Camera PIR Or AI Camera – What’s Best At Detecting Movement In External Applications?

Camera PIR Or AI Camera – What’s best at detecting external movement? When this question started doing the rounds recently it caused some serious reflection at the SEN office.

Experience confirms that external sensing applications are tricky and there are conditions under which most intrusion sensors, including quality dual technology sensors, are going to find themselves stretched to breaking point.

In such applications, a sensor camera able to provide a few frames covering moments of activation proves seriously valuable – so valuable we tend to think most external sensor applications would benefit from integrated cameras that give business owners or control room operators eyes on the trigger.

The toughest conditions we’ve found are hot days – the closer to 37C the tougher – with a strong wind moving trees and shrubs backwards and forwards. This combination of heat and movement leads to triggering of PIR side and microwave side of a sensor, and with both detection technologies in alarm, an event is activated.

Contributing to such challenges are dark external surfaces at closer ranges – within 5 metres – that absorb and radiate heat on cooler days in such a way as to create plumes of warm air that can trigger the PIR side. This makes the sensor vulnerable to gusts of wind causing vegetation movement that sporadically trigger the microwave side of the sensor, leading to false alarms.

Camera PIR Or AI Camera – What’s Best?

We’d argue that in commercial and high security applications these issues can be significant enough to demand moving of sensors to avoid conditions described. Certainly, having a camera integrated into the sensor does allow fast triage of alarm events by security officers or security operators in a monitoring centre. Even still, the underlying cause of such false alarms in certain conditions remains.

So, that brings us to whether a CCTV camera with line-crossing analytics is more reliable in a range of external conditions than a dual technology sensor. In our experience IVA-enabled cameras are more reliable than sensors on hot days – their detection parameters are different and thermal patterns don’t worry them.

Instead, the issues we’ve experienced revolve around reductions in range during the night and false alarm activations generated by nocturnal wildlife, including kangaroos, wallabies and wombats. Other conditions that impact camera IVA solutions include fog and rain, though these attenuate intrusion sensors, too. Alarms can also be generated by wind blown shrubbery but these problem areas can be masked out.

Is a camera installed as a sensor capable of outperforming a quality intrusion sensor in challenging external applications while also offering high resolution video streams? We’d argue that a quality external camera – not the cheapest piece of junk on the shelf – carefully installed to cover a thoughtfully considered area – could outperform an external alarm sensor.

Camera PIR Or AI Camera – What’s Best?

In SEN’s opinion you’d install and commission the camera to specifically cover the most challenging light period and make sure the scene had no moving IR reflections, no wildlife and few or no moving plants. There are negatives with cameras in that you can’t fit them with a 10-year battery and screw them to a wall – there’s star config blue cable and node zero to consider.

But if you’re putting in cameras anyway, then line crossing is a worthy addition. IVA cameras unquestionably have superior image quality – there’s no contest there.

But there are circumstances in which getting them installed where you need them might prove challenging. You can put a wireless camera PIR anywhere there’s RF range. It’s not the same with IP cameras.

We’d be interested in hearing thoughts in the comments from techs who’ve run both technologies side-by-side taking into account parameters like catch performance and false alarm resistance.

You can read more about Bosch video analytics here (we had to pick some one for our external SEO link and Bosch (and i-PRO) do IVA very well), or you can find more SEN news here.

“Camera PIR Or AI Camera – What’s Best At Detecting Movement In External Applications?”