Devices and Channels

The traditional idea of cameras as surveillance software entities has been developed, resulting in the concept of devices and channels. Essentially, it represents the separation of physical and data layers for reasons of security and easier management.

"Device" refers to any piece of physical equipment that serves as a data provider; a hardware piece delivering video, audio and event streams to the server. IP cameras, video encoders, capture boards, USB web cameras - these are all examples of devices that can be added to Macula software. Devices do not include any data streams.

"Channel" refers to any actual video stream (with corresponding audio/event stream, if applicable) delivered to the server from any of the configured devices. Software licensing mechanism counts channels and not devices.

In Macula Console, devices hold camera TCP/IP and user settings, as well as actual hardware model. By contrast, channels do not possess these properties: this allows them to be handled as virtual entities, detaching and re-attaching them from/to devices. Channels feature video stream configuration settings - resolution, frame rate, bit rate and others - as well as all supplementary data streams, such as audio, motion and digital input/output events, PTZ control and camera-side analytics information.

As there are also some multichannel devices, e.g., capture boards and video encoders, each device can have one or more channels attached to it - these can either be assigned or detected automatically; maximum number of channels for each specific device is stipulated by the device model.

Devices only appear within Macula Console, allowing the administrator to apply all necessary configurations. Macula Monitor only displays the channels and does not provide any access to the devices' properties to the end users.

Both devices and channels can be grouped independently. For internal Macula Console management, device groups and channel groups are available; for Macula Monitor channel grouping, visual groups can be used.