Overlaying External Temperature Data on Milestone XProtect Video Feeds

General
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1

Hi everyone,

We have a customer requirement that we’d like to get some input on regarding Milestone XProtect.

The customer wants to display temperature data as an overlay on video streams within Milestone. More specifically, they would like:

  • Temperature values to appear on the live camera feed

  • The same data to be visible on recorded footage during playback

We’re trying to understand the feasibility of this within Milestone and the best way to approach it.

A few specific questions:

  • Is it possible to send external data (e.g., temperature readings from a sensor or third-party system) to Milestone and have it displayed as an overlay on the video?

  • Does Milestone support this natively, or would this require a custom integration (e.g., via MIP SDK, plugins, or metadata streams)?

  • If anyone has implemented something similar, could you share the approach or point us to relevant documentation?

Any insights or guidance would be really helpful.

Thanks in advance!

2

Which camera brand do you use ? When Axis you can do this in camera. Out of box kinda with existing ACAP

3

If the camera doesn’t have built-in functionality…

One possible way to develop the functionality is to use Analytics Events.

  1. Develop an app or service which submits analytics events contain the data about the temperature.
    The Analytics Event Trigger via library sample could be used as a starting point.
  2. Develop a Smart Client plugin that can read the analytics event and put the data as overlay on the camera picture. Note that the plugin can be part of the export when using Milestone format, so the playback in the exported Smart Client player will still have the same overlay. Exports in plain video formats (MKV or AVI) will not have the overlay.
    The Smart Client Overlay Graph on Event plugin sample could be used as a starting point.
  3. You might need a way to admin which temperature readings should be displayed on which cameras. Here I believe the Server Side Carrousel plugin sample could be used as inspiration.