Ava Aware and Ava Cameras 3.5 releases

Malcolm Walters, March 18 2021

Introducing new vehicle types for search and rules

2 mins

Malcolm Walters

Product Manager

March means it’s time for a new Ava product release. The Ava Aware and Ava Cameras 3.5 reaffirm our commitment to enhancing object detection and classification—for better accuracy—, increasing the openness of the Aware video management system by adding more options for integrations, and improving the handling of third-party cameras. 

Let’s break down the most important new features and updates and see how they will impact you and your video security system.

New vehicle types for search and rules

There are situations where the type of vehicle is as important as the presence of one. With this release, you can create more fine-grained rules based on the type of vehicle.

With searches, you can now choose to search based on vehicle type, which cuts down the number of matches found, allowing you to review relevant footage faster.

As always, we continue to improve the underlying object detection and classification, which enhances accuracy.

aware-3.5-vehicle-types

Additional counting-based rules

aware-3.5-counting-rules

With the ongoing pandemic, there has been a need to introduce new procedures to handle cleaning and hygiene. At the same time, many locations are running at reduced capacity. Together these have led to an increased demand to monitor usage and become more responsive to actual rather than predicted use. To address this, we have expanded the options for counting rules. Now you can create a rule that triggers every time a predefined number of people have crossed a line. This allows for smarter monitoring of use and for resources to be directed to where they are needed.

API explorer for an open security ecosystem

Another area of focus for the development team at Ava is the API. We’ve talked about our open video security solution before, and with this release, we widen the horizon even more. Meet the Aware API Explorer, which allows people to see all of the APIs we have, and the various parameters required. The Explorer enables customers, partners, and third parties to develop integrations to our system. There is no licensing around the API as a testament to our commitment to make Aware open to integrating with external systems. 

aware-3.5-api-explorer

Additional integration options for third-party cameras

Aware was designed from the ground up to work with a range of third-party cameras. It implements several protocols and dynamically controls the connected cameras’ streams to give the optimal balance of resolutions for storage, analytics, and live viewing.

As always, we are committed to improving the interoperability of the Aware system and will continue to develop workarounds within our code to maximize the number of cameras that can be handled automatically out of the box.

However, this is not always sufficient to work with all cameras. Some cameras do not share a common protocol with Aware, and in some cases, other issues prevent the use of the protocol in the way we desire. With this release, you can use two changes to improve the connections to these cameras.
  1. You can add a camera using an RTSP URL. This allows any camera providing an RTSP stream to be added to Aware regardless of how that stream is configured. The feature enables integration to a broader range of cameras and other systems.
  2. In cases where the automatic selection of resolutions does not work, we already had a manual stream configuration mode. In this release, you can now copy the manual stream settings from one camera to another, making it easier to manage multiple cameras.

This month’s release also includes:

  • the ability to ignore a color in search and rules
  • the option to remove stationary objects from heatmaps
  • a new single pane (1x1) layout option in Video view
  • the creation of audio rules that cover multiple audio alarm types
  • a centralized audit logging for increased IT reporting
  • the ability to rotate the video from the Ava Camera in 90° steps
  • and much more

Discover all the new features included in Aware 3.5 and Ava Cameras 3.5 from our release notes.