I decided NOT to subscribe to Sentry…

z_zk_z

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Sentry is the best addition to Blue Iris and its subscription price isn’t bad after it has matured (i.e., bugs corrected). As a technical person, I don’t believe it is correct to transmit thousands of video images from users to the Sentry servers for human detection 24/7 (and generating useless internet traffic), when the Blue Iris could simply obtain the license from Sentry in order to run it locally on user’s PCs. I am also against transmitting my videos (especially walking naked in front of my cameras) to Sentry. Sentry says everything is encrypted, and no person actually views the video clips. We all know that Amazon Alexa already records people’s conversions without permission for “improving their software”, and I hate to see my naked photos on Internet just because of an unhappy employee at Sentry, etc. I would pay for the Sentry subscribe, if it was built into the Blue Iris.
 

fenderman

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Very happy for you. Perhaps another post on why you don't have ring cameras.
BI cannot obtain a license to run sentry locally. They don't sell it that way. Pesky fact's.
Thousands of images are not sent. Low resolution images are sent only after bi detects activity, the traffic is insignificant.
You can limit sentry to your outdoor cameras or only activate when you are away allowing you to prance around naked.
Sentry will survive without your money, notwithstanding your business accumen and demands on how it should work.
 

z_zk_z

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You took what I wrote completely in a wrong way. I am for Sentry functionality, however I am against anything requiring a cloud operation. What happens when Sentry servers or Internet connection goes down??? I have home automation, which rely on cloud servers and internet being up and running (or I can't even command a stupid light bulb to turn on/off). I am sure Blue Iris can hire someone to write a similar program as Sentry (or even buy the software from Chinese companies who are already using it in China) and make money via subscription. PS. I also have a ring camera and I gave it a single star. Here is a copy of my review from Amazon:

UPDATE JUNE 2019, In addition to requiring a monthly subscription, I have come to the conclusion that this product is VERY useless. This product starts recording when it detects a motion, therefore it is sleep to save battery until a motion is detected. This means that there is NO RECORDING of what happened just before it detected a motion. Go walk in front of the camera and walk away fast. The camera will tell you that someone is at the door, then you look who it was and you will see no one. What I want to know is why am I forced to give it even one star...
Let's say you are in the bathroom and someone rings your doorbell. You come out within a minute and the person is gone and you are now wondering who was at your door. This product doesn't even save the most recent recording and it wants you to signup for a subscription in order to see the most recent recording. I don't need to save my recordings for weeks at a time. I just want to know who just rang my doorbell. It is extremely easy to add this capability to this product, however why would they do it when they can get you to subscribe and make more money.


Very happy for you. Perhaps another post on why you don't have ring cameras.
BI cannot obtain a license to run sentry locally. They don't sell it that way. Pesky fact's.
Thousands of images are not sent. Low resolution images are sent only after bi detects activity, the traffic is insignificant.
You can limit sentry to your outdoor cameras or only activate when you are away allowing you to prance around naked.
Sentry will survive without your money, notwithstanding your business accumen and demands on how it should work.
 

fenderman

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You took what I wrote completely in a wrong way. I am for Sentry functionality, however I am against anything requiring a cloud operation. What happens when Sentry servers or Internet connection goes down??? I have home automation, which rely on cloud servers and internet being up and running (or I can't even command a stupid light bulb to turn on/off). I am sure Blue Iris can hire someone to write a similar program as Sentry (or even buy the software from Chinese companies who are already using it in China) and make money via subscription. PS. I also have a ring camera and I gave it a single star. Here is a copy of my review from Amazon:

UPDATE JUNE 2019, In addition to requiring a monthly subscription, I have come to the conclusion that this product is VERY useless. This product starts recording when it detects a motion, therefore it is sleep to save battery until a motion is detected. This means that there is NO RECORDING of what happened just before it detected a motion. Go walk in front of the camera and walk away fast. The camera will tell you that someone is at the door, then you look who it was and you will see no one. What I want to know is why am I forced to give it even one star...
Let's say you are in the bathroom and someone rings your doorbell. You come out within a minute and the person is gone and you are now wondering who was at your door. This product doesn't even save the most recent recording and it wants you to signup for a subscription in order to see the most recent recording. I don't need to save my recordings for weeks at a time. I just want to know who just rang my doorbell. It is extremely easy to add this capability to this product, however why would they do it when they can get you to subscribe and make more money.
You are poorly informed about AI. You can't just hire somebody to do this for you. There are a myriad of patents involved can companies spend millions of dollars developing these tools.
You are not relying on sentry for recording just to suppress the alerts. If the sentry server is down you will get the alerts just more of them that are not suppressed. What happens when your internet is down? You aren't going to get alerts either.
 
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IAmATeaf

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What product are you talking about? If the cam is not activating that that’s not an issue with sentry as far as I know. Have a look at your make time.
 

varghesesa

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Right now, we only take one image per clip. The image is defined by the MAKETime. So assuming you have no pre-trigger times set, the very first frame in the clip is sent to Sentry for AI analysis (Humans now, vehicle & pets coming soon).

We occasionally still miss the activity with one frame, so we plan to take 3 frames (MAKEtime, +1s, +2s) in an upgrade to reduce the false negatives.

We hear the concerns for an on-prem solution primarily for privacy reasons. We are still evaluating how to do so correctly. TBD.

-- Sam from Sentry
 

Madoxx

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When do you plan to add the 3 frame feature ?
How I could get informations about the changes done on sentry side. What are from my view is important to unterstand how the algo is actual and in the future working to get the best results out of the over all configuration including BI side.
 

varghesesa

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When do you plan to add the 3 frame feature ?
How I could get informations about the changes done on sentry side. What are from my view is important to unterstand how the algo is actual and in the future working to get the best results out of the over all configuration including BI side.
Working with BI right now on prioritizing bugs and feature requests. For example, the image sent in email and SMS alerts is now the frame that created the trigger. Fixes pop-up in updates and BI's updates sheet (Updates - Blue Iris Software). Open to ideas on how to improve the communications as well.

-- Sam from Sentry
 

Madoxx

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Thanks for you answer. Sounds good.
Is it possible to show / store the frames which are sent to sentry cloud somewhere in BI ?
May this would help to investigate if the trigger result are bad (in both cases positive false and negative false).
Also from my view it will provide more confidence to the user by having a insight view which data flow to the cloud.
 

varghesesa

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Thanks for you answer. Sounds good.
Is it possible to show / store the frames which are sent to sentry cloud somewhere in BI ?
May this would help to investigate if the trigger result are bad (in both cases positive false and negative false).
Also from my view it will provide more confidence to the user by having a insight view which data flow to the cloud.
We received a lot of feedback for a customer portal to share images received from BI. We agree, sharing the images provides a level of transparency and confidence in Sentry from the customers. In addition, it helps customers debug the MAKE time or easily check images that resulted in false negatives or positives to help us improve the AI.

For these and more reasons, we should have the customer portal up in 2019, not sure yet if it will be delivered in Q3 or Q4.

— Sam from Sentry
 

Madoxx

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Thanks. Sounds good again :)
I will jump in when that portal is available.
 

sorka

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Same here especially if I can adjust when images are sent from the start of detection and how many images. I had too many false negatives with only a single image. Being able to send up 4 or 5 would be more helpful. Also, consider that with more than 1 image from a scene you far more easily detect object addition and deletion through diffs. I'd think this would greatly improve the ability eliminate most of the image for actual human detection.

I'd also still need the ability to differentiate a notification between one that is just about motion vs one that has a human detected in it.

The biggest thing though, would be a customer portal that allows me to add known faces so that it doesn't notify about me and my family as we walk around the house.
 

Madoxx

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For these and more reasons, we should have the customer portal up in 2019, not sure yet if it will be delivered in Q3 or Q4.

— Sam from Sentry
Any progress with the customer portal ? Est. opening date ? :)
 

varghesesa

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Marketing is finishing wireframes for version one. Engineering has not scoped out the work and provided timelines. We are still anticipating v1.0 to come out in 2019.

-- Sam from Sentry
 
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