Camect alerts not reliable at all

[Gerhard Peters]

I have been using Camect for a year now and recently I started configuring alerts. I don't find it reliable at all. One thing it is consistent is detecting school buses but anything else is a hit and miss. For one camera I'm trying the alert ratings for a specific area. I have cars, pickups and trucks selected as objects. Once in a while, it will detect a car come or go meanwhile we leave and come back with our car and truck multiple times a day. Sometimes it will detect my tractor as a truck. The other day I was wearing a white baseball cap and it was detecting me as a bird multiple times. Many other instances where wrong objects are detected. Today I detected my son as a bird. He is wearing a white hoodie. I have been reporting them

I do like the playback features in V2

The cameras I'm using are Reolink

[MOH]

I have been using Camect for a little over 2 years now and find that the object recognition is quite good. The Camect staff can chime in here but my feeling is it may take a while for your reports to actually filter down into a performance improvement. I have also found that my object recognition seems better when I minimize the types of objects I want warnings on (e.g., if recognizing every time a bird gets into frame is not so important to you, I would suggest eliminating that as an object of interest). So far, my Camect has been very accurate in identifying the following: USPS truck, Amazon truck, FedEx truck, UPS truck, DHL truck (its very good at recognizing logos), person, deer, dog, cat (we get coyotes and mountain lions in the area), raccoon, squirrel, skunk, car, and truck. I do not think that tractors are listed as a separate object (probably will be classified as a truck). Sometimes my Camect was mixing up dogs and cats (OMG, armageddon with dogs and cats intermingling LOL). I use Amcrest 4k cameras and have a Coral USB (don’t know if that makes any difference). Arup and others can chime in here but I think it may just take some time for your AI to learn the objects better.

[Wendell Morris]

I’ve been using Camect since its early days, and overall I’m totally impressed by its accuracy.  I have a 9 pound dog that sometimes gets detected as a cat, but it doesn’t happen too often, and she is awfully close to the size of a cat, so I can’t complain about that.  There are occasional misclassifications of objects, but it’s fairly rare, and usually you can attribute it to poor lighting or some other condition that makes it excusable.  There have been times when Camect has identified an object (correctly) that I have to go back and replay to even see what it saw, so when that happens I’m particularly impressed!  Just last night it correctly detected a skunk, and while the markings on a skunk are pretty recognizable, in this case the skunk was walking around near some vegetation while there were strong winds that were whipping around the surrounding trees, weeds, and bushes, so it was really cool to see Camect pick out the relevant object and tag it amongst all this motion. Most camera systems with motion detect would have been falsing like crazy, yet Camect was perfectly quiet until the skunk came into the frame.  I’ve installed Camect for a couple of friends and a business, and in every case the system has performed quite well.  I wish the hub could handle a few more cameras in some cases, but overall it’s been quite impressive.  What framerate are you using on your cameras?  If it’s too low I think that could be contributing to the problems.

I just recently installed a new Camect system that’s using Reolink cameras, so your comment about Reolink caught my eye.  One of my Reolink cams is the Duo 2 (the one that stitches images from 2 separate cameras into a single stream).  It appears that this camera is hard coded to use H.265, and I’ve been having some issues with it disconnecting from Camect.  The Camect team is saying this is most likely due to errors in the encoded H.265 video, which doesn’t sound all that far fetched.  Which models of Reolink are you using, and are you having any issues with the stream getting disconnected?  The other Reolinks on my hub are E1 and E1 Pro (outdoor and indoor PTZs), and while the PTZ functions don’t work in Camect, the video streams seem to be fine.

[Gerhard Peters]

I have 4 RLC-511 Reolink cameras. You mentioned a disconnection issue. I have one of my cameras that does randomly get disconnected. One pattern seems to be when it is raining or windy but that is not always the case when the disconnection happens. This last night it had about 12 disconnects and it was windy. It is usually 1-10 minutes that the camera stays disconnected. Any idea what to look for? Now it has been connected for the last 6 hours and it is still windy. It is random and sometimes it is a full week of no disconnections.

Regarding the frame rate, I checked and the camera settings are for Fluent it is set to 7 and for Stream, it is set to 30. Should I change that? When I login to the camera settings I see one place H.264 Profile and it is set to high

Right now I removed all alerts from the hub and only have two alert ratings enabled with a specific zone on one of the cameras. One is for a bus in a zone for several school buses pass each morning and afternoon. It does not alert me to anything. When I enable alerts for buses in the hub for all cameras I get alerts for buses on this one camera. Seems like using alert ratings for specific zones is not working at all. I'm I doing something wrong?

What other settings should I consider?

[Wendell Morris]

I only just recently installed this hub with the Reolinks, so I don’t have enough data points on the disconnects yet.  For a period of time the disconnects were happening nearly constantly (it spent more time disconnected than connected), but I haven’t changed anything since then, yet it’s been staying connected most of the time for the last couple of days.  At first I thought it was doing better at night, but yesterday it stayed connected during the day as well, and there was a lot of wind and accompanying foliage movement.  It’s probably going to take some time to track down what influences the disconnects.  I don’t see any disconnect problems in the Reolink app, so it’s apparently doing something that impacts Camect but not its own native app.  And I’ve never had a disconnect with the E1 cameras… just the Duo 2.

What is the URL you’re using in Camect for one of these cameras?  Tap on the wrench in the camera’s title bar, then the little “i” after Camera Name.  The “Video” line should show the URL (you can copy the entire thing even though it isn’t completely displayed within the box).  7 FPS sounds too low for Camect, but I’m guessing you’re actually streaming from the 30 FPS feed, so I doubt that’s the problem.

I’m going to let the Camect team comment on the detection zones issue.  Are you sure you’re not just seeing the results of it suppressing some of the repeat alerts?  If you tap the “bell” icon in the title bar of the hub name, then tap on the “+” next to Filters, enable Suppressed Alerts and see if they show up in the list.

— 

— Wendell Morris

On Sep 23, 2022, at 11:12, Gerhard Peters <gerha...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have 4 RLC-511 Reolink cameras. You mentioned a disconnection issue. I have one of my cameras that does randomly get disconnected. One pattern seems to be when it is raining or windy but that is not always the case when the disconnection happens. This last night it had about 12 disconnects and it was windy. It is usually 1-10 minutes that the camera stays disconnected. Any idea what to look for? Now it has been connected for the last 6 hours and it is still windy. It is random and sometimes it is a full week of no disconnections.

[Wayne Wilson]

I too have been using Camect since the early days and I don’t have near as many false detections, rarely on people, I can’t even remember when it mis-identified a person.  It sometimes get mixed up with the variety of cats we have hanging about and thinks they are some other small animal.  I do report these video clips using the UI and things get better.  This is the best detection I have seen.   

I don’t know what’s happening with your setup, perhaps some unusual lighting?

[Mo Jo]

I have had my Camect for almost 2 years now and generally the alerts have been good.  I have had mostly good luck with the area definitions and only alerting the objects I want after flagging them a few times.  A dog is sometimes identified as a cat but overall it gets the object right most of the time until they go through cycles of updating the data and it will start randomly identifying things and shadows as people.  This has happened multiple times.  I go through the submittal process and in a couple of weeks it usually resolves.  Chao contacted me in June about Beta testing after I had lots of issues, but fell radio silent about the test.  This week it randomly started again and then started identifying USPS trucks that it had not done.  While Camect is much better than other systems I have used, the random deluge of false flags and lack of transparency in update processes is really disappointing.  

[CamectChao]

On Saturday, September 24, 2022 at 10:01:18 AM UTC-7 mojo....@gmail.com wrote:

I have had my Camect for almost 2 years now and generally the alerts have been good.  I have had mostly good luck with the area definitions and only alerting the objects I want after flagging them a few times.  A dog is sometimes identified as a cat but overall it gets the object right most of the time until they go through cycles of updating the data and it will start randomly identifying things and shadows as people.  This has happened multiple times.  I go through the submittal process and in a couple of weeks it usually resolves.  Chao contacted me in June about Beta testing after I had lots of issues, but fell radio silent about the test. 

The mentioned test feature has been live for a while. Let us know if you are still receiving false stationary vehicle alerts.

Sorry that I failed to respond to that thread.

This week it randomly started again and then started identifying USPS trucks that it had not done. 

We are aware of this issue. Such things are usually caused by the AI model over trained on some data and usually get fixed in the next AI model update.

While Camect is much better than other systems I have used, the random deluge of false flags and lack of transparency in update processes is really disappointing.  

We post to this forum for every software release.

As for AI model release, it's weekly. We occasionally may skip one week or two.

Users can always find the AI model version from hub setting dialog.

We don't post AI model release to this forum because there is not anything useful we can say about each release. 

For majority of the users, they won't feel any difference for AI model release.

[CamectChao]

On Thursday, September 22, 2022 at 11:05:58 AM UTC-7 gerha...@gmail.com wrote:

I have been using Camect for a year now and recently I started configuring alerts. I don't find it reliable at all. One thing it is consistent is detecting school buses but anything else is a hit and miss. For one camera I'm trying the alert ratings for a specific area. I have cars, pickups and trucks selected as objects. Once in a while, it will detect a car come or go meanwhile we leave and come back with our car and truck multiple times a day.

Sounds like your ratings may need to be adjusted a bit.

Please share one of such videos with us. Our engineers will take a look.

Sometimes it will detect my tractor as a truck.

That's expected though. We don't detect tractor. For now, it's detected as "truck". 

The other day I was wearing a white baseball cap and it was detecting me as a bird multiple times. Many other instances where wrong objects are detected. Today I detected my son as a bird. He is wearing a white hoodie. I have been reporting them

We detect people pretty reliable if the angle and distance are good.

For such wrong detection, the AI usually fixes itself after it gets the training data.

[CamectChao]

On Friday, September 23, 2022 at 8:12:27 AM UTC-7 gerha...@gmail.com wrote:

I have 4 RLC-511 Reolink cameras. You mentioned a disconnection issue. I have one of my cameras that does randomly get disconnected. One pattern seems to be when it is raining or windy but that is not always the case when the disconnection happens. This last night it had about 12 disconnects and it was windy. It is usually 1-10 minutes that the camera stays disconnected. Any idea what to look for? Now it has been connected for the last 6 hours and it is still windy. It is random and sometimes it is a full week of no disconnections.

Please file a bug report the next time it happens. Remember to tell us the name of the camera and the time it disconnected. 

If there is no network issues, it may be caused by the camera uses some "advancided encoding features". We need to see the logs to see whether we can find anything useful.

Regarding the frame rate, I checked and the camera settings are for Fluent it is set to 7 and for Stream, it is set to 30. Should I change that? When I login to the camera settings I see one place H.264 Profile and it is set to high

Right now I removed all alerts from the hub and only have two alert ratings enabled with a specific zone on one of the cameras. One is for a bus in a zone for several school buses pass each morning and afternoon. It does not alert me to anything. When I enable alerts for buses in the hub for all cameras I get alerts for buses on this one camera. Seems like using alert ratings for specific zones is not working at all. I'm I doing something wrong?

Please share one of such missed alerts. Our engineers will take a look.

[Gerhard Peters]

@CamectChao the disconnect is a network/camera issue. I set up a continuous ping with logging and when Camect alerts that the camera is offline it does not reply to the ping. Once the camera replies to the ping it shows online in Camect

How do you want me to share the missed alerts? Do you want me to provide the video of school buses going by by were not detected by alert ratings I have set up?

[CamectChao]

Right. Just share one of such missed alert video with us. If you haven't shared a video with us before, following is a simple guide:

- Use the "[" and "]" buttons to mark the begin and end of the video you want to share.

- Click the "share" button.

- Add a google drive account to the hub.

- Remember to check "also share with Camect".

[Gerhard Peters]

I have shared the video with Camect with the following description 

This video has 3 school buses passing by and 2 of them are stopping to pick up my kids. I have alert ratings enabled and get no alerts

[CamectChao]

Looks like you disabled alerts on your hub?

Please open the hub settings dialog and check "Detect alerts" to enable alerts again.

[Gerhard Peters]

Yes, I had the alert disabled and didn't know that it has to be enabled for alert ratings to work for a specific camera. But I know that I had it enabled until a few days ago, and no alerts

But I will start over again. In the hub alerts, I have it set only to send alerts for a cat. 

In the one camera, I have alert ratings set for a specific area for buses.  There are several school buses passing by every day so should be able to tell today if it will work. Then I have another area for cars and trucks. Both my wife and I leave and come with our truck and car every day. 

[Gerhard Peters]

Now I have alerts enabled on the hub but still no alerts from the one camera I have alerts ratings enabled. I'm I doing something wrong?

[CamectChao]

Can you share such an missed alert with us? Please leave your settings unchanged so we can investigate what happened.

[Gerhard Peters]

I have shared this video with you Front-of-the-House_20221006T075715_1m31.9s.mp4

I sent another one before this one and please ignore that one. I have not changed any settings and the above video has 3 school buses passing by in the 1 minute 31 seconds time frame

[Gerhard Peters]

Did you receive the video I shared with you?

On Saturday, 1 October 2022 at 17:09:34 UTC-4 CamectChao wrote:

[CamectChao]

I replied to you privately...

[Gerhard Peters]

I replied here on Friday and don't see my reply. I got your private message but your assumption is not correct

Yes, I only have alerts set for cats on the hub but for the Front+of+the+House camera, I have alert ratings enabled for buses, cars, trucks for a specific area. That is what's not working for me

If I enable alerts on the hub for  buses, cars, trucks it works

Please re-read what I said previously.