Alarm Monitor

In this chapter:

FindFace Multi allows for embedding an alarm monitoring service, an additional functionality that displays information about individual alarms and events as they occur. This increases the awareness of the security service regarding critical events. An alarm monitor cannot be blocked by other windows, and the configuration cannot be changed to mute, which makes it a simpler tool for monitoring centers. Operators can acknowledge alarms or discard.

Server Preparation

To work with the alarm monitoring service, FindFace Multi uses Annex, a software platform that provides video analytics tools. Annex is installed by default when you deploy FindFace Multi, and includes a set of components and services:

Component	Ports in use	Description	Vendor
backend_provider	1111	Service that provides an interface (REST API) for delivering data to various microservices, enriches input data if necessary and converts them to the desired format.	NtechLab own deployment
backend_api	2222	Service that provides an interface (REST API) to application service databases, as well as a proxy interface to FindFace Multi and FindFace Server.
service_notifier	3311	The auxiliary service for sending notifications (Notify) through various client channels (WebSocket, Telegram, Mail), as well as for sending client responses (Reply) back to the services.
alarm-app	4444	A web service of the Alarm Monitor.
service_alarmer	n/a	An application service for announcing alarm messages with the ability to acknowledge them by the user.
service_notifier_tg	n/a	The channel of the interaction with the user via Telegram.

Annex receives events from FindFace Multi via Alert manager and sends them to Alarm Monitor.

Before running Alarm Monitor, make sure Annex is deployed and perform some preliminary actions in FindFace Multi.

1. Make sure all Annex services are running.

   sudo docker ps -a | grep -e annex -e findface-alarm
   

   findface-multi-alarm-app-1
   findface-multi-backend_provider-1
   findface-multi-service_notifier_ws-1
   findface-multi-service_alarmer-1
   findface-multi-service_notifier_tg-1
   findface-multi-backend_api-1
   

2. In the FindFace Multi web interface, create a user. See Role and User Management. Use these credentials to log in Alarm Monitor.

Configure Events

In order for the alarm monitoring service to be able to receive events of matching objects, line crossing and counter events from FindFace Multi, use Alert Manager function. It allows you to configure necessary rules for alarms depending on the tasks being solved.

Application Configuration

• The application is available for Windows.

• The application is installed in the standard way and also available from the FindFace Multi navigation bar in the web-interface.

Note

We recommend installing Alarm Monitor application. Please contact our support and sales team on support@ntechlab.com to get the latest version.

Do the following:

1. Download the latest version of Alarm Monitor application for Windows.

2. Run the executable file to launch the application.

   

3. Navigate to the settings and perform some preliminary actions.

   

   Note

   If you use a web interface for running the Alarm Monitor, enter http://ip_address:4444/config/ in the address bar to navigate to the settings. ip_address is the Annex IP address specified during installation.

   You can also navigate to the Alarm Monitor from the main navigation bar by clicking the button. Then click and .

4. Select the alarm sound and volume.

5. If needed, click the button to test the alarm sound.

6. If needed, enable showing route option to display a track of the object.

7. Alarm Monitor doesn’t process more than 20 events in the queue and deletes them. You can enable showing the number of deleted events with the corresponding option.

8. Specify the connection server address (WebSocket) as ws://ip_address/annex/.

   Note

   ip_address is the Annex IP address specified during installation. If you use a web interface, IP address and a port will be automatically filled in.

9. Select the interface language.

10. Leave the default value ALARMER for the alarm service name. This is the endpoint of the service, and it can be used to receive messages from multiple servers.

11. Click Apply.

12. Click Login to profile.

13. Enter username and password. Click Login.

Work with Alarm Monitor

Alarm Monitor does not display any information by default. When receiving the alert, the application displays information about the event together with an audio signal. The application will alternately display events until each of them is confirmed.

The following types of alarm events are supported by Alarm Monitor:

• Face events

• Body events

• Vehicle events

• Counter records

Example of line crossing event

The following elements are displayed:

• Full frame of the event with the bbox of the body, the line crossing and the track of the object (if you clicked the button)

• Thumbnail of the object crossing the line

• Alert name

• Camera group /Camera name

• Watch list(s) that contain a person

• Date and time of the event

• Number of events

Example of object (face/body/vehicle) matching event

The following elements are displayed:

• Full frame of the event with the bbox

• Thumbnail of the object from the video stream

• Thumbnail of the matched object from the record index and a match probability

• Watch lists that contain a person/vehicle

• Alert name

• Camera group /Camera name

• Date and time of the event

• Number of events

Example of counter event

The following elements are displayed:

• Full frame

• Alert name

• Camera group /Camera name

• Date and time of the event

• Number of events

Click Confirm to acknowledge the alarm, or Reject to discard it. Alarm confirmation is expected within 60 seconds by default. An alarm becomes acknowledged automatically after the time interval expires. You may change this value using the Acknowledgment interval parameter in the Settings tab of alert configuration wizard. If the acknowledgment interval is set to 0, no confirmation is expected – alarms become acknowledged automatically right after they occur.

To finalize work with alarming events that were acknowledged or rejected in the Alarm Monitor, navigate to Alarm Feed.