questions from a potential new customer

[speakerman]

Hello
I'm evaluating sighthound on a trial basis on a Macbook 2011 model. So far I've connected the four 3MP IP cameras I plan to use and in general I've been able to get the system working reasonably well (after lots of tweaking to reduce the frame rate and resolution of some cameras, in order to avoid overloading the CPU). I am saving full resolution video so I'm sure that's part of the reason why so I can live with it given that I'm using this as a dedicated NVR computer.

I'm now left with a few questions to know if I can get my system to work the way I hope:

1. I've set up some alerts to my iPhone, but I get blasted by 5-15 alerts back to back for the same event. I notice there's a way to limit the number of emails sent out per rule, but is there a way to do that for notifications too?

2. Is there a way to check in from a remote mac computer via an app, similar to the basic functionality offered by the iOS app? Or perhaps through a web browser? So far it seems to me I'm limited to using a mobile device as the only way to remote into the system.

3. I've been experimenting with the "play a sound" functionality, but I'm not sure how to set up this scenario: I've drawn different, adjacent regions in a single camera view with the intent of playing different (rather long ones, 30 seconds for example) as a person walks through each area visible in the camera's view. The trouble is, there is no way to optionally stop the sound #! from playing once the person has left region#1 and moved into region#2 - both sound#1 and sound#2 will play at the same time. Is there a way for the user to select whether to play through the whole audio file, or stop playback when the condition is no longer true?

4. I'd like to be able to use sighthound to send keystrokes to an arduino in order to do some basic home automation, such as turning on a light, etc as part of a rule. I assume there is some way to do that using the "run a command" feature. Can you provide any example of how to setup up the software on OS X to send keystrokes over the USB serial connection to interact with the arduino, or point me to any resources that discuss how to do that?

5. If item #4 is possible, it would be very useful to use the iOS app to have the ability to send keystrokes back to sighthound in order to interact with the arduino. For example, I could check the live view from the phone, notice that the light is off, and press a button on the app to turn it on. I assume this falls under the "new feature request" category.

6. I'm getting lots of false positives for "people" identification when they are in fact not human - in particular there are lots of cats that walk across my driveway and Sighthound often thinks they are people. Is there any way to avoid this other than select the "ignore objects less than XX pixels"?

thanks for creating this terrific software - is seems very powerful and has lots of potential . Keep up the good work

Alex

[ryan]

Hi Alex,

Thanks you for your interest in Sighthound Video, and thank you for the compliments. We're glad to hear you're enjoying it so far.

I've set up some alerts to my iPhone, but I get blasted by 5-15 alerts back to back for the same event.

The number of alerts you receive for a given rule should correspond to the number of clips listed for that rule when it is selected in the search view. Is this not the case? What type of rule are you using?

Push notifications are generally most useful when attached to something you always want to know about immediately, events which don't occur often. As such there isn't a concept of a rate limiting feature for them at the moment.

Is there a way to check in from a remote mac computer via an app, similar to the basic functionality offered by the iOS app?

There is indeed. Simply take the URL you're entering into the iphone app and enter that into your computer's web browser instead. More detail can be found at https://www.sighthound.com/support/how- ... ote-access

Is there a way for the user to select whether to play through the whole audio file, or stop playback when the condition is no longer true?

There is not a way to truncate the playback of sound responses.

I'd like to be able to use sighthound to send keystrokes to an arduino in order to do some basic home automation, such as turning on a light, etc as part of a rule. I assume there is some way to do that using the "run a command" feature. Can you provide any example of how to setup up the software on OS X to send keystrokes over the USB serial connection to interact with the arduino, or point me to any resources that discuss how to do that?

Run command accepts the path to an executable (script or application) which it will launch when the corresponding rule is triggered. If you have a script or application you're having trouble running we'd be glad to assist, but I'm afraid we can't help you write your custom response itself. We are working on additional response types to assist in triggering external devices and software, which may be of use to you in the future.

If item #4 is possible, it would be very useful to use the iOS app to have the ability to send keystrokes back to sighthound in order to interact with the arduino. For example, I could check the live view from the phone, notice that the light is off, and press a button on the app to turn it on. I assume this falls under the "new feature request" category.

We're primarily focused on enabling sighthound to automatically trigger events when rules occur. We definitely want to expand and allow developers to interface with the application better, though making sighthound a general proxy to your home network is likely a bit out of scope.

I'm getting lots of false positives for "people" identification when they are in fact not human

Even though we think our algorithms are best in class, there is of course always room for improvement. We have a team in our computer vision lab hard at work on improving our current functionality and working on new and exciting enhancements for the future.

Best,
- ryan