confidence SMS or resetting a camera PTZ position). They will also temporarily waken a sleeping encoder if necessary; perform any configured actions, before returning to sleep.

Once the desired alarm rules have been created the next step is to monitor the encoder for alarm alerts. Once the alarm event conditions for a rule have been matched EdgeVis Server will send alerts in accordance with the instructions within the rule.

For example, a user who has SMS enabled in their contact details will receive an SMS containing the message set by the creator of the rule:

A user who is running EdgeVis Client will be aware of any incoming alarm alerts by monitoring the Alerts pane. This is available on both the EdgeVis Client home page or by selecting a layout with an Alert pane.

The Alert pane will display both historical alerts and any new alerts. If there are more than 30 historical alerts, then the first 30 are displayed. Alerts have three different states:

By default, the Alert pane only displays New and Acknowledged alerts (this can be changed from the Settings cog at the top-left of the pane).

When an alert is added to the list only a summary is displayed, showing the subject entered when the rule was created. For fuller details on the alert, including what event triggered the event click the small down arrow on the right of the alert – this will expand the alert:

When a user receives an alert, they can signal to other users that they are dealing with the alert by changing the state from New to Acknowledged. Click on each alert to be acknowledged then select the Change to Acknowledged button. This will change the state of every selected alert – EdgeVis Server will then update all other running EdgeVis Client users with the live state of the alert.

Similarly, the user can then signify that the alert has been dealt with by changing the alert from Acknowledged to Closed.

It is possible to quickly clear multiple alerts using the bulk change tool. Ensure no alerts are selected, then click the Change All button. This will present a dialog offering the option to bulk change either:

To clear all alerts, it is recommended to perform two steps – firstly convert all New alerts to Acknowledged, and then convert all Acknowledged alerts to Closed.

Bulk changing large numbers of alerts can take some time. The server will work in the background to perform the bulk update and notify the client when complete – any alerts in the Alert Pane will then be updated with the new state.

It is possible to configure EdgeVis Client for Windows to automatically open a video pane showing the appropriate encoder (and optionally with a map and/or alert panel) when an alarm notification arrives.

This feature is disabled by default and can be enabled from within the Settings menu -> Open video on alert.

iOS and Android users will also receive push notifications to alert users who are not currently running EdgeVis Client. Opening the notification will open EdgeVis Client, automatically selecting the correct encoder video stream to view.

To allow the use of alarms in environments where the area being protected is not normally quiet/sterile it is possible to set a schedule of when all alarm rules should be armed/disarmed on an encoder. Common examples include warehouses or schools where alarms should not be used during standard opening hours.

It is possible to create two types of schedules within a domain:

When schedules are applied to encoders in different time zones they will automatically use the local time zone of the encoder. For example, a command to arm the system at 09:00 will always be enacted at 09:00 in the encoder’s time zone - and not the time zone of the server, or the user who created the schedule.

The default setting for all encoders is Always armed with no exceptions, but you can set a new default weekly and exception schedule on a domain-wide basis, and/or specify a specific schedule on an encoder-by-encoder basis.

From the previous chapter, when creating a rule you will see it is possible to enable/disable any rule individually. Alarm scheduling is an additional feature that arms/disarms an encoder’s alarm rules to a timed schedule. In practice, any alarm rule will only be active when:

If either of these conditions isn’t true then the alarm rule will have no effect. No actions will be performed, and no users will be notified.

All schedules are located in the Alarm Scheduling section of the Encoder settings page that is available from a domain’s homepage. This page presents two options - select Weekly schedules to view a list of schedules.

In a new domain, there will be no schedules, and the default setting will be that all encoders will have all their alarm rules armed at all times.

Use the Create one now link to start creating your first schedule, and then enter a name for your schedule.

The weekly recurring schedule page then allows you to add a day and time (to the nearest 5 minutes) the alarm system on an encoder should be armed/disarmed.

Select the day, time, and the new armed/disarmed state for each point during the week you want to change the arming state.

For example, the screenshot above demonstrates how to disarm the alarm during office hours between 09:00 and 18:00. Add an entry at 09:00 on Monday to disarm the system when the office opens, and another entry at 18:00 on Monday to arm it when the office closes. This should then be repeated for the remaining days of the week.

A useful tool to visualise a schedule is the Preview button which will show the list of arm/disarm entries on a weekly calendar grid:

Once you have finished editing your schedule, select the Save button – this will add the new schedule to the list of available schedules.

To review the details of a schedule, select the schedule from the list. This will present the details of the schedule that can also be edited. There will also be two additional options:

All schedules are located in the Alarm Scheduling section of the Encoder settings page that is available from a domain’s homepage. This page presents two options - select Exception lists to view a list of available exception lists.

In a new domain, there will be no exception list, and the default setting will be that all encoders will have all their alarm rules armed at all times.

Use the Create one now link to start creating your first exception list.

Use the Create one now link to start creating your first exception list, and then enter a name for your list.

There are only two fields per entry. A specific date, and whether to arm/disarm for the entirety of this day. The date is fixed and will not automatically update annually – it is recommended to set an annual reminder to update any exception lists as required.

Any entry will take effect at midnight (encoder local time) and will use the same setting for the entire day, regardless of the setting in the main schedule.

To review the details of an exception list, select it from the list. This will present the list of dates within the list, where you can edit and save any desired changes. There will also be two additional options:

There are two ways to apply schedules/exception lists:

On the Weekly schedules page there is a Choose default for this domain menu button. This will present a list of weekly schedules which also includes a special Always armed option (which is selected by default).

Select the desired default schedule and select Save. This takes immediate effect (and so may change the current arming state of all encoders in a domain). It will not override any individually set schedule on an encoder.

On the Exception lists page there is also a Choose default for this domain menu button. This will present a list of exception lists which also includes a special No exceptions option (which is selected by default). Changing this setting also takes immediate effect on all encoders in the domain that do not have an individually set exception list.

The top of the Alarm rules page (when configuring an encoder) will show the current status of the encoder’s arming state. It will also list the schedule/exception list in use.

To change the settings (or to override the domain default) use the Edit button.

This page lists both the current schedule and exception list in use, and whether they are the domain defaults.

To override the domain default, change the first option from Inherit domain default to Encoder-specific setting then select the desired item from the second list.

Again saving these options will take immediate effect and may change the alarm state of the encoder.

The power consumption of a typical encoder, cellular modem, PTZ camera, and recording disk is often between 20-50W (and can be even higher). This is not a concern when the deployment is mains powered, however remote deployments usually require batteries to be used to power all equipment.

The challenge is that high-capacity batteries are big and heavy – the size of the battery required to power an encoder 24/7 for months could easily be heavier than two people can carry.

It is unlikely, in most scenarios, that the user is monitoring the video 24/7, meaning that much of the power would be wasted when there is no video of interest to view.

Specialist encoders (such as the HD-R700, 4K-R800), include special ‘Sleep’ states that allow the encoder to operate for extended periods using considerably smaller batteries. It achieves this by following a battery-based deployment strategy:

To achieve a ‘sleep’ state, supported encoders include a low-power management processor. It is the only component that is powered when an encoder is put to sleep. Its responsibilities include listening for incoming alarm triggers (including ground sensors), powering the encoder if necessary, and performing simple alarm actions (e.g. switching a relay) without the need to fully power the system.

There are three different power usage levels an encoder can operate at, depending on how it is configured:

The user only has the menu option to put the encoder to ‘sleep’ and the encoder will select the correct low-power mode automatically – it is the user’s responsibility to ensure the correct recording mode is set to ensure that either Sleep or ‘Always Record’ Sleep is utilised.

It is possible to use either the EdgeVis Server web management interface or EdgeVis Client to control an encoder’s sleep mode..

Within EdgeVis Client, open the video stream, and from the Settings menu, select Change sleep state…, or from EdgeVis Server, open the encoder’s configuration page and select Sleep configuration. EdgeVis Client only offers the ability to set the encoder’s sleep mode, while EdgeVis Server offers some additional configuration options to customise the encoder’s behaviour.

Within EdgeVis Server use the Put to sleep menu option to change the encoder’s sleep mode:

By default, the encoder will sleep forever, only waking up to deal with any alarm triggers/rules, before returning to sleep. This is the default mode for sleep (Wake on alarm) and cannot be disabled.

An additional option is available for battery deployments where 24/7 operation is required - but only after a certain point in time: Wake after set time

This allows the user to wake the encoder permanently after a certain time and date – this will cancel sleep mode entirely. This is useful to save battery in the period between deployment, and the time it will be required.

While putting an encoder to sleep will save power, the other important step to properly utilise a battery-powered deployed encoder is to create alarm rules that wakes the encoder when required.

This will require the use of deployment-appropriate alarm triggers and sensors including:

The next chapter outlines the steps required to create alarm rules within EdgeVis – for deployments utilising sleep it is a requirement to create the necessary rules, using the above sensors, to waken the encoder.

It is possible to cancel Sleep mode. Within EdgeVis Server the menu option to Put to sleep changes to Wake at the next check-in for sleeping encoders (with similar options within EdgeVis Client’s Change Sleep settings… page). Selecting this option will cancel any sleep mode and return the encoder to an Online state.

However, this will not happen instantly - as described earlier, the encoder has powered down most of its systems and has no means to receive this cancellation. In order to allow sleep to be cancelled, the encoder only sleeps for short durations (naps), before waking up and periodically checking in with the server to check:

It is only during a check-in that a sleep can be cancelled. The Sleep configuration page will display the next check-in time for a sleeping encoder.

Within the Sleep configuration page, there are two additional options available which can be employed:

These settings can be configured at three different levels:

Once configured at a lower level any changes made further up have no effect on the encoder.

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