What is your experience with Sentry?

sorka

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I'm still unclear what is done where? What phases of detection are done locally and what is sent up? What are the hardware requirements for the local machine. My I7 is running with 14 cameras all with motion detection enabled and it consumes 24 to 28% according to the windows task manager. What is the upload bandwidth usage i.e. what actually ends up getting uploaded? Single images? Video segments?
 

fenderman

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I'm still unclear what is done where? What phases of detection are done locally and what is sent up? What are the hardware requirements for the local machine. My I7 is running with 14 cameras all with motion detection enabled and it consumes 24 to 28% according to the windows task manager. What is the upload bandwidth usage i.e. what actually ends up getting uploaded? Single images? Video segments?
As noted in other threads, a single image is uploaded. No video us uploaded. Nothing is done locally except blue iris own motion detection that is require to trigger an alert before an image is uploaded.
 

sorka

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OK, dumb question. How do I configure it to send me an SMS *only* when a person is detected? I still want my clips to record on motion but I only want to be notified via SMS when a person is detected.

Also, it's not working most of the time. About 1 out of 4 times when I walk in front of one of my 1080p cameras taking about about 1/4 of the frame it fails to detect me.
 

sorka

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OK, think I figured it out. SMS are only sent now if a person is detected and motion only clips continue to record.

However, all alerts have stopped working UNLESS there is a person detected. The push notifications that play the little chirp I have configured don't work either unless there's a person detected.

Also, I have it configured so that if there is motion across two triangulated cameras in front of my house within 10 second of each other, I get an SMS. I do this by running a script to trigger my ISY for each camera whenever there is motion. This has also now stopped working unless I turn Sentry off.

Unless I'm missing something there is a major flaw here if there isn't a Sentry check box on each alert type.
 
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fenderman

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OK, think I figured it out. SMS are only sent now if a person is detected and motion only clips continue to record.

However, all alerts have stopped working UNLESS there is a person detected. The push notifications that play the little chirp I have configured don't work either unless there's a person detected.

Also, I have it configured so that if there is motion across two triangulated cameras in front of my house within 10 second of each other, I get an SMS. I do this by running a script to trigger my ISY for each camera whenever there is motion. This has also now stopped working unless I turn Sentry off.

Unless I'm missing something there is a major flaw here if there isn't a Sentry check box on each alert type.
That is how its intended to work. If you dont like it, you can email support or setup a cloned camera.
 

varghesesa

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How is sentry actually working? In the end the live stream or maybe one image per second must be sent to the Sentry servers. Or does local code "preselect" what is sent for deeper analysis to Sentry servers?
We decided to work off of Maketime on this version. We will evaluate other ideas to continuously improve results.

-- Sam from Sentry.
 

varghesesa

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Just turned this on for a few of my cameras to trial it. Is there a way we can help by sending a clip or something to improve it? I just went out to walk the dogs and only had alerts on 1 camera vs the 3 that usually email me when I walk by.
For this version, we worked off of Maketime. We considered absorbing clips but then internet connectivity and bandwidth come more into play. We are continuously evaluating other schemes for input. We should be getting better with future releases.
 

varghesesa

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As I've seen posted before, night vision filtering for Sentry needs some work...many motion triggers by humans in a close range dark environment with IR are not identified by Sentry.

Edit: Some alerts are identified by Sentry, but only if the human subject is facing the camera....at least in my FOV.
Night vision is continuous work in progress. Grayscale is just more challenging.

-- Sam from Sentry
 

varghesesa

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Set my PTZ to record the community mail box all day and out of 27 alerts with visible people there were 11 that failed to register with the sentry icon. Included the fails below. It would be cool if we could get a filter in the clips section to show only sentry alerts.

View attachment 40478 View attachment 40479 View attachment 40480 View attachment 40481 View attachment 40482 View attachment 40483 View attachment 40484 View attachment 40485 View attachment 40486 View attachment 40487 View attachment 40488
Nice test! We have two icons, were neither on the 11 that failed?

The filter was on the roadmap for this release, but ran out of time. We will be sure to add it to the next release!

We are noticing that Blue Iris sometimes times out before our AI has time to respond (usually needs 3-6 sec). We are researching on our end.

-- Sam from Sentry
 

varghesesa

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An interesting option would be to upload only partial image (similar to Blue Iris Area of Interest), but retaining the full camera view in Blue Iris. For example, I'm not interested in people walking on the right side of the camera's image frame, as it should trigger a false detection and I think that sending the whole image to Sentry would be approved as people appearing in the image, when it should be rejected by the whole system. Sure it will help a lot if BI just uploads an AOI to Sentry. Uploading only the AOI should help in those situations, like a filter, only analyzing the part of the image that we are interested on. In other Words, we should have the possibility to mark a "new zone" (A to F + H currently exist in BI, for example a new zone "S" for Sentry, that should be used only to analyse). There is also a benefit , data saving, as less data would be transferred to AI Sentry, optimizing also response .

Thank you.
Creating a Sentry AOI is a great idea! Appreciate the feedback.

-- Sam for Sentry
 
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varghesesa

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I'm still unclear what is done where? What phases of detection are done locally and what is sent up? What are the hardware requirements for the local machine. My I7 is running with 14 cameras all with motion detection enabled and it consumes 24 to 28% according to the windows task manager. What is the upload bandwidth usage i.e. what actually ends up getting uploaded? Single images? Video segments?
With this release, we only leverage the frame set by the Maketime (default = 1 sec) for each camera in order to minimize bandwidth. In future releases, we may want to leverage clips, but work in progress. Still need to figure out the right user experience so users understand the additional bandwidth constraints and perhaps costs associated with clip analysis.

-- Sam from Sentry
 

varghesesa

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OK, dumb question. How do I configure it to send me an SMS *only* when a person is detected? I still want my clips to record on motion but I only want to be notified via SMS when a person is detected.

Also, it's not working most of the time. About 1 out of 4 times when I walk in front of one of my 1080p cameras taking about about 1/4 of the frame it fails to detect me.
We use the frame set by the Maketime. We have noticed occurrences where BI does not wait long enough for a response from Sentry. Our AI takes around 3-6 sec. If issue persists, please open a ticket with Sentry so we can investigate.

-- Sam from Sentry
 

varghesesa

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OK, think I figured it out. SMS are only sent now if a person is detected and motion only clips continue to record.

However, all alerts have stopped working UNLESS there is a person detected. The push notifications that play the little chirp I have configured don't work either unless there's a person detected.

Also, I have it configured so that if there is motion across two triangulated cameras in front of my house within 10 second of each other, I get an SMS. I do this by running a script to trigger my ISY for each camera whenever there is motion. This has also now stopped working unless I turn Sentry off.

Unless I'm missing something there is a major flaw here if there isn't a Sentry check box on each alert type.
We only integrated Sentry with SMS and Email. Are you sure the other alerts have changed because of Sentry? If so, please open a ticket on Sentry website via the chat function so we can investigate.

-- Sam from Sentry
 

sorka

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That is how its intended to work. If you dont like it, you can email support or setup a cloned camera.
That may be so, but it eliminates the ability have notifications for both sentry AND just motion events. Unfortunately it is a non starter for me. Hopefully they will add this in the future. Until they can add Sentry specific alerts where we can configure any alert for either / or with meta tags in the alerts so we can do filtering on the receiving side I'll continue using the secondary IP streams to feed amazon Rekognition directly which gets me something similar although not nicely integrated with BI.
 

sorka

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We only integrated Sentry with SMS and Email. Are you sure the other alerts have changed because of Sentry? If so, please open a ticket on Sentry website via the chat function so we can investigate.

-- Sam from Sentry
OK, that's good to know. I tested it only briefly and didn't get the triangulated notice I was expected via the executed scripts but I did not go and look further to see if it was a glitch or something that happened on my end. I'll double check it. I hope I'm wrong because I'd like to switch over to a BI integrated solution.
 

varghesesa

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That may be so, but it eliminates the ability have notifications for both sentry AND just motion events. Unfortunately it is a non starter for me. Hopefully they will add this in the future. Until they can add Sentry specific alerts where we can configure any alert for either / or with meta tags in the alerts so we can do filtering on the receiving side I'll continue using the secondary IP streams to feed amazon Rekognition directly which gets me something similar although not nicely integrated with BI.
That's impressive chaining BI to Amazon Rekognition on your own. We will work with BI to associate alerts to Sentry triggers as a customer configurable setting in a near-term release. Afterwards, would love to hear your feedback on our image processing. We believe we are better than Rekognition but always receptive to independent feedback.

-- Sam from Sentry
 
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