Person/Car Detection

mforrester

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Hi All

I have a 6 camera setup and migrated to Milestone from BI/Sighthound

Can someone advise if there is a addon setup where AI can be implemented for person/car detection? everything in the marketplace seems to be for professional use and I am just a home user. Happy to pay a small sub for the service if required, ideally something like deepstack integration would be good

Thanks
 

wittaj

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Well it was all in BI with DeepStack integration...

Do your cameras have AI built in and you can pull ONVIF triggers?
 

mforrester

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Sadly not, BI was not working well for me there are times where it was not triggered even though my settings we set very sensitive.

Slowly migrating from Reolink (non AI) to AI cameras seems to be the way forward
 

wittaj

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Reolink (whether it had AI or not) with BI is the issue. It had nothing to do with BI. If BI missed triggers, nobody would be using it, but it needs a decent camera to perform correctly.

I think you will find the same issues with reos and milestone. Reolinks only work "correctly" within their own platform (NVR), but that still doesn't address the image issues during motion.
 
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mforrester

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The cameras were fine and streaming fine and I used the in app movement detection and not the movement on the camera because that went off all the time.

The in app detection is working much better in milestone and the cameras are supplying the same feed res etc.

I live in a suburban area so suffer alot from sun through trees and shadows hence the AI requirement.

It was my first setup so I went with Reolink to get up and running.
 

wittaj

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Glad to hear Milestone is working for you, but I assure you that the issue you were having with BI was more related to the cameras than BI itself...

Blue Iris is great and works with probably more camera brands than most VMS programs, but there are brands that don't work well or not at all - Rings, Arlos, Nest, Some Zmodo cams use proprietary systems and cannot be used with Blue Iris, and for a lot of people Reolink doesn't work well either.

Blue Iris and Reolinks do not work well together, but the same principles applies for almost any low end consumer grade camera. It is just Reolinks is one of the more consumer end cameras people buy and come to this site as to why it is pointed out often about. I have a cheapo camera for overview purposes so it doesn't matter, but it exhibits this same behavior even though in the settings I can set an iframe...

This was a screenshot of a member here where they had set these cameras to 15FPS within the cameras (and look some of the sub FPS were dropped to 5 and KEY of 0.25 which is a recipe for missed motion):

1639751147274.png

Now look at the key - that is the iframes ratio. Blue Iris works best when the FPS and the iframes match. Now this is a ratio, so it should be a 1.00 if it matches the FPS. The iframes not matching (that you cannot fix or change with a reolink) is why they miss motion in Blue Iris and why people have problems. This is mainly why people are having issues with these cameras and there are many threads showing the issues people have with this manufacturer and Blue Iris. It is these same games that make the camera look great as a still image or video but turn to crap once motion is introduced.

The Blue Iris developer has indicated that for best reliability, sub stream frame rate should be equal to the main stream frame rate and these cameras cannot do that and there is nothing you can do about that with these cameras... The iframe rates (something these cameras do not allow you to set) should equal the FPS, but at worse case be no more than double. This example shows the cameras going down to a keyrate of 0.25 means that the iframe rates are over 4 times the FPS and that is why motion detection is a disaster with these cameras and Blue Iris...A value of 0.5 or less is considered insufficient to trust for motion triggers reliably...we have seen people come here where the reo/BI combo missed them pulling their car into their garage, so it would probably miss your motion as well.

A key of 0.25 means that if the object can be in and off of your camera view in under 4 seconds, it will miss the motion. Folks have seen the key drop to 0.10 with these cams, which means if an object is not on your screen for longer than 10 seconds, it will miss the motion.

Compounding the matter even worse...motion detection is based on the substream and look at the substream FPS - they dropped down to below 6 FPS with an iframe/key rate of 0.25 - you will miss motion most of the time with that issue...DeepStack probably won't work at all...

Now compare above to mine and cameras that follow industry standards that allow you to actually set parameters and they don't manipulate them. You will see that my FPS match what I set in the camera, and the 1.00 key means the iframe matches:

1639751177126.png

Here is the unofficial thread showing all the issues folks have with Reolinks. Despite our repeated attempts to ask people to share a good quality night time motion video, as you will see, it doesn't exist. If all you care about knowing is what time something happened, then maybe these are the right cameras if the person is in the field of view long enough, but you will never be able to IDENTIFY them...


Feel free to share your fine video stream of motion at night to the above thread and prove that they can perform well...
 
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Flintstone61

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My Blink system that I set up for a family member is missing motion in the garage when I walk by. But the homeowner insists that it works great at her brothers house. you get what you pay for unfortunately. I like the idea of $20-$50 cameras, but they have shortcomings.
she isn't willing to buy better.
 
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wittaj

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My Blink system that I set up for a family memeber is missing motion in the garage when I walk by. But the homeowner insists that it works great at her brothers house. you get what you pay for unfortunately. I like the idea of $20-$50 cameras, but they have shortcomings.
Her brother doesn't know what motion he is missing either...

When people only have cameras with no or very little overlap in camera coverage from other cameras, they don't realize how much the cameras are missing.

It is only when you have 3 or more cameras that can see the same area and you see that all the cameras got the motion or some of them didn't that you realize the deficiencies in a system.
 

fenderman

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Sadly not, BI was not working well for me there are times where it was not triggered even though my settings we set very sensitive.

Slowly migrating from Reolink (non AI) to AI cameras seems to be the way forward
This is a result of 100 percent user error. Too bad you didnt ask for help or read the help file..
 

mforrester

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Thanks for all the feedback but honestly I just came to ask if there is any home AI for Milestone I could use and it has turned into a bit of user bashing and the cameras I bought. I understand the love for BI but that is not what this thread was opened for.

I know they are not the best but they got me up and running, they do a job but there is a balance between how much I want to spend on CCTV and what I want in return.

I just wanted a bit of extra info if a person or car is detected on motion in Milestone.
 
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Sorry to bring an old thread back from the dead (first time this has ever happened haha). Full disclaimer I am a noob and an off-and-on amateur I.T. guy for 15 years. Mr. Mforrester, I am currently dealing with the same issue. I went with Milestone running on Window Server from the start. My reasoning is simply the scalability and flexibility. After all it is enterprise grade. While Blue Iris is definitely not a bad product, it has its limitations no matter what server hardware you use, and it has been documented on ipcamtalk here (forgive me for not posting the thread as I don't remember where it is). Try searching "Blue Iris and Threadripper" or somewhere along those lines. Anywho, I'm dealing with trying to configure continuous recording the proper way and not just simply turning up the motion sensitivity. On top of that and the main issue here; I'm trying to find a free/remotely affordable solution for AI person and vehicle detection. For Milestone, the most fitting AI plugin was from Scylla Technologies. I spoke with a sales rep and the licensing is a small fortune. About $500 per camera stream. That's not too surprising and not unreasonable for a business or enterprise but for me as a lower middle class consumer, "ooooouch". Due to the extreme flexiblity of the Milestone platform, I don't see any reason why you could not configure the AI detection from deepquest to work along with Milestone. You would simply configure your trigger paths and alerts to forward to Milestone. I haven't fully went over every detail in this tutorial here Adding AI detection to Blue Iris. One caveat to this method is that this solution lacks "auto-start" meaning you can't simply restart your server and it automatically run. You would have to login and manually start Deepquest AI. Yes there are workarounds listed in this tutorial but it's a bit messy and alot of moving parts. You know what something that has millions of moving parts is prone to? BREAKING! At the end of the day we need a rock solid and reliable solution especially when it comes to security and our homes. I have only been looking for a day and a half for a solution to the problem I have (and yours) as I am just now dealing with it but I have a gut feeling that with using the Milestone platform, there will not be a clean, free, or affordable solution. I haven't called Milestone yet but my internal thoughts on that are, "Yeah good luck you are not even paying for the product and they deal with fortune 500 companies everyday expending millions of dollars". I will slowly keep my eye out for a solution and I will continue to make a few phone calls and search for a reliable solution.

For now this is my "solution". It's cheating but still better than nothing. I currently have a Ring Doorbell. People detection is built in (it's affordable due to their massive customer base). Anyway my solution is to simply have recording enabled 24x7 and use the Ring service to show me alerts and timestamps of when a person or significant even happens. Then I can simply roll back the footage to the time listed and see what happened. Yes it's cheating I know but gosh I can get over that versus paying $500 PER camera. Would it be freakin awesome, heck yes but I don't have Kobe Bryant money. Sorry I didn't have a better answer at this time. I might look closer at the solution for Blue Iris and see if I can make it work with Milestone. If I do go that route and I may post a tutorial on ipcamtalk here but that is all in flux and I'm not very qualified myself so that remains to be seen. To the OP, I hope this post gives you a small amount of closure and happy camming everybody!
 

fenderman

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Sorry to bring an old thread back from the dead (first time this has ever happened haha). Full disclaimer I am a noob and an off-and-on amateur I.T. guy for 15 years. Mr. Mforrester, I am currently dealing with the same issue. I went with Milestone running on Window Server from the start. My reasoning is simply the scalability and flexibility. After all it is enterprise grade. While Blue Iris is definitely not a bad product, it has its limitations no matter what server hardware you use, and it has been documented on ipcamtalk here (forgive me for not posting the thread as I don't remember where it is). Try searching "Blue Iris and Threadripper" or somewhere along those lines.
Understand that blue iris like many other software constantly being improved. Blue iris is just as scalable, flexible and efficient as milestone unless you have more than 64 cameras. It has many many features and functions simply not available on milestone that benefit residential and/or small business users. Many of the old threads with respect to cpu resources, are no longer relevant since blue iris became capable of using sub-streams for matrix view and motion detection in May of 2020. This is how NVR's and other vms like milestone were able to keep cpu down. Blue iris can now do that as well.
If you are hell bent on a commercial product because you wrongfully assume they are better, look at digital watchdogs ipvms which is rebranded NXwitness for north America. They may have a cheaper AI integration and the software itself is only 70 per camera with lifetime updates and upgrades to all new versions.
 

wittaj

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Sorry to bring an old thread back from the dead (first time this has ever happened haha). Full disclaimer I am a noob and an off-and-on amateur I.T. guy for 15 years. Mr. Mforrester, I am currently dealing with the same issue. I went with Milestone running on Window Server from the start. My reasoning is simply the scalability and flexibility. After all it is enterprise grade. While Blue Iris is definitely not a bad product, it has its limitations no matter what server hardware you use, and it has been documented on ipcamtalk here (forgive me for not posting the thread as I don't remember where it is). Try searching "Blue Iris and Threadripper" or somewhere along those lines. Anywho, I'm dealing with trying to configure continuous recording the proper way and not just simply turning up the motion sensitivity. On top of that and the main issue here; I'm trying to find a free/remotely affordable solution for AI person and vehicle detection. For Milestone, the most fitting AI plugin was from Scylla Technologies. I spoke with a sales rep and the licensing is a small fortune. About $500 per camera stream. That's not too surprising and not unreasonable for a business or enterprise but for me as a lower middle class consumer, "ooooouch". Due to the extreme flexiblity of the Milestone platform, I don't see any reason why you could not configure the AI detection from deepquest to work along with Milestone. You would simply configure your trigger paths and alerts to forward to Milestone. I haven't fully went over every detail in this tutorial here Adding AI detection to Blue Iris. One caveat to this method is that this solution lacks "auto-start" meaning you can't simply restart your server and it automatically run. You would have to login and manually start Deepquest AI. Yes there are workarounds listed in this tutorial but it's a bit messy and alot of moving parts. You know what something that has millions of moving parts is prone to? BREAKING! At the end of the day we need a rock solid and reliable solution especially when it comes to security and our homes. I have only been looking for a day and a half for a solution to the problem I have (and yours) as I am just now dealing with it but I have a gut feeling that with using the Milestone platform, there will not be a clean, free, or affordable solution. I haven't called Milestone yet but my internal thoughts on that are, "Yeah good luck you are not even paying for the product and they deal with fortune 500 companies everyday expending millions of dollars". I will slowly keep my eye out for a solution and I will continue to make a few phone calls and search for a reliable solution.

For now this is my "solution". It's cheating but still better than nothing. I currently have a Ring Doorbell. People detection is built in (it's affordable due to their massive customer base). Anyway my solution is to simply have recording enabled 24x7 and use the Ring service to show me alerts and timestamps of when a person or significant even happens. Then I can simply roll back the footage to the time listed and see what happened. Yes it's cheating I know but gosh I can get over that versus paying $500 PER camera. Would it be freakin awesome, heck yes but I don't have Kobe Bryant money. Sorry I didn't have a better answer at this time. I might look closer at the solution for Blue Iris and see if I can make it work with Milestone. If I do go that route and I may post a tutorial on ipcamtalk here but that is all in flux and I'm not very qualified myself so that remains to be seen. To the OP, I hope this post gives you a small amount of closure and happy camming everybody!
Keep in mind that AI tools thread you linked is old and outdated and BI has since incorporated DeepStack into BI which is a lot simpler to implement.
 
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Hey guys! So believe it or not I read over all of your replies and reconsidered BI. Long story short I made the switch and I couldn't be happier. I've tried the demo for like fifteen minutes and I'm already in love. The UI is very intuitive and functional especially from a homeowner standpoint. Even the CPU usage is lower and I love the resource usage being shown in the web interface. I can say I have alot more minuses vs positives to say about Milestone for my use case and I should've went with BI from the start. I am going to purchase the BI license right now right after finishing this post. I'm a convert! Sorry for veering off topic for this thread but I just wanted to give an update and I appreciate everybody's input.
 
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