Exacq Unbreaks Avigilon Integration

IPVMU Certified

For nearly 4 years, Exacq had broken and effectively blocked use with Avigilon cameras, as IPVM reported in January 2014.

Just the Avigilon motion detection was blocked, or Avigilon cameras in general?

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Ethan Ace

IPVM

VMD. There was no issue connecting to Avigilon cameras with Exacq, but you were limited to continuous recording. Now the VMD and I/O works.

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Undisclosed #1

IPVMU Certified

Didn't VMD anyway work if you just changed the onvifnvcpi.json file, as you pointed out in 2014?

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Ethan Ace

IPVM

At the time, yes, but it wasn't officially supported and would be overwritten every time you updated. I think support got a little spotty at one point, as well.

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Undisclosed #1

IPVMU Certified

That makes sense because it's ONVIF motion detection, not some propreitery version.

So if VMD worked for other ONVIF cameras on Exacq, and assuming Avigilon's implementation was correct, there's no reason it wouldn't work.

Therefore Exacq had to explicitly mark Avigilon cameras as not supporting ONVIF VMD so that the VMS would not even try.

So really Exacq didn't just break Avigilon VMD, but actually had to break their ONVIF VMD in a way that made it not work for Avigilon.

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Ethan Ace

IPVM

Nope. ONVIF events are not standardized, even something as simple as VMD. Manufacturers can use different XML strings for events as they see fit.

So in order to integrate various manufacturers, you need to know where their event stream is. It's not much in the way of coding requirements, but it still has to be integrated for each manufacturer.

That's what the onvifnvcpi.json file contains, the manufacturer name, the event (motion), the location of the event stream (RuleEngine/MotionDetection/), the specific motion event name (MotionActive), and whether it's off or on (1/0), shown here:

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Undisclosed #1

•Oct 19, 2017

IPVMU Certified

Nope. ONVIF events are not standardized, even something as simple as VMD. Manufacturers can use different XML strings for events as they see fit.

Are you sure about that? The strings are not arbitrary manfacturer creations, IMHO, and in any case they are dynamically discoverable at run time. The Analytic test tool expects:

So in order to integrate various manufacturers, you need to know where their event stream is. It's not much in the way of coding requirements, but it still has to be integrated for each manufacturer.

I agree that Exacq did it this way, and therefore needs the Avigilon entry in the file; but I don't think it was necessary based on the ONVIF docs I have seen.

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Ethan Ace

•Oct 19, 2017

IPVM

They unfortunately are arbitrary strings.

In that onvifnvcpi.json file you can find the strings for multiple manufacturers, here's a sampling:

VideoSource/MotionAlarm/
VideoSource/MotionDetection
VideoAnalytics/Motion/
VideoAnalytics/MotionDetection/
RuleEngine/MotionDetection/ThresholdCrossed/
RuleEngine/CellMotionDetector/Motion/

Some use 1 for on and 0 for off, some use "true" and "false", etc., etc.

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Undisclosed #1

•Oct 19, 2017

IPVMU Certified

They unfortunately are arbitrary strings.

Agreed they are different. Though they look somewhat more alike than arbitrary, consider for instance stream URLS. Maybe it's a holdover from early ONVIF implementations?

Regardless my point was that whatever data definition the device used it could be dynamically retrieved at run time via SOAP calls etc, obviating the need for the motion parts of the file. Perhaps it was easier for Exacq to manage it the way they did it.

Now the new Analytic test tool expects RuleEngine/MotionRegionDetector/Motion and event.

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Undisclosed #2