Video security plays a key role in the fight against copper theft for most Electrical Utility companies. Inexpensive battery-operated cameras with built-in motion detection triggers offer easy-to-install solutions to allow Utility companies to see what is going on at substations from remote locations.
Unfortunately the motion-detection is designed that “something has moved” and is prone to false alarms. The key issue with video motion detection is that it is designed to begin recording when any change in the video occurs. Video motion detection cannot differentiate whether wind blowing trees or debris, rain or snow falling, insects flying in the camera or a small animal is causing the event.
Video-analytics based systems differ from video motion detection by alerting security when “something you care about is happening.” The software is based on machine vision applications that allow users to create detection zones that alert to violations based on the size of objects and the amount of time an object stays in a specific area in the field of view.