HikVision Event Receiver

Because of lack of time, I have no possibility to complete the FrontEnd. The core is 100% functional, you can use app to populate the databse with events

DS2CD2x32EventReceiver_Standalone_Console is ready to use, you may try it

HikVision-EventReceiver (the final BackEnd) is also ready

Progress:

• DataBase: Ready (100%)
• BackEnd: Ready (100%)
• FrontEnd: Waiting (0%)

Introduction

This application is a web-friendly solution for receiving, logging and browsing 'events' sent by HikVision IP Cameras. It also provides console interface to see events reported by the camera. Its easy to extend with new features.

The application is under development and is going to be tested with:

• DS2CD2132-i
• DS2CD2132f-is
• DS2CD2532
• DS2CD2332

Other DS2CD2x32 cameras are most likely supported. Other DS2CDxxxx cameras are probably supported.

Key features:

• Single application supports multiple cameras (list defined in database)
• Receives data from cameras and displays them in user-friendly web interface
• Depends on camera built-in event system. Application does not analyze or even receive image stream from camera. Such approach allows operation in low-resource environments such as raspberry pi, etc
• Talks to cameras via ISAPI (google hikvision isapi) in xml-based protocol (see AlertStream section in isapi documentation)
• Provides mechanisms to detect connection problems, camera death etc

Supported events are:

• General camera failure (connection problem / camera error / etc)
• Video loss (event reported by the camera)
• Video tampering (event reported by the camera)
• Motion detection (event reported by the camera)
• Line (crossing) detection (event reported by the camera)
• Field detection (event reported by the camera)

Architecture

The application consist of 3 parts:

• SQLite3 database which is the main mechanism for storage and basic communication
• C++ backend (daemon) maintaining connection to camera and storing received events into database
• Web frontend responsible for presenting data from database to user

There only communication method between those parts is the database itself. No pipes / sockets / etc.

It is of course possible to use only database + backend or even backend only.

System requirements

• Linux-based operating system
• Decent CPU (backend uses on average 2%-8% of 1GHZ arm core)
• Decent amount of RAM (backend uses ~100MB of Vmem for 8 cameras, but this is not linear, most of this is sqlite3 cache)
• BackEnd:
  • c++11 compiler
  • SQLite3 (lightweight serverless database)
  • Boost (additional libraries) (headers only are required)
  • scons (make-like system)
• FrontEnd:
  • Node.js (runtime environment and frontend web server)
  • npm (package manager to download bower and grunt)
  • Bower (web components downloader)
  • Grunt (build system)

Getting dependencies

(commands for Debian / Ubuntu)

Install BackEnd requirements using system package-manager:

$ apt-get install g++ libsqlite3-dev libboost-dev scons

Install FrontEnd system packages using system package-manager:

$ apt-get install nodejs npm

Install FrontEnd packages using npm:

$ npm install --global bower grunt-cli

Building

BackEnd:

• Do cd into BackEnd directory
• Run scons to compile all source files to objects and all objects to target executable. Use scons DEBUG=1 to build debug version (with symbols etc).
• Executables would be placed in Release directory
• It is ready to use

FrontEnd:

• Do cd into FrontEnd directory.
• Run npm install to install server dependencies.
• Run bower install to install front-end dependencies.
• Run grunt server to start the front-end server. It should automatically open the client in your browser when ready.

Usage

Actual event listener (the BackEnd) loads list of cameras on startup. The first thing you should start is the FrontEnd, to configure list of cameras. When everything is configured, run the BackEnd (below also called Main Application).

FrontEnd: @TODO

BackEnd application (HikVision-EventReceiver.Main). Application starts with no arguments. On startup it loads list of cameras and begins to receive events. Only initial messages and errors are printed to console, so don't worry that application does not show any activity.

• To run application execute ./Release/HikVision-EventReceiver.Main. You might be interested in putting application on screen (for background work). See screen
• Hello message + list of loaded cameras would be printed to console
• Application is up and running, can be backgrounded
• To stop application, press CTRL+C

DS2CD2x32EventReceiver_Standalone_Console - Application intended for standalone usage. Not a BackEnd actually, but also contained in BackEnd directory. Does not required SQLite3, front-end components. Simply connects to camera specified by command-line arguments and prints all received events to console.

• To run application execute ./Release/DS2CD2x32EventReceiver_Standalone_Console CameraIp AdminPassword
• Application runs and prints everything to console
• To kill it - CTRL+C