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Version: 1.0.1

U-Filter User's Guide

U-Filter by Ultinous filters alarms using image-based AI filtering, eliminating false alarms. Follow the guide below to setup image filtering via the U-Filter web interface.

Your company should already have provided you with an account approved by Ultinous. Login to the U-Filter web interface.

To learn more about receiving an account approved for U-Filter, contact sales@ultinous.com.

Sites​

Every stream handled by U-Filter is grouped by a Site, representing their physical location. The following section describes how to create one - repeat these steps for each Site you would like to create.

Site basic configuration​

  1. Click the Add New Site button in the upper left corner of the screen.
  2. Fill in the following fields with the data provided by your organisation.
  • Name: The name identifying your Site.
  • Technical name: The technical name of the Site, used to identify your site in integration and third party services. Must be unique across all Sites. Must not contain special characters.
  • Event time offset (optional, in seconds): The amount of seconds to be subtracted from the event timestamp included in every e-mail and integration (such as the timestamp value in HTTP integration).

HTTP Webhook (optional):​

Enables / disables event sending via HTTP. Use this feature to send triggered events to a third-party software with an optional snapshot image of the incident attached. Sends a HTTP POST request to the URL set below, with a content type of application/json.

  • Target URL: The location of the API.
  • Header keys and values: Keys and values of custom HTTP headers. Click the Add button to add more Keys. To delete a Key, press the Trash icon next to it.
  • Send snapshot image: Off by default. If enabled, it fills in the img_url field of the HTTP message schema in base64 encoded format.

To test the HTTP Webhook, click the Send Test Event button once the rest of the HTTP Webhook settings are set.

Integration​

  • Select the type of service you would like to use U-Filter with.
  • Target address: The target address to which you would like to receive images filtered by U-Filter. Type a valid e-mail address associated with the service chosen above.
  1. Click Save.

Channels​

Once your Site is created, Channels can be registered. They correspond to your cameras and streams.

  1. Click the Channels button under the Actions column of your Site.
  2. Click the Add New button in the upper left corner of the screen.
  • Name: The name identifying your Channel.
  • External ID (optional): You may define a custom ID value here, in case an external or third-party solution requires one to identify this channel with.
  • Technical name: The technical name of the Channel, used to identify it in integration and third party services. Must be unique across all Sites. Must not contain special characters.
  • GPS Latitude (optional): The GPS latitude coordinates of your Channel.
  • GPS Longitude (optional): The GPS longitude coordinates of your Channel.
  1. Choose any combination of objects you would like to filter. Select their sensitvity ranging from VERY LOW to VERY HIGH or turn them OFF. Lowering the sensitivity causes less false detections but decreases accuracy. Increasing it results in more detections but may include more false detections as well.
  2. Click Save, then click Back.
  3. Your Channel has appeared in the list of Channels of your Site. Click the ℹī¸ button under the Detections column of your Channel.
  4. The following popup will appear:

Use the information here to help you configure your camera's SMTP settings:

  • SMTP server: The SMTP address generated for the U-Filter site.
  • User Name: The SMTP username for this Site, generated from the corresponding Site technical name and the account's technical names.
  • Password: The password generated for this Site. To change it, edit the Site by clicking on the Edit ✏ī¸ button next to the Site name. Click the Generate New Password button. Click OK on the popup, then click Save.
  1. To test your settings, open your Site's page by clicking the Edit ✏ī¸ button next to the Site name, then scroll down to Send Test event.
  2. Click the Select Input file button to select an image file in .jpg format to apply the chosen types of analytics. Click Upload. Tick the Save image on the server box if you would like to re-use the image later (e.g. for drawing areas, see below).
  3. All done! You can either click Save and proceed to configuring your cameras, or configure U-Filter with additional filtering tools, described below.

Additional filters​

In order to further enhance detection accuracy, additional filters may be applied to images sent to U-Filter.

  1. Open the Channels page of your Site. Click the Edit ✏ī¸ button under the Detections column of your Channel.
  2. Scroll down to Additional Filters.
  3. Select an image to upload from your device. Since this image will be used as a canvas on which an image extracted from your camera feed.
  4. You may click the Delete button to undo your changes, or click Browse Image again to replace the uploaded image with a different one.

There are multiple ways to extract an image from your camera feed - for example by using a tool such as ffmpeg. You can use the command below to generate an image.

ffmpeg -i <rtsp_URL_of_your_camera> -vframes 1 output_image.jpg

Draw ROI (Region of Interest, optional)​

You can draw annotations on top of the scene observed by the camera to specify what areas (regions of interest) to include or exclude from filtering.

  1. Click the Draw Areas button to open the Ultinous Camera Editor and begin drawing areas. You can drawn multiple areas.
  2. To remove all areas, click the Remove Areas button.

Read the Camera Editor guide for detailed instructions on drawing regions of interest.

Set detection size filter (optional)​

If you have a good idea of what pixel range the detected objects would fall into, you can customise the minimum and maximum height size of detections, in pixels, here. This would ensure that only objects that fit into that range would get detected, resulting in a further decrease in the number of false detections.

NOTE: Take care that any object below or above the set range will NOT be detected, possibly resulting in missing incidents. It is good practice to set the minimum size slightly below, and the maximum size slightly above the desired amount.

  1. Click The Set Object Size button.
  2. Move the the arrows by clicking and dragging them to help you determine the optimal values. Adjust the slider's endpoints on the bottom part of the screen to set the minimum / maximum values.
  3. Click Set sizes to save your changes, or Discard to cancel them.

Edit Site​

  1. Click the Edit ✏ī¸ button to the left of the Site name.
  1. Modify the settings to your liking, then click Save. To remove the Site, click Delete Site.

Note that SMTP data and the Site technical name can not be modified once the Site is created. Click Generate New Password to regenerate the SMTP password.

Edit Channel​

  1. On the Sites screen, click the Channels button on the right of a Site's row.
  1. On the list of channels, click the Edit ✏ī¸ button on the right of the Detections column of a Channel.
  1. Modify the settings to your liking, then click Save.

The technical name and the Target e-mail address (derived from the technical name) can not be modified.