deeptangoflyfre
San Diego, CA
49, joined Jan. 2014
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I have a client, for privacy we will call them LUCKY DUCK CO or LDC, that uses a Swann DVR for their video surveillance. Nothing big brotherish.
Here is a little background first:
LUCKY DUCK CO has a large variety of different clients.
Some clients are cash clients who come in, purchase a product and leaves. The transaction is complete. Usually they will purchase 1 - 3 units.
There are a few clients that resale LUCKY DUCK CO's products. They come in and may need 1-20 units at a time and would like to keep the transaction open until the end of the day or end of the week.
We will focus on one of the resale clients Nyota Uhura. LDC is only able to serve one client at a time. If Nyota is being served and she requests 20 units, any other clients who arrive during this time will have to wait. The wait maybe substantial. Also, Nyota's clients are waiting. When the wait takes too long, her more impatient clients may decide to cancel or become aggressive.
Other factors play into this as well. For the case of brevity, I will spare you.
Uhura may return several times during the day to get more units depending on her client's requests (and anticipated needs). Uhura prefers to pay at the end of the week after the last units are acquired, generally Saturdays at 5pm. She has a running total in her mind but will need to go to the bank to get the correct amount of Standard Units to compensate LDC for her purchases. The attendants at LDC sometimes forget to complete the record of a particular open transaction.
They may forget to write her name on the top of the Invoice. The units are processed as if they are paid.
The intense noise & environment makes some people nervous and their writing eligible. A 4 may look like a 9.
The environment is also highly volatile so even low voltage equipment is prohibited because of fear of explosion.
When Nyota calls to get the total quantity as she makes her way to the bank, the attendant will rarely have an answer or if they do, their is a lack of confidence. 95% of the time, they get lucky and the quantity that Uhura has matches what the attendants come up with.
Last Saturday was different. The difference was significant. The quantities in question was transferred to a separate invoice for analysis. Everyone agrees that the answer is recorded on the security system. That is where I come in.
I went in and transferred the data files from that day to a USB. SWANN saves them in 3 minute segments with a file extension 264. H.264 is one of the most widely used compression formats today. Converting from H.264 to AVI should be simple.
SWANN has a flunky conversion interface that allows you to take one file at a time. You also have to specify the output file each time. The conversion process takes a few minutes. Their is no batch or applying to a an entire folder or multiple files.
I looked at other utilities. The DIVX converter allows you to select multiple files but as you select them, it analyzes them. This takes up to 4 minutes. 1 out of every 5 segments fails and the program either crashes or skips that particular segment. At least once they are all queued, they can be converted in a batch.
The reason why I have to convert to AVI is I now need to separate each time Nyota Uhura shows up. Then I will annotate each unit with a number. I'll do this with Camtasia or ???
One of the days she came in 10-15 times. That day there were 2 large groups of several hundred people who passed through and 165 transactions. That is a lot to go through.
So the second part of my question is to come up with a better solution. The SWANN unit just fails for so many reasons. I need to come up with a system with a little AI. There are off the shelf solutions for facial recognition. Cameras have been used for quality and inventory control for several years, there must be solutions for counting as well.
I haven't looked at Zonealarm for a long time. I am thinking of a solution using this.
The facial recognition software shouldn't have too many issues with recognizing her. There are very few females who purchase units because they are heavy and the aggressive aspect, I suppose. She is also African American. There are very few African American clients, nothing racist, it just is that way. Her body is very distinguishable. She also is extremely strong and lifts the filled unit off the table with one hand while dropping in another with her other hand in order to aid the speed of the process. Then she loads the unit into her vessel. It makes distinguishing each unit easier.
Some of the units will get rejected. That means they are at risk. She will also put these in her vessel for a change over. I would have to discern this so she doesn't get charged for them. The SWANN camera is not good enough to see that the reject unit is not being filled.
The one distinguishing factor of the reject is that Uhura does a personal cursory probe and decontamination after the rejected unit is placed in her vessel. Again the poor quality camera makes it difficult to see specifics but she basically starts by slapping her pant bottoms next to her ankles then runs her gloved hand up to her knees while maneuvering to probe her front and back of her pant legs. She stops for a few seconds and then slaps her knees a couple times, then thigh and butt slide only. She shakes the bottom of her shirt and then brushes off her chest. I think all of this is more to see if she feels like she needs to go for a more thorough (or complete) decontamination or not. This is the one distinguishing thing for the rejects.
I'm sure others have run into similar situations.
Thanks and have a great day!
ps. I need to do this all with a very limited budget. I am a fairly inept C++ programmer although the more I put into this, the less I am making because I will get one dollar amount no matter how much time it takes. So far the equipment side is a analog video capture card which I already have. The computer is also irrelevant as far as cost as long as I can use one of the existing workstations which will be appropriated for this job.
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stanleyzee
Dayton, OH
60, joined Dec. 2012
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Z 
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deeptangoflyfre
San Diego, CA
49, joined Jan. 2014
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Hello!
What a crazy mess of words and ideas I wrote earlier.
Deprivation of sleep sucks and makes me more alien
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