Verkada Camera alarm trigger alerts give additional information to the agent to determine if the event is a threat to a person or property. Previously, you could only have a person detection as a trigger when you add a camera. Verkada has now introduced new and improved ways to trigger a detection.
Trajectory alerts allow you to:
Get notifications based on the movement of people detected within the camera frame.
Use cases for camera alarm triggers
For cases where you require more than 1 person being detected, you can use triggers in these scenarios:
Use Case | What You Can Do |
Person detection |
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Line crossing |
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Loitering detection |
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Crowd |
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When should a detection occur?
When a Verkada camera detects an object, green bounding boxes appear over the detected object(s). You can see these bounding boxes when scrubbing through a cameras people and vehicle motion search or scrubbing through a cameras historical video.
Line crossing and loitering detection
Recommendation. Use Line crossing and Loitering detection instead of Person detection when you configure a camera model that ends in "2" or higher (for example: CD42, CD52, CD62, etc).
Detection is determined when the center bottom of an persons bounding box crosses a line or sits inside a loitering region. See example below. (In a majority of cases, it is a person's feet).
In the example below:
Once the person's trigger point intersects the loitering region, the timer begins.
If the trigger point remains in this region for the configured time (one minute) a detection event occurs.
If the person trigger point briefly exits and re-enters the loitering region within 4 seconds, the counter continues.
If the camera loses track of an individual (for example, walking out of frame) or the trigger point is outside the loitering region for more than 4 seconds, the counter resets.
Person detection
Detection is determined whenever any part of a persons bounding box intersects with the configured region of interest.
Recommendation. We always recommend using Line crossing and Loitering detection instead of Person detection whenever you configure a camera model that ends in "2" or higher (e.g. CD42, CD52, CD62, etc).
Create camera trigger alerts
There are multiple ways to create an alert. For the purpose of this article, the focus is on how to create and alert for camera devices.
In Verkada Command, go to All Products > Cameras.
Select a camera and below the camera footage, click the Settings (gear) icon.
By default, the General page displays. Scroll down to Events.
Scroll down and click Manage Alerts.
At the top right, click New Alert.
On the Create Alert page, configure your settings by Events, Recipients, Schedule, and Settings.
On Events:
Select Cameras as the product.
Select at least 1 event (site, device, or event). You event can be Camera Status, Crowd, Motion, Person of Interest, or Tamper.
Click Next.
On Recipients:
Enter names, email, or group of users and groups who you want to be notified and how (email, SMS, push).
Click Next.
On Schedule:
Edit the schedule to when you want alerts to be detected. The default is 24/7.
Click Next.
On Settings:
Enter an alert name that's unique for this new alert.
For Editors, enter a name, email, or group.
Optional. Enter an alert description.
Click Done.
Configure alarm trigger alerts
In Verkada Command, go to All Products > Alarms.
Select a location where you want to configure the trigger alert.
At the top, click Settings.
Under Alarm Triggers, click Cameras and select a camera to configure.
Select a trigger type (as shown below): Person detection, Line Crossing, or Loitering detection, depending on your use case to configure, and click Done.
Once you've completed your camera trigger configuration, a trigger badge appears on the camera to indicate which camera and trigger type has been enabled.
Person detection
Person detection detects the person in a configured region and triggers a verification event for the monitoring agent to determine if it's an actionable threat (and to notify or call the police).
At the top left of your selected camera, select Person detection and follow the instructions to define a region and enable person detection. Once you have defined a region, the camera has been enabled as a trigger.
To remove the Person detection trigger, click Clear regions or delete the region of interest with the (x) at the bottom right.
The example (shown below) shows how a person detection region is set to monitor the building entrance and ignore the public walkway, where you might expect a lot of normal activity.
Click Done when you’re satisfied with the settings.
Line Crossing (recommended)
Line Crossing provides more control and granularity in a trigger by allowing you to draw a line and defining a direction that a person has to cross before a detection occurs.
At the top left of your selected camera, select Line crossing and follow the instructions to draw a line and define a direction.
The example (shown below) shows a scenario where if any person crosses the line— in either direction (towards or away from the building)—it causes a trigger event.
Click Done when you’re satisfied with the settings.
Loitering detection
Loitering detection allows you to define a region with a freeform polygon and define how long a person has to stay in that region before a detection occurs.
At the top left of your selected camera, select Loitering and follow the instructions to draw your region.
The example (shown below) shows a scenario where there’s been some experience with a lot of issues where people in the public are loitering around benches and seating areas. Because this camera is in view of a public walkway, you only want a detection to occur if a person stays in one of these two regions for more than one minute.
Click Done when you’re satisfied with the settings. Learn more how to configure your alarm’s site settings.
Crowd
Configure event generation for each camera as with motion events. You can select the number of people or vehicles that must be in the camera frame to trigger an event.
On the Events dropdown, click Crowd to set up alerts via the existing alert creation workflow. You should then receive alerts for all crowd events on all cameras with loitering regions configured that you are authorized to see.
View and edit cameras on the Alarm Triggers page
You can also quickly see and edit cameras that have been enabled from the Alarms Triggers page.
In Verkada Command, go to All Products > Alarms.
Select an alarm to view.
At the top of that alarm's page details, click Settings.
On the Settings page, on the left, scroll down to Alarm Triggers.
Learn more
Visit the Verkada Training Center for bite-sized video tutorials on how to accomplish role-based tasks in Command.
Need more help? Contact Verkada Support