Is Your Verkada Camera Failing to Detect Vehicles?
Verkada's advanced video analytics, including its powerful vehicle detection, are key features that provide valuable, actionable insights from your security footage. When this feature doesn't work as expected, it can lead to missed events and security blind spots. If you're experiencing issues with your Verkada camera's ability to detect and flag vehicles, this troubleshooting guide will help you diagnose and resolve the most common causes.
Core Requirements for Accurate Vehicle Detection
Before diving into specific problems, it's essential to understand that the accuracy of any video analytic feature is highly dependent on the camera's setup and environment. For Verkada's AI to work effectively, certain conditions must be met.
- Clear Line of Sight: The camera must have an unobstructed view of the detection area. Trees, pillars, or other objects can hide a vehicle from the camera's view.
- Adequate Lighting: While Verkada cameras have excellent low-light capabilities, sufficient lighting is crucial for analytics. Very dark scenes or areas with harsh glare and deep shadows can impair performance.
- Correct Camera Placement: The angle and height of the camera play a significant role. A camera that is too high or angled too sharply downwards may not get a clear profile of a vehicle.
- Sufficient Resolution: The vehicle needs to occupy enough pixels in the frame for the AI to analyse it. Vehicles that are very far away may be too small to be reliably detected.
Troubleshooting Common Vehicle Detection Failures
Let's address the specific symptoms you might be encountering and how to fix them.
Symptom: Vehicles Are Not Being Detected at All
If your camera isn't flagging any vehicles, start with the basics in your Verkada Command dashboard.
- Confirm Analytics are Enabled:
- Navigate to the specific camera in your Command portal.
- Go to Settings > Analytics.
- Ensure that the toggle for Vehicle Detection is turned on. It's possible for it to be disabled on a per-camera basis.
- Check the Analytics License:
- Verify that your organisation has the necessary licenses assigned to the camera to enable advanced analytics features.
- Review Camera Positioning:
- Height: The ideal mounting height is generally between 3 and 8 metres.
- Angle: Avoid extreme angles. The camera should not be pointing straight down (top-down view) or straight out at the horizon. An angle of around 30-40 degrees is often optimal.
- Distance: Ensure the area you want to monitor is not at the extreme edge of the camera's range.
Symptom: Detection is Intermittent or Unreliable
When the camera only catches some vehicles, environmental and placement factors are almost always the cause.
- Analyse Lighting Conditions: Review footage from the times when detections were missed. Was it during sunrise or sunset when long shadows are cast? Was there heavy glare from the sun or artificial lights? You may need to adjust the camera's physical position or add supplemental lighting to create more consistent conditions.
- Ensure the Lens is Clean: A dirty, smudged, or rain-covered lens can dramatically reduce image clarity and impair analytic performance. Regularly clean the camera's dome or lens.
- Rule Out Obstructions: A parked van, overgrown foliage, or new signage could be temporarily blocking the view. Check for any new obstructions in the camera's line of sight.
Symptom: Incorrect Classifications
If the system is flagging other objects (or people) as vehicles, or vice versa, this points to a need for fine-tuning.
- Use Regions of Interest: In the analytics settings, you can define specific regions of interest. This tells the system to only analyse motion within that designated area. For example, draw a region around a road or car park to prevent the system from analysing movement on a nearby footpath.
- Provide Feedback: Verkada's systems are constantly learning. While it won't provide an immediate fix, using the feedback tools within the Command interface to report misclassifications helps improve the underlying AI models over time.
By ensuring your camera is correctly positioned, the environment is suitable for analytics, and your software settings are properly configured, you can significantly improve the reliability and accuracy of Verkada's vehicle detection.