Trying to better understand Milestone motion detection

[voip-ninja 0]

I was going to send this to Beull as a PM (as I know he's starting to play with Milestone) but there are other installers and re-sellers here who have Milestone experience so figured I'd bring the topic to the group.

 

In playing around with Milestone "camera based" motion detection I have come to the realization that Milestone sets up its own events for this on the destination cameras. In other words, I can set up all of the motion detection areas and tweak the sensitivity (per zone) on my Axis cameras, but none of those events will trigger motion recording on Milestone XProtect.

 

Apparently I must use the Milestone wizard and motion detection settings to tweak motion detection and it seems a bit limited.

 

What are the experiences of others? Is there a not-super-complicated way to force Milestone to use the motion detectors I have programmed into my cameras or do I need to rely on their detection setup?

[grege 0]

I was maybe interested in trying Milestone.

 

So does it use the camera based motion detection or does it use their own or do you get a choice? I have ACTi cameras and didn't have any luck with their NVR 3.0 software using the camera based detection. I was using Blue Iris but was having trouble getting it to see the ACTi cameras. That's why I was thinking of trying Milestone.

[voip-ninja 0]

I was maybe interested in trying Milestone.

 

So does it use the camera based motion detection or does it use their own or do you get a choice? I have ACTi cameras and didn't have any luck with their NVR 3.0 software using the camera based detection. I was using Blue Iris but was having trouble getting it to see the ACTi cameras. That's why I was thinking of trying Milestone.

 

With Milestone you get a choice of using camera based motion detection or using their built in motion detection.

 

Interestingly though, they provide the same "motion detection" tuning interface regardless of which you choose. From doing a bit of research I suspect that what happens is you set your exclusion areas, sensitivity, etc, and they then program the camera appropriately.

 

I would just like, in the case of my Axis cams, to be able to allow the Axis cam to do all of the motion detection and still have the Milestone Recorder do the motion recording. Not sure if this is possible or not, but the Axis camera motion detection (which for example allows you to set different sensitivity for different areas) is superior in my opinion to what Milestone offers by way of their motion wizard.

[buellwinkle 0]

Don't know if Axis is different because Axis has the concept of an in-camera app and that's what they do in ACC to do motion detection, not the native Axis motion detection. But with ACTi, it's definitely using the camera's motion detection as I can change it in camera and it affects what Milestone records.

 

With less popular brands, Dahua and Hikvision, it uses it's own motion detection that works well. I have it set to iframe detection which is pretty CPU efficient and has worked well to capture motion.

[voip-ninja 0]

Don't know if Axis is different because Axis has the concept of an in-camera app and that's what they do in ACC to do motion detection, not the native Axis motion detection. But with ACTi, it's definitely using the camera's motion detection as I can change it in camera and it affects what Milestone records.

 

With less popular brands, Dahua and Hikvision, it uses it's own motion detection that works well. I have it set to iframe detection which is pretty CPU efficient and has worked well to capture motion.

 

That's interesting. I've pretty much 100% confirmed that what I am setting in the camera itself is having no affect on what Milestone is picking up. I was wondering why I was missing a lot of motion events even though my Axis cams were set up appropriately.... as soon as I tuned things in the Milestone interface the events were being picked up.

 

Perhaps Axis is a special use case.

 

Interestingly, when I was using Synology it did seem to pick up any motion event detected in the Axis cams, even after I resized windows, added additional ones, etc.

 

Sounds like a great opportunity for you to test their tech support since you are now a Milestone distributor.

[buellwinkle 0]

Sure, put the pressure on me, I'm learning from you. Not a distributor, just a Milestone Partner and it was you who convinced me to try it.

 

I found this on their forum that may help - http://forum.milestonesys.com/yaf_postst3139findunread_Axis-motion-detection.aspx#post6698

[grege 0]

Which version are you trying voip-ninja? Just curious.

[voip-ninja 0]

Which version are you trying voip-ninja? Just curious.

 

Which version of Milestone?

 

I demoed and ultimately bought licenses for XProtect Essentials with 4 cams. I'm quite happy with it other than normal issues like this one when you are using something new.

 

What tipped me over was the quality of the Milestone mobile apps. They are quite good.

[voip-ninja 0]

Sure, put the pressure on me, I'm learning from you. Not a distributor, just a Milestone Partner and it was you who convinced me to try it.

 

I found this on their forum that may help - http://forum.milestonesys.com/yaf_postst3139findunread_Axis-motion-detection.aspx#post6698

 

Come on, it's all in good fun.

 

Yes, I saw that thread which convinced me that in the case of Axis at least, the XProtect Recorder is direct-programming the cameras for the motion detection.

 

It's unclear to me if I could build an event for each of my motion windows and point them back to XProtect from with the Axis cams.

 

In any event, after some tweaking I'm pretty satisfied with the quality of motion recording I am getting.

 

I have observed one other fairly small problem. It seems that if I leave the thick client up in my virtualized Windows 7 machine, and then re-connect it, sometimes one or more cameras will show "connecting" or simply show a black screen. It does that with live video as well as recordings. If I wait a bit eventually they reconnect... or if I close and re-connect the thick client it straightens it out.

 

Not that big of a deal but worth mentioning.

[grege 0]

Which version are you trying voip-ninja? Just curious.

 

Which version of Milestone?

 

I demoed and ultimately bought licenses for XProtect Essentials with 4 cams. I'm quite happy with it other than normal issues like this one when you are using something new.

 

What tipped me over was the quality of the Milestone mobile apps. They are quite good.

 

That's the version I was thinking of. I first thought about XProtect Go but since my cameras are watching my lake house I thought the 5 day limit would not be good for me. I have Blue Iris but liked that the Milestone came with an app for my phone where I have to buy the one for Blue Iris.

 

What are the specs of your computer? I have a Core 2 6400 2.13GHz with 2GB of RAM. Wasn't sure if that would be good enough for Milestone or not.

[voip-ninja 0]

Which version are you trying voip-ninja? Just curious.

 

Which version of Milestone?

 

I demoed and ultimately bought licenses for XProtect Essentials with 4 cams. I'm quite happy with it other than normal issues like this one when you are using something new.

 

What tipped me over was the quality of the Milestone mobile apps. They are quite good.

 

That's the version I was thinking of. I first thought about XProtect Go but since my cameras are watching my lake house I thought the 5 day limit would not be good for me. I have Blue Iris but liked that the Milestone came with an app for my phone where I have to buy the one for Blue Iris.

 

What are the specs of your computer? I have a Core 2 6400 2.13GHz with 2GB of RAM. Wasn't sure if that would be good enough for Milestone or not.

 

I would probably start a new thread asking for a direct compare of Blue Iris vs Milestone, I know that Buellwinkle has direct compared them.

 

In addition to XProtect Go limitation of 5 days of archiving, it also has a limitation of only 1 viewer at a time. I'm not sure if it counts mobile app viewers towards this limit.

 

I think your PC will probably cut the mustard no problem. I tested out initially on an older 2.6ghz C2D and the CPU only broke a sweat when I was using the mobile server to simultaneously view 4 H.264 streams... I'm guessing it has to transcode them.

 

Worst case, you might have to upgrade the CPU if you do a lot of cams or mobile intensive stuff. I actually am now running XProtect on an old Windows Home Server HP EX495. I spent about $85 bumping the RAM up to 4GB and another $30 on a used E7500 CPU (2.93ghz C2D). It is now way over-specced for this job but I have headroom if I want to upgrade cams or add more later.

 

I bought a $50 copy of Windows Home Server 2011 for the EX495, which is basically a slightly stripped down version of Server 2008. At $50 its pretty hard to beat since it is more or less a real server OS.

[grege 0]

He said his review would be out soon so I was waiting for that too.

 

I was only questioning my PC because this morning I had remoted in and it was very slow. I'm still trying to get BI to see my cameras. I checked and the processor was at 100% with BI using 95%. I made some changes and finally got it down to 55% and that is with 3 cameras having no signal and only a Foscam with a signal. I was thinking of going ahead and going with an i7. I spec'd building one at Newegg but it ended up around $740. I may look and see what I can find already built.

 

Good idea about WHS.

[voip-ninja 0]

He said his review would be out soon so I was waiting for that too.

 

I was only questioning my PC because this morning I had remoted in and it was very slow. I'm still trying to get BI to see my cameras. I checked and the processor was at 100% with BI using 95%. I made some changes and finally got it down to 55% and that is with 3 cameras having no signal and only a Foscam with a signal. I was thinking of going ahead and going with an i7. I spec'd building one at Newegg but it ended up around $740. I may look and see what I can find already built.

 

Good idea about WHS.

 

BI doesn't use camera side motion detection which is why it's a CPU hog. If you use a software package that makes use of camera side motion detection (like ACTi, Milestone, ExacqVision, Avigilon, etc) you should be fine.

[grege 0]

He said his review would be out soon so I was waiting for that too.

 

I was only questioning my PC because this morning I had remoted in and it was very slow. I'm still trying to get BI to see my cameras. I checked and the processor was at 100% with BI using 95%. I made some changes and finally got it down to 55% and that is with 3 cameras having no signal and only a Foscam with a signal. I was thinking of going ahead and going with an i7. I spec'd building one at Newegg but it ended up around $740. I may look and see what I can find already built.

 

Good idea about WHS.

 

BI doesn't use camera side motion detection which is why it's a CPU hog. If you use a software package that makes use of camera side motion detection (like ACTi, Milestone, ExacqVision, Avigilon, etc) you should be fine.

 

Yeah I tried using ACTi software but I wasn't getting good results with the motion detection. Even if I had the settings low and went and jumped around I got no emails saying there was motion detected. Especially on one camera. I have a ticket in with ACTi and I'm waiting to hear from them.