This article describes how to add your first IP camera to SAFR.


TABLE OF CONTENTS



Step 1: Connect a Camera to SAFR


SAFR supports USB and integrated cameras, which are always auto-detected. SAFR also supports the Open Network Video Interface Forum (ONVIF) camera auto-discovery protocol used by most IP cameras. To connect an auto-discovered camera, open the Desktop Client and select the desired camera from the drop-down menu Camera Analyzer window. (shown in red in the screenshot below) The Camera Analyzer window is the default starting window for the Desktop Client.



In some cases, however, ONVIF discovery is disabled by default. (ONVIF is sometimes disabled by default for security reasons.) This makes the camera effectively invisible to SAFR and SAFR is unable to discover or communicate with the camera automatically. In this situation, you'll need to manually add the camera by doing the following:


  1. Within the Desktop Client, go to the Camera Preferences menu located at Tools -> Preferences -> Camera.
  2. Click the +icon in the bottom left corner of the window: 
  3. In the Add Camera pop-up dialogue, enter the following information:
    • Name: The name which will be displayed for the camera. You can choose any name you want, although we recommend not having any whitespace in the name.
    • URL: The RTSP URL of the camera, which depends on the camera model.  Please see the Connect Cameras to SAFR documentation for information about how to find out the correct RTSP URL for your camera.
    • Username: The username that will be used to connect to the camera.
    • Password: The password that will be used to connect to the camera.



Step 2: Test the Camera Connection

You can test the connection of the camera you just added by doing the following:

  1. Go to the Camera Preferences menu on the Desktop Client.
  2. Select the camera you just added.
  3. Press the Open camera button, which is to the right of the +icon.
  4. A new Camera Analyzer window will be created. If you can't connect to the camera, check the following:
    • Ensure that your network connection is working.
    • Verify that the RSTP URL you used is correct, valid, and well formed.
    • Verify that you used the correct username and password.

Note that if you close the Camera Analyzer window, the video feed won't be processed by SAFR anymore. To continuously process the video feed in the background, add the feed to VIRGO as described in the next section.


Step 3: Add the Camera Video Feed to Video Recognition Gateway (VIRGO)


The easiest way to add the camera video feed to VIRGO is to press the Add to VIRGO button when a camera video feed is displayed in the main window of the Camera Feed Analyzer. 


This will cause the camera video feed to become associated with a VIRGO video feed for continuous processing, and the Video Feeds window will automatically open so that you can manage the newly created VIRGO video feed. You'll see your newly created VIRGO feed listed below your computer. If you press your computer's Configure button you'll be able to configure your feed's properties. See the SAFR documentation for a full description of what the VIRGO feed properties mean.