Motion Detection Events Processing

The server Flussonic Watcher can receive events over the SMTP protocol. Cameras send motion detection events over this protocol, and Watcher adds corresponding marks in the archive recordings in the places when motion was detected.

How motion recording works

Flussonic Watcher continuously keeps recording of video received from a camera, with the specified archive depth. When an event arrives, Flussonic Watcher saves the time interval in the database to be able to show the event in the archive player. The record with detected motion is protected from deletion.

The duration of a protected recording is determined by two timestamps, the first of which is calculated as the current time minus 10 seconds, and the second timestamp is the current time plus 30 seconds.

You need to set the depth of the archive, for example, 6 hours, and then enable the reception of events. As a result, you will have a recoding of 6 hours of continuous archive and additionally motion events, which will be stored as long as there is free space on the disk. Recording of new events will delete the old ones.

By calculating the necessary disk space based on the bitrate of the cameras and the frequency of motion events, you can save up to 50-90% of the disk space compared to the normal recording without events.

You can configure motion detection in two steps:

1. (If you don't use Flussonic Agent) Configuring Flussonic Watcher to receive motion events.

2. Configuring a camera to send motion events to Flussonic Watcher.

On this page

• Configuring motion detection events for cameras without Flussonic Agent

  • Configuring Watcher to receive events
  • Configuring the camera

• Configuring motion detection events for cameras with Flussonic Agent

  • Configuring the camera

• Viewing events in the web interface of Flussonic Watcher

Configuring motion detection events for cameras without Flussonic Agent

Configuring Watcher to receive events

To activate events receiving, add the camera_alarm plugin into /etc/flussonic/flussonic.conf:

plugin camera_alarm {
  catch motion;
  listen smtp://0.0.0.0:1025;
}

• The catch parameter specifies the word that Flussonic Watcher will search for in the subject of the message. Most cameras send messages that have the default subject like this: "Camera 123 Motion Detected at 14:21 27-07-2019".

  If your camera sends messages with a different subject or allows you to specify your own subject, then you can configure catch as you like.

  It is possible to specify several parameters for a catch by listing them separated by commas: catch motion,alarm,detect;

• The listen parameter specifies the interface and port for the built-in SMTP server. You can set login and password for SMTP:

listen smtp://username:password@0.0.0.0:1025;

Restart the server to apply the settings:

service flussonic restart

Configuring the camera for sending motion events

To configure the camera, specify the SMTP server address, and the names of sender and recepient.

Use the IP address of your Flussonic Watcher server as the SMTP server address.

The sender and receiver must be specified as full camera names (camera name and ID). You can find the full names in the Watcher UI. Example: cam1-abcdefg@example.com, where cam1 is a camera name in Watcher and abcdefg is a camera ID in Watcher. Besides, the full name of the camera can be found in the browser's address bar when the page with camera settings is open.

Here is an example of camera settings:

Configuring motion detection events for cameras with Flussonic Agent

If you have Flussonic Agent installed on a camera to automatically connect the camera to the server, if it is behind NAT, then you do not need to configure anything on the server. It is enough to configure the camera to send events.

To configure the camera, specify the SMTP server address, and the names of sender and recepient.

Go to the camera's interface to the message sending section and specify SMTP server settings:

SMTP Server: 127.0.0.1
SMTP Port: 5025

Fill in other fields. Sender name is the name of the camera.

Viewing events in the web interface of Flussonic Watcher

After you have configured a camera to send motion events, you can view the events in the DVR archive.

To view the DVR archive of the camera:

1. Go to Cameras in the Watcher main menu.
2. On the top of the page, select the List mode for viewing the list of cameras.
3. Find the camera (for example, by using the search form on the right).
4. Open the actions menu for this camera by clicking the icon in the most right column.
5. Choose View. The player opens and you can jump to the interval with recorded video. If DVR is disabled for a camera, the player shows only live video.

If there were motion events, you will see the marks on the timeline that show points in time when the camera recorded movement:

You can also go to the Motion detector tab on the Events page to view the events from all cameras. Use Filter to search for an event e.g. from specific cameras or in specific time. Click the event tile to view the event recording.

See also Events.