Video Cam notification latency is maddening - SVR?

Greetings and Happy New Year’s Eve!

My home video setup has three Alarm.com cameras:

  1. ADC-VC826 Dome Camera w/Analytics (trip wire): ethernet to managed switch providing POE
  2. ADC-VC726 Mini Bullet w/Analytics (trip wire): ethernet to managed switch providing POE
  3. ADC SkybellHD @ 720P, soon to be replaced by ADC-VDB770. SkyBellHD wifi signal strength reported to be 100% via ADC website - “Device Info”
    **I have a rock-solid wired and wireless home network with FIOS internet. My cell service is Verizon with 2-bar (out of 4) cell signal at my house.

My issue is the notification latency for the cameras through the Alarm.com app is poor (90+ seconds at best when I am home) for the POE cameras and worse with the SkyBellHD. I’ve even performed soft reboots on my network, the cameras ,and reinstalled the ADC Skybell, hoping to reduce latency - no luck :frowning:

Question - Would the addition of an add-on ADC SVR improve system performance and what would those performance improvements be? Or any other ideas to improve notification latency? BTW-the camera images themselves are crystal-clear. Thx!

Just to clarify, are you referring to the time it takes to get notified that a recording is available?

If so, this is normal, the notification in Alarm.com is sent out after the recording is viewable, not right when the trigger occurs.

The recording length, plus the processing time in ADC servers to ready the clip is the latency you are mentioning, if I am understanding the question.

Hi Jason, thats correct; specfiically, from when the cameras have been triggered and completed the recording to when I receive the notification is the latency time I am referring to. To expand on your response; concerning a SVR…

Since the SVR is local to my home network, would that reduce my described latency issue. or is it all a back-end Alarm.com issue that I cant improve upon?

I am not seeing a related Surety subscription, if you are a Surety user I would be able to look into your account and the notification rules you have set up and might be able to provide insight.

If you use a different service provider, they may be able to assist with recommendations.

Ultimately, no I don’t think Adding an SVR is going to make any difference here with what you are describing.

The type of notification and your carrier will have more of an impact. Generally speaking Push notifications should be quickest, followed by SMS, followed by email.

Jason thank you for the information and honest reply. I am not a Surety subscriber (but probably should be). My best to you!

No problem. I would be able to give more pointed advice and view actual timestamps if you were one of our users, that’s why I ask. Happy to help either way if I can.

If you are not using Push notifications, I would recommend doing that as a first step, as that can often come in with less latency than an SMS or email. Also, if you are attaching the video, try just attaching a thumbnail or leaving it text only. Any difference?

I appreciate the advice. My best to you and the Surety team. Have a GREAT 2021!!!

Hey man how is the video quality on the 826. Is it full 30 frames per second smooth video or is it choppy like the older ADC clips were. Thinking about adding a couple to my setup so wanted to ask

it’s a superior POE dome camera. I have a SkyBellHD (not my favorite device, soon to be replaced by the new ADVC video door bell) watching my covered porch area. After installing it, I noticed that my Amazon packages were being placed immediately below it and out of the SkybellHD’s field-of-view; seemingly intentionally? So, I installed the ADC VC826 Dome camera to view the “null” zone below the SkyBellHD and since the delivery drivers are fixated on the SkyBellHD, they completely miss the dome camera above the porch. I now have full coverage of my front porch. Dome camera image quality is good and analytics perform as expected on this camera.

Sometimes I do get a frame-skip on the 826, but that is also the case with my ADC 726 Mini Bullet which watches my driveway leading up to the porch. I attribute that to my theory that Alarm.com can only record one stream at a time (that’s another reason I was thinking about a SVR…I’ve read it can do 4 channels simultaneously on a LAN???) and my three cameras are “fighting” for bandwidth to the Alarm.com servers???

Attached is a snapshot of my dome camera field-of-view. Ignore the Christmas light power cord . :slight_smile: Hope my use case helps you.

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Whoops - forgot to attached the Dome camera snapshot:

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Wow that’s a lot better quality than the original adc cams. And I think the SVR can actually do 8 cams on the LAN and up to 16 if you get the commercial version.

Yeah, I try to hard-wire devices to my LAN wherever it’s possible and maybe that’s contributing to the better image quality? Both cameras are not brand new model “releases” but fortunately they support video analytics (mini bullet VA trigger is mediocre, dome camera VA trigger is really good).

Hmmm, new issue. I just noticed that the date-stamp on this morning’s dome camera snapshot above did not auto-change from 2020 to 2021. I guess I need to go into my ADC account settings and manually change the “year” for the date-stamping…

And finally, I see that I didn’t respond to Andrew’s original question to me about frame rates - here’s my answer. Recorded video frame rate on the 826 dome camera is a little choppy (15 fps?), but no worse than the recorded frame rates on the SkyBell or the mini bullet.

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News on this topic. Alarm.com has notified us that in the near future (sounds like a few weeks) Video Analytics notifications will start to be sent upon detection of a person, vehicle or animal instead of after clip upload. This significantly shortens the time between object detection and notification. These notifications will now link directly to the Live View section of the app.

If you would prefer to receive the recorded clip still simply choose the “Attach a Video Clip” option in the notification rule which will then make it so the notification goes out after the upload and contains that clip.

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