New! Motion Events in Timeline and Alerts for People Events

[Saralyn]

MV Smart Cameras got two new features this week. You may have noticed the first one, Motion Events in the timeline, if you have logged into the dashboard to view video in the last couple of days. As you can see in the image below, we've added orange blocks to signify when the camera has detected motion. A few details: 

• Each block represents a separate event, and the opacity of the block indicates the intensity of motion. (Lighter orange represents less motion, darker orange is more intense motion.)
• When hovering over with the cursor on second generation cameras, the Motion Recap associated with the event will appear.
• Selecting any block will start video playback for the event.

The new timeline is designed to make it easier to understand what the camera has seen, and minimize the time it takes to find what you're looking for.

The second update is a little more hidden, but something that we'd been getting a lot of asks for. I'm happy to report that we've added our people detection intelligence to Motion Alerts. Now, in addition to selecting multiple areas of interest, and specifying the minimum time and intensity of motion, you can also be alerted only when people are detected by the camera. This is designed to increase the relevancy of alerts, and potentially reduce the overall number of alerts. As it requires people detection, this is available only on second generation cameras. In true Meraki fashion, configuring alerts for people events is simple, simply navigate to "Settings", then "Alerts" and select the "Enabled" button. 

We would love to hear what you think about the new updates. Can you see the new timeline being useful in your day-to-day, and will filtering alerts for people-only events change how you use Motion Alerts?

[EJN]

Like both of these features. I submitted a "wish list" online asking if the motion timeline can be turned off/on on a camera by camera basis. If this feature adds a load on resources (speed, memory, processor), there are cameras where I don't need this feature... they are under constant movement. In these cameras, I would turn off. And I also have cameras where this would be very useful and I would turn on.

On the wish list I also suggested to allow an option to show the intensity of motion as either orange gradients (what you have implemented) or variations in color (red, green yellow or some other high/medium/low scheme).

Just adding this here since with the wish list online, once you submit, you have no idea what happens to the wish (there is no acknowledgement, request for more information, etc).

[Saralyn]

@EJN Thanks for the feedback. You bring up a good point about cameras with constant motion, as well as the potential impact to resources. I'll definitely pass it along to the team!

[AlexTAnana]

We hope this will be a useful feature for our DataCentre cameras, we've been plagued with issues with motion sense with the adaptive lighting in there coming on and off with other tenants, and the MV cameras not being able to cope with the change in light level.

The recent change in motion delay has helped, but hasn't been perfect.

Fingers crossed this will do the trick!

[Saralyn]

Sounds like the perfect application, @AlexTAnana! Environments like that are definitely challenging, so hopefully this combined with the sensitivity and minimum duration help reduce the number of alerts. Let us know how it works out!

[Priesty]

This has already made a huge difference. False alerts have been reduced and finding events is now x10 easier, especially with the motion recap enabled.

Great work Meraki.

Now hurry up and get face recognition with people tagging developed!

[PhilipDAth]

It would be good if the beta feature could be slightly amended from "Alert Only on People Events" to "Alert Only on People and Vehicle Events".

Then I could use it with the MV72 vehicle detection feature and motion detection webhooks.  Ideally the webhook would contain a field saying which it was.