VMS pros are no stranger to false and unhelpful notifications about the status of our cameras, servers and a number of other things.

At Boring, we dreamt of a day when our customers only got alerts that actually mean something:

• When your cameras stopped providing video
• When your recording servers went offline
• When maintenance mode kicks in

We brought that dream to life with the introduction of notification thresholds. These thresholds give Boring Toolbox user’s control in defining the parameters around what warrants an email notification and what does not.

ie. only notify me if a camera is down for at least 5 minutes

The problem? Some cameras are sneaky and may experience multiple down events within that threshold period, meaning they will not trigger an alert and may fly under the radar.

We call these pesky cameras, “flapping cameras.”

Flapping can be caused by a number of different factors including limited amount of POE available from the switch or faulty wiring both of which could cause a boot loop. With unstable connectivity, flapping cameras aren’t providing consistent video to recording servers, and can easily miss important video. But since a booting camera could take <60 seconds these events, while important, will not be caught by more conservative thresholds.

So, we built a solution.