Smart Motion Detection generating a lot of false positives

[wittaj]

For many of us the Dahua AI works exceptionally well, but you have to spend the time to dial in the camera to your field of view. Running on default/auto settings will result in less than ideal performance.

I have had the camera AI work in blizzard and in less than ideal situations (Deepstack missed these in my testing).

Who uses Dahua AI capable cameras? Reliable AI for triggering events? Pro's/con's?

It has come to my attention that certain Dahua cameras come with built in AI that distinguishes between human & cars. I was unaware of this. Well, always saw the AI word used in the reviews but never really thought about it because I thought it was a Dahua NVR integration only. I am currently...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[XDRDX]

For many of us the Dahua AI works exceptionally well, but you have to spend the time to dial in the camera to your field of view. Running on default/auto settings will result in less than ideal performance.

I have had AI work in blizzard and in less than ideal situations.

Who uses Dahua AI capable cameras? Reliable AI for triggering events? Pro's/con's?

It has come to my attention that certain Dahua cameras come with built in AI that distinguishes between human & cars. I was unaware of this. Well, always saw the AI word used in the reviews but never really thought about it because I thought it was a Dahua NVR integration only. I am currently...

ipcamtalk.com

View attachment 155431 View attachment 155433

Were those from a Dahua NVR or directly from the camera?

 

[wittaj]

Those images were pulled from the camera so I could have the IVS lines on them for demonstration purposes (I run BI so those lines do not show).

 

[Mike A.]

The Axis AI detection works amazingly well, I just can't justify the cost.

I was speaking to Dahua's "SMD" specifically. Maybe Axis' works better. In Dahua's case "SMD" is intended to be an easy, no config, click and done solution. They also have a smartER motion detection with IVS AI that's better and works great. You just need to do some relatively minor set up of rules to configure it.

 

[jmpage2]

I was speaking to Dahua's "SMD" specifically. Maybe Axis' works better. In Dahua's case "SMD" is intended to be an easy, no config, click and done solution. They also have a smartER motion detection with IVS AI that's better and works great. You just need to do some relatively minor set up of rules to configure it.

To me, the Dahua SMD makes no sense, since you have to turn on general motion detection and it seems as though it switches the ONVIF to an alert state whether there is person/car detection or just regular motion detection. It would make more sense if you could turn on SMD without regular motion detection.

As it is, the feature seems somewhat pointless unless you have a Dahua NVR that can use the metadata.

I definitely will look into this again as I deploy more of the 5442 cams.

 

[wittaj]

SMD is placed on top of the MD, similar to how CodeProject is placed on top of motion in BI in order to knock out false triggers.

Just like CodeProject will not work if BI is not sending it motion to analyze, SMD will not work in MD is not sending it images to analyze.

That is why both are needed.

Dahua says SMD is an ideal solution for low populated areas where you want an alert for people or vehicles anywhere in the scene without having to set rules and draw lines.

But even then, if someone is trying to do too much with one field of view or hasn't dialed in the settings, then it will trigger falsely. For example, the AI works a lot better if the contrast setting is 6-8 numbers higher than the brightness.

And for the less than ideal field of views, the global config is needed to "calibrate" the camera to your field of view. If it struggles after that, then one is trying to do too much with a field of view or the camera is too high.

I have been running Dahua AI since it came out and on all my cameras combined I get less than 10 false triggers a year. It is probably more like 5 or so.

I had one field of view where I was getting greedy and tried to stretch the IVS rule too far in the distance and I would get an occasional deer triggering it, but moving the line in has eliminated that.

But several of mine have never had a false trigger. Like after awhile I would literally go out and walk around to make sure it was working LOL.

If I get a push alert, I know that someone is where they shouldn't be.

 

[looney2ns]

To me, the Dahua SMD makes no sense, since you have to turn on general motion detection and it seems as though it switches the ONVIF to an alert state whether there is person/car detection or just regular motion detection. It would make more sense if you could turn on SMD without regular motion detection.

As it is, the feature seems somewhat pointless unless you have a Dahua NVR that can use the metadata.

I definitely will look into this again as I deploy more of the 5442 cams.

Dahua's focus is for SMD to work with it's own NVR's, and recordings to the SD card in the camera. Which does work rather well in this regard.

The Dahua engineers I've worked with, don't even know what Blue Iris is for the most part.
Their market is aimed at professional installers, and dealers, not us.
Use IVS with Blue Iris, and it all works well.

 

[jmpage2]

That's useful information but that wasn't my experience when I tried turning it on.

When I turned on smart motion detection and person detection and set BI to record on ONVIF events it recorded all motion... I got 150 alerts from the cam in the span of 30 minutes due to a BBQ grill cover that was blowing in the breeze a little bit. There's no way that the camera was mistaking this for a human but I'd have to look at logs to verify that.

You've explained the other method very well, but it does seem like it's a bit of work to get it dialed in.

One advantage of AI is that I can use dual stream recording and only get notifications for people, but still have alerts with my higher resolution stream for capture used for both vehicles and people... or even for dogs and cats or whatever.

The setup of the AI was not that bad, but it does tax the CPU and I can see it becoming a problem with a lot of cams. Even with just four cameras and using the high resolution stream for analysis it will drive the CPU on the box to 100% for a few seconds for ANY event that the AI has to look at.

 

[Mike A.]

I think you're getting too caught up in semantics. "SMD" basically is just running motion detection through a somewhat more discriminating filter. They aren't two separate things operating at the same time. Rather, think of SMD as putting an overlay on regular motion detection when you click to enable it. You don't get regular motion alerts and SMD alerts. If set to do so, SMD with regular motion detection running behind it ideally shouldn't trigger on anything but a person/car. But it will in a lot of cases and give more falses. You also can't set things to be more discriminating as far as areas within the view and what/how things move. If you want better detection, then you use IVS which is more the "real" AI-based detection. I think very few of us here use SMD .

 

[jmpage2]

I think you're getting too caught up in semantics. "SMD" basically is just running motion detection through a somewhat more discriminating filter. They aren't two separate things operating at the same time. Rather, think of SMD as putting an overlay on regular motion detection when you click to enable it. You don't get regular motion alerts and SMD alerts. If set to do so, SMD with regular motion detection running behind it ideally shouldn't trigger on anything but a person/car. But it will in a lot of cases and give more falses. You also can't set things to be more discriminating as far as areas within the view and what/how things move. If you want better detection, then you use IVS which is more the "real" AI-based detection. I think very few of us here use SMD .

If that's true then person detection on the camera is fooled by a flapping piece of black fabric which is pretty gawdawful.

 

[wittaj]

It happens with CodeProject too LOL. There is a thread here somewhere that people post their funny mis-identifications.

AI isn't perfect.

But there are always things people can do to mitigate it if it is happening too often - adjusting the camera view or the IVS rule, global config, training their own model with their own field of view, etc.

 

[looney2ns]

You are making this way harder than it needs to be.
Too bad you don't take any stock in all the good suggestions you've received.
For any cam to perform it's best, it requires tuning for it's fov.

 

[jmpage2]

You are making this way harder than it needs to be.
Too bad you don't take any stock in all the good suggestions you've received.
For any cam to perform it's best, it requires tuning for it's fov.

Didn't take stock in suggestions?

I was simply confused about how the feature was working and commented on that.

IVS was suggested, but after fiddling with it a bit it seemed like it would take a little more work to get set up properly so I went ahead and turned the AI back on.

The AI certainly isn't perfect. I do get false alerts with it as well.

I'll hopefully have enough time at a later date to actually try to configure it. I'm replacing my driveway camera next and that might be an opportunity to try it since that camera sees an awful lot of traffic and even with the AI there have been some false alerts.

 

[Mike A.]

It's pretty easy. Basically, set BI to use ONVIF triggers under Video > Configuration. Under Trigger tab, check Camera's digital input or motion alarm. On the cam turn off motion detection and SMD, set the light bulb for Smart Plan on, make a rule, select human/vehicle as appropriate. 99% of your false alerts magically will be gone.

A little more to it in some cases, but that's pretty much it.

 

[mephisto_uk]

Very helpful information, I was sold the idea that SMD would work wonder with the terminator working inside the camera doing AI wonders and catching only the relevant stuff. Well, not when using BI then, that makes me wonder how a Dahua NVR would work. But I guess once you started getting used to the amount of feature in BI it may be difficult to justify using a regular NVR

 

[mephisto_uk]

Do I need this enabled to make IVS work?



I can't get any tripwire/intrusion to work on the IPC-T5442T-ZE. I've tried from creating intrusion with appear/cross and inside, to trip wires both directions, still no luck

Is there documentation/tutorials about this? It seems to be a minefield trying to get information how to set this up?

My other camera, an IPC-PFW5849-A180-E2 works fine with similar config, but the web interface is wildly different, so I can't tell for sure I'm configuring them in similar way

 

[wittaj]

Do I need this enabled to make IVS work?

View attachment 155799

I can't get any tripwire/intrusion to work on the IPC-T5442T-ZE. I've tried from creating intrusion with appear/cross and inside, to trip wires both directions, still no luck

Is there documentation/tutorials about this? It seems to be a minefield trying to get information how to set this up?

My other camera, an IPC-PFW5849-A180-E2 works fine with similar config, but the web interface is wildly different, so I can't tell for sure I'm configuring them in similar way

No, you do not use MD or SMD when using IVS. It will send you a ton of alerts.


You also need to make sure that you are using an account that can see ONVIF.

This is a common problem unfortunately when someone changes the admin password or it doesn't carry over to ONVIF user when initially setting up the camera.

What happens is the ONVIF user password isn't changed or created at initialization.

Log into the Camera GUI and under users you will see a tab called ONVIF User

Select it and then change the admin password for the ONVIF user to match your password.

Or simply create a new user and password and use that.


Then in BI, go thru these steps again:

There are a few places you need to set this up in BI (assuming you already set up the IVS rules in the camera GUI):

In Camera configure setting check the box "Get ONVIF triggers".

Hit Find/Inspect on the camera setting to pull the coding for the triggers.

Go into Motion Setting and select the "Cameras digital input" box. Uncheck (if not already) all of the BI motion settings.

On the Alerts tab uncheck the Motions Zones tab (those are alerting you to any BI motion in those areas in Zones A thru H)

On the alerts tab set up how to be notified.

 

[mephisto_uk]

I was not aware I had to enable smart plan:



It finally worked!

The new web interface on the IPC-PFW5849-A180-E2 doesn't have such a setting, I just added an intrusion zone and it worked straight away:

 

[wittaj]

Yeah one of the eliminating steps the new GUI does better LOL. About the only thing in most of our opinions LOL

 

[mephisto_uk]

I guess once I have some time I'll record some videos on YouTube for newbies how to set up these cameras in BI