How-to: How to set up motion detection and alerts on a Hikvision NVR

What is Motion Detection and why is it useful?​

Motion detection is one of the easiest events to set up and will notify you as soon as a person or vehicle enters a predefined detection zone in your scene. Traditionally, it would just rely on lots of pixels changing between frames in your camera’s video stream, which would indicate movement in the scene. Of course, this would cause lots of alerts for things you are not interested in, such as animals, moving plants and rain. Hikvision’s Acusense cameras and NVRs now have something called Motion Detection 2.0, which cuts the false-positive detections right down as will only notify you when people and/or vehicles are in the scene by learning what they look like. In this simple step-by-step guide, we will show you how to get motion detection set up on the new NVR 5.0 web interface.

---

Step 1: Go to your NVR’s Motion Detection configuration page…​

1. Browse for your NVR’s IP address in a web browser.
   
   
2. Login using the admin username and password that you have set on it.
   
   
3. Go to Configuration > Event Center > Event Configuration > Generic Event
4. Select your camera from the Channel dropdown.
   
   
5. Select Motion Detection from the row of options beside Sub Event.

---

Step 2: Configure your Motion Detection zone and rules…​

1. First, turn on Motion Detection by turning the Enable toggle switch on (green).
   
   
2. If you would like any trigger objects to be highlighted by a green box overlay in your footage, then turn the Dynamic Analysis toggle switch on. This can be especially useful when your scene is large and target objects are tricky to spot.
   
   
3. For the Sensitivity setting, there is no set rule. The higher this is, the more sensitive the trigger is to any movement, so setting this to the maximum 100% will likely leave you with lots of alerts. We recommend starting with the default 60% and adjusting this over time to get the results you are happiest with.
   
   
4. If you have an Acusense-enabled NVR, then you will see an Enable AI by NVR option – turn this on if your camera does not have Acusense built-in to is, and the NVR will analyse whether a moving object is a person or vehicle. If your camera is an Acusense model, then leave this option off, as it is better to have your camera do this work if possible.
   
   
5. Beside Detection Target, tick the object types you would like to trigger the event. You can also tick both if you would like Humans and Vehicles to trigger it, or even leave both unticked, which will notify you on any form of motion, such as animals in the scene.
   
   
6. On the right-hand side you should see a preview of the camera with a green rectangle filling it, which is your detection zone. You have a couple of options here:
   
   
7. Adjust the existing box by left-clicking on and dragging each of the four corners to your chosen boundary. You can also move the whole box, just left-click on the middle and drag it while holding the clicker down.
   
   
8. Delete the existing shape by clicking on the Clear All (dustbin) button in the toolbar and draw one from scratch, which will allow you to draw a more complex shape with up-to ten points (or nine sides). You will first need to click on Draw Area (the box with a pentagon inside it) in the toolbar. Then left-click to drop each point, and then right-click to complete the shape.
   
   
9. Once you are happy with the shape, you can up-to three more by clicking the Draw Area button again.
   
   
10. When you are finished, click Save.

​

Quick tip…​

If you find that the camera preview is too small when drawing your detection zones, you can switch the view to full screen by clicking on the Full screen (four arrows) button in the toolbar, and then exit full screen by pressing Esc on your keyboard.​

​

---

Step 3: Set the arming schedule to specify when you want Motion Detection active…​

1. Click on the Arming Schedule tab.
   
   
2. You will see a grid representing the week in hours, broken down into 30-minute segments. Motion Detection will be active for any period that is blue in this grid, so it’s on constantly by default.
   
   
3. If you would like to have the event turned off for a certain period, then just click on the Erase button and then click on each 30-minute segment to turn it white (meaning “off”). You can also left-click and drag to erase several segments quickly.
   
   
4. If you would like to change a white segment blue again, click on Arm, and do the same as explained above.
   
   
5. When you are happy with the schedule, click Save.

​

Quick tip…​

If the 30-minute segments are not precise enough for you, you can finely tune a period of arming or disarming by double-clicking on the segments and specifying your start and end times in minutes using the arrows.​

​

---

Step 4: Set what you need the NVR to do when a camera detects a target…​

1. You have four toggle switch options here to tell the NVR what to do every time the event is triggered – which ones you enable is up to you:
   
   Notify Surveillance Center: You’ll need to enable this if you want the NVR to send notifications with a video clip of the trigger object to the Hik-Connect mobile app or iVMS-4200 software.
   
   Alarm Pop-Up Window: Enabling this will mean that, when a camera detects motion, it switches to full screen on the NVR’s local console interface.
   
   Buzzer: When you enable this, the NVR will make an audible beep every time the camera detects motion.
   
   Send Email: This will get the NVR to send an email notification with a still image of the trigger object, which was popular before Hik-Connect notifications were introduced. These guides have more information on configuring email notifications, but Hik-Connect notifications are easier to set up and view.
   
   
2. Below these toggle switches you will see another table of options labelled Other Linkages, which have some more advanced camera instructions. Again, you only need to tick the boxes that you feel are necessary for your application:
   
   Video Recording: Tick the box for any camera that you want to save a clip when motion is detected on the selected one. This only really applies for cameras that aren’t set to continually record anyway. The selected camera will be ticked by default, so keep this ticked.
   
   Alarm Output: Your NVR, and some cameras, will have an alarm output terminal connector. Ticking one of these will mean that your camera sends a signal over the selected output when motion is detected to trigger an external device, such as an automated gate or security alarm system.
   
   Audio and Light Alarm Linkage: Any Live Guard camera will have these options – you just need to tick the Light box if you would like the camera to use it’s strobe light when motion is detected, or Audio if you would like it to play your audible warning through the speaker.
   
   
3. When you’re finished, click Save.