Camera Alarm Configuration

A camera alarm configuration is a configuration of an existing alarm for a specific camera. If you just create an alarm, it won’t do anything until you add it to a camera. When you do that, the condition of that specific alarm will be evaluated for this specific camera at regular intervals (as explained in the core concepts).

There are two preconditions that must be met for this, though: For one, you need to create and configure one or more alarms in your partner account, for which you have to be of level superuser or admin, with general camera permission. And for the other, you need a camera that is under active monitoring (i.e. has a defined schedule and has its status set to “operating”). Alarms will not be evaluated for cameras that are not under active monitoring! You can still add them to these cameras, but they won’t be doing anything.

Adding and alarm to a camera

There are two options for adding an alarm to a camera: One is to apply the alarms default peripheral pattern, which will add it to all cameras matching the pattern (see core concepts and alarm configuration). The other is to add the alarm to the camera manually in the camera configuration page, where you will see an alarm box below the table configuration:

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In the image shown, there are no alarms yet added to the camera. To add one, click on the edit button, choose the alarm you want from the drop-down, and click on the “Add alarm to camera” button.

If you don’t see a dropdown or a button, that means you have either not created any alarms yet for your partner account, or you have already added all of them to the camera (in which case you would see them listed in the box, though).

Once you add an alarm, it will be shown in the box, with a checkbox and a “-” button in front of it:

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The checkbox and the button will only be visible to superusers or admins! powerusers will see the alarm, but not the controls!

The checkbox to the left is for enabling and disablig the alarm for this particular camera. The red “-” button will remove it entirely. The difference is, when you disable a camera alarm it merely stops being evaluated, but the alarm stays added to the camera and any action extension configurations it might have are preserved. In effect, it behaves the same way as an alarm added to a camera that is not under active monitoring (So setting the camera status to “paused” or “under maintenance” is a convenient way to disable all alarms for a given camera without bothering with all the checkboxes).

When you remove an alarm from a camera, on the other hand, the Camera Alarm Configuration is deleted. To activate the alarm for this camera again you have to add it again, but all action extension configurations will be lost!

Extending action configurations

When you click on the + sign to the right of an alarm, it will drop out to display the alarms description, and list the alarms configured actions.

The configuration of some actions can be extended for this specific camera. This particular feature is also available at poweruser level. For superusers and admins, it is important to understand that this is not an override of the action configuration in the alarm itself. It is very much a second configuration for that action, and both will be executed for this camera. Action extensions are specific to the camera they were created in, and will not have any effect on the same alarm added to other cameras, while changing the action configuration in the alarm configuration itself will affect all cameras that have that alarm.

When you extend an action, you will be shown the actions configuration widget, and can configure it normally.

There is also a removal button at the bottom, which serves to remove this specific extension from the camera alarm configuration. It is not to be confused with the removal button shown before that removes the entire alarm from the camera.

How to configure specific alarm actions is documented in its own section.