Initial Camera config

Guidelines for initial camera configuration and suggested settings for Spot AI Dashboard

Whenever starting any new IP camera setup, there are several basic configurations that must be performed before adding your cameras to your Spot AI IVR. These settings are conveniently available through the Native Camera Config page. Please read the following information for our recommended best practices.

Video Quality configuration

The proper Video Quality configuration for a SpotAI Dashboard is:

For Appliances starting with sn5a and up, and enterprise Appliances (snae, snea, snae2):

• Video Encoding: H.265/H.264 (H.264 is acceptable if H.265 is not an option)
• Video resolution: Up to 5MP (2560x1920 [4:3] or 2880x1620 [16:9])
• FPS: 15
• Rate Control/Bitrate Type: CBR (Constant)
• Bitrate: 2048 Kbps 
• I-Frame Rate: 15 (should match FPS, may not be an available setting)

For Appliances starting with sn4e and up:

• Video Encoding: H.265/H.264 ((H.264 is acceptable if H.265 is not an option))
• Video resolution: Up to 2MP (1920x1080)
• FPS: 15
• Rate Control/Bitrate Type: CBR (Constant)
• Bitrate: 2048 Kbps 
• I-Frame Rate: 15 (should match FPS, may not be an available setting)

This will deliver a balance between image clarity and network bandwidth consumption. 

A camera IP address can be set to Static or DHCP, but what works best?

It is highly recommended to use a Static IP address for any IP Camera deployment. This way it makes things easier to keep track of cameras deployed and to be able to organize your sites by utilizing IP number groups and to quickly find and access any particular camera of your choice.

Note: A Static IP means a particular unique IP address that has been assigned to a network device to be used on a regular basis in which will stay the same over time.

Versus a DHCP IP address that gets assigned automatically in a network as a temp solution to communicate with your devices. However, this IP is set to change over time, which could confuse you if you are trying to track any of the particular camera devices in the future. Also if the DHCP server fails, devices can't get IPs which could cause an outage.

Change the camera's default credentials

Most IP camera manufacturers set their default credentials to very easy things to remember: Pass, admin, root, password, 123456, etc. This is because they want to make sure that all users have a very easy experience during the initial camera installation. This does not mean you should leave it unchanged as it leaves your camera vulnerable to unauthorized usage and access to all your equipment. Therefore, to protect your cameras please change the default password and create a new unique password of your choice. The password is usually case-sensitive and must contain at least eight characters, which can be letters, numbers, and special characters, but no spaces, pound signs/hashes (#), colons (:), or forward slashes (/). To change the password on a Spot camera, please see the Camera Password Guide.

NTP Syncs

Once you have added the desired IP address to your camera, the next step will be to properly assign the correct time zone, the current time and synchronize the camera with an NTP server. Also known as Network Time Protocol. This is a networking protocol for clock synchronization between computer systems over the internet or local network. This is crucial to sync camera recordings with your Network Video Recordings properly. To set NTP on your Spot cameras, please see Configure NTP on Spot AI Cameras.

Note: To use the Spot appliance as an NTP server for your cameras, you can check out this article.

DST Set Up

As cameras are shipped both nationally and internationally, many do not have Daylight Savings Time (DST) enabled by default. This can cause the displayed time to fall out of sync during the months of DST. To enable DST on Spot cameras, please see Enable DST on Cameras.

Image calibration

For image calibration, it is recommended that you find the right camera angle and area that you will like to capture before calibrating the camera lens. This is because the view is could have many variables such as Outdoor/Indoor lighting conditions, high foot traffic areas, highly reflective surfaces, trees, bushes, or moving vehicles. Once the desired field of view has been set, proceed to perform an Autofocus, Automatic Gain Control (AGC), adjusting contrast and lighting if needed. 

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