Goodbye Sentry

ffhamm

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My free trial ran out, and I don't think I'll subscribe. I think its a great idea, but not quite ready yet. I found I had to review all of my footage even with Sentry because it just seemed unreliable. I adjusted the make time etc but found that Sentry missed humans a good portion of the time, and labeled spider webs, moths and other things as human activity.
I will probably try it again in the future. I feel the idea is great but I dont feel that it is ready to be a paid service.
Good luck to you. I hope you meet your potential.
 

fenderman

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My free trial ran out, and I don't think I'll subscribe. I think its a great idea, but not quite ready yet. I found I had to review all of my footage even with Sentry because it just seemed unreliable. I adjusted the make time etc but found that Sentry missed humans a good portion of the time, and labeled spider webs, moths and other things as human activity.
I will probably try it again in the future. I feel the idea is great but I dont feel that it is ready to be a paid service.
Good luck to you. I hope you meet your potential.
Sentry will survive despite losing your $50, you're passive aggressive post notwithstanding.
 

ffhamm

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I'm sure they will, as I reflected, the idea is solid. I also think the price is fair, if it would have worked for me I would have kept it and been happy to pay.
 

fenderman

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I'm sure they will, as I reflected, the idea is solid. I also think the price is fair, if it would have worked for me I would have kept it and been happy to pay.
Sentry, like blue iris requires proper setup by the end user at it relies on BI alert images.
 

ffhamm

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I understand that, and I accept there is a probably a bit of user error and if I spent more time with it I would probably have better results. However, 100 alerts that a spiderweb moving in the breeze or a moth flying by being interpreted as a human when numerous alerts that clearly show the trigger as a person walking around a corner NOT being seen as human lead me to believe that the software still needs a little work. I am glad it works for you. I hope that as it matures, it will work for me as well. BTW it does a great job of knowing that a cat is not human.
 

fenderman

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I understand that, and I accept there is a probably a bit of user error and if I spent more time with it I would probably have better results. However, 100 alerts that a spiderweb moving in the breeze or a moth flying by being interpreted as a human when numerous alerts that clearly show the trigger as a person walking around a corner NOT being seen as human lead me to believe that the software still needs a little work. I am glad it works for you. I hope that as it matures, it will work for me as well. BTW it does a great job of knowing that a cat is not human.
You don't have it setup right at all. This is 100 percent human error.
 

bp2008

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What do you mean @fenderman ? I haven't used sentry before but I thought it was basically just a magic button with no configuration. What settings could he possibly have set wrong that cause Sentry to incorrectly classify his alerts?
 

fenderman

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What do you mean @fenderman ? I haven't used sentry before but I thought it was basically just a magic button with no configuration. What settings could he possibly have set wrong that cause Sentry to incorrectly classify his alerts?
There could be several possibilities.
1) Camera angle, view, image quality.
2) as far as missing human alerts improper adjustment of make time will cause the wrong image to be uploaded
3) not setting basic motion detection properly so you have lots of images being processed that should never have been uploaded to begin with.
4) there were certain versions of BI that failed to suppress alerts.

If you look at the other posts you will see users are successfully using sentry with a very high accuracy rate. This alone tells me that the OP is misconfiguring something.
 

bp2008

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I think the OP's concerns are valid.

While you are definitely right about the camera angle and image quality being possible problems, how often have you known even the most clueless user to set up a camera (angle/quality) so poorly that it would actually cause Sentry to fail? I can't think of one single occurrence unless you could things like shitty analog cams, video corruption, dirty domes, and bad IR reflection, all of which would be obvious to the user.

BI is still only sending one frame per event? That is interesting. I'm guessing it is the same frame that gets saved as the alert thumbnail? That could definitely be a problem sometimes, but I couldn't blame a user for not knowing this. It seems like a failure of Blue Iris and Sentry to integrate properly.

I totally disagree about needing to configure basic motion detection to avoid triggering on things like spider webs. Sentry exists because this task is notoriously difficult to achieve with traditional motion detection like BI has built in. If Sentry thinks a spider web is alert-worthy, that is Sentry's problem, not the user's.

It also doesn't sound like this was simply the result of a bad BI version.
 

fenderman

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I think the OP's concerns are valid.

While you are definitely right about the camera angle and image quality being possible problems, how often have you known even the most clueless user to set up a camera (angle/quality) so poorly that it would actually cause Sentry to fail? I can't think of one single occurrence unless you could things like shitty analog cams, video corruption, dirty domes, and bad IR reflection, all of which would be obvious to the user.

BI is still only sending one frame per event? That is interesting. I'm guessing it is the same frame that gets saved as the alert thumbnail? That could definitely be a problem sometimes, but I couldn't blame a user for not knowing this. It seems like a failure of Blue Iris and Sentry to integrate properly.

I totally disagree about needing to configure basic motion detection to avoid triggering on things like spider webs. Sentry exists because this task is notoriously difficult to achieve with traditional motion detection like BI has built in. If Sentry thinks a spider web is alert-worthy, that is Sentry's problem, not the user's.

It also doesn't sound like this was simply the result of a bad BI version.
My problem is not with his concerns, its with the way they are expressed.
We don't know what his imagine looks like.
Yes it sends one image. There are improvements on the way as their rep has indicated.
I have not tested sentry with a camera full of spider webs. I don't use bullets with ir rings around the lens.
The bottom line is that there are many users reporting high success rates. This indicates that the ai works well.
 

anijet

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............ BI is still only sending one frame per event? That is interesting. I'm guessing it is the same frame that gets saved as the alert thumbnail?..................
It's the frame that caused the trigger and not the frame that is sent with the SMS. (Is that the same frame as the alert thumb?) The SMS image is the image that is current when BI receives the positive indicator back from Sentry. Usually 5-12 seconds apart.

I have about a 90%+ success rate. The camera in my garage comes back positive when we drive in. A passenger is in the front seat on the side of the camera but I can't see the person. Not sure why Sentry consistently comes back positive on this one.

No web alerts - and webs are a problem for me even with all but one 5231/2231 outside cameras.

I had triggers fine tuned fairly good to start with but it has reduce the false alerts to a minimum and is much appreciated. I think it's a combination of trigger tuning and Sentry that provides the best experience. I've been gone for over a week and received 2 false alerts. Both headlights at night. I'll pass one of those and a garage image to Sentry just as an FYI when I get back.
 

varghesesa

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Hi ffham,

Apologies for frustration. I was wondering if it were possible to send a support ticket to support@smarthomesentry.com with your sentry-id. From your description it sounds like Sentry is not activated. I would like to trouble-shoot on our end if possible. If you do so, please reference "Goodbye Sentry IP CAM TALK thread" so it gets to me.

We can extend your trial as well. Thank in advance.

--

Sam from Sentry
 

beepsilver

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There could be several possibilities.
1) Camera angle, view, image quality.
2) as far as missing human alerts improper adjustment of make time will cause the wrong image to be uploaded
3) not setting basic motion detection properly so you have lots of images being processed that should never have been uploaded to begin with.
4) there were certain versions of BI that failed to suppress alerts.
And highlights and rectangles should also be turned off.
 
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