How to work with HALO devices

Using the IOT connector, Boring Toolbox will allow you to manage devices as well as events at scale.

What IOT Connector will do

• Scans and find HALO on the LAN
• Pre-configures HALO to work with Milestone XProtect
• Map HALO smart sensor to cameras
• Adds HALO to Milestone XProtect
• Defines events in Milestone
• Listens to events from HALO and triggers user defined events on mapped cameras
• Change settings in bulk
• Update passwords in bulk

Scans and find HALO on the LAN

HALO smart sensor should be put on the network in default configuration.  No pre-configuration needed.

1. Enter the starting address to scan
2. Optionally enter the ending address.  If you do not enter an address here it will scan until the last IP in the subnet (255)
3. Begin scan
4. Click Next to move to the next step

Select your recording server

Here you will select which recording severs you would like to add the HALO devices to. You will be able to select which HALO smart sensors you would like to add to each one of your recording servers.  This is different than the traditional Milestone workflow of adding devices to one recording server at a time.

Adding all HALO to a single recording server 

• Select the recording server from the drop down (#2)
• Click Apply to All (#4)

Adding HALO to multiple recording servers

• Select the HALOs you would like to add to a recording server (#1)
• Select the recording server (#2)
• Click Apply to Selected (#3)
• Repeat for the rest of your HALO devices

Connect cameras to HALO

Boring Toolbox IOT connector will listen for HALO events and trigger user defined events in Milestone XProtect on the HALO which created the event as well as cameras or devices which are associated to it.  To identify the devices associated with the HALO you will map them to each other in this step.

• Click on Browse
• This will open the device mapping dialog (below)

•  To make it easier to find the cameras or devices you would like to map you can search by name, IP, MAC-address or subnet.  You can also filter by recording server and device status.
• Select the devices and click Add Cameras
• **The HALO device video stream will automatically be mapped to the event for you

• Back on the main screen you can now confirm the cameras which were mapped to each HALO by hovering your mouse over the Mapped Devices cell in the grid.
• Once done mapping cameras to all your HALO devices, click Next

Choose your device groups

Here you will choose the device groups you would like HALO to be added to when added to Milestone.

• Click on Browse
• This will open the device group dialog (below)

• Select one or more device groups
• Click Add Device Groups

Add to Milestone

Once you click Save Changes the following will happen

• Each HALO device will be configured
  • If not already defined, events and actions will be created
  • Notifications will be set and pointed to the Boring Listening Service on port 1235
  • Authentication will be adjusted
  • Host name will be updated
• Each HALO will be added to the specific recording server
• Each HALO will be added to the specified device groups
• Two unique user defined events will be created in Milestone for each HALO event (set and reset)
• Camera mappings will be added to the Boring Listening Service

Viewing HALO video stream in Milestone

To see the video stream from HALO in Milestone there are two more settings that you need to change.

• Go to Hardware section of Boring Client
• Search for HALO-
  • This will bring up all your HALO devices added to Milestone
• Select them all
• Click Camera Settings
  • Set Codec to MJPEG
    • Codec tab
    • Select MJPEG from the drop down and click Apply to Selected
  • Set Streaming Mode to HTTP
    • Streaming Mode tab
    • Select HTTP from the drop down and click Apply to Selected
  • Click Preview and then Save Changes

Manage HALO passwords 

If you use Boring IOT Connector to add HALO to Milestone XProtect you now have the ability to manage and synch passwords for HALO devices in Milestone using the password manager

Dynamic event management

After you add the first HALO to Milestone XProtect using IOT Connector, Boring Toolbox will create User Defined Events (UDE) for each alert programmed in the HALO smart sensor.  These UDEs will be activated by the Boring Listening Service.

Boring Listening Service

The IOT Connector introduces a new background service called the Boring Listening Service.  This service runs constantly listening for events on port 1235.  

How does it work?

• Add HALO to Milestone using the IOT connector wizard
• Two UDEs are created for each HALO alert (set and reset)
• Boring Listening Service (BLS) will listen for alerts from the HALO (Vape, THC, Aggression, etc)
• When a message is received, BLS will
  • identify the HALO,
  • identify the alert type
  • identify the Milestone devices mapped to the HALO
  • activate the correlated UDE in Milestone while passing the mapped cameras as meta-data

Whats the benefit?

• No need to manually create 14+ events per HALO device
• Management of events in Milestone is manageable at scale
• Once the events and the rules are created that all new HALO devices will be able to re-use what has been configured without any additional configuration in Milestone

Creating rules in Milestone

With the UDEs already created in Milestone you can not easily write and manage dynamic rules using meta data. 

Example: Create a rule that starts recording for 1 min, sends an email and creates a log entry