Dahua WizSense vs WizMind

On many of our Dahua product listings, you may have seen the logo or a mention of one of two key Dahua technologies – these are WizSense and WizMind. But what does they actually mean?

Well, to understand what they do and how they help users, we first need to understand what AI in security cameras is.

What does AI mean in security cameras?

By now, nearly every knows what AI stands for: Artificial Intelligence and is essentially boils down to computers trying to replicate human actions in order to simplify and enhance our lives. AI is built in to pretty much all the products we use today, especially things like smartphones (see: Siri) but we also have AI powered hoovers, self-driving cars and even social media uses AI to detect spam or malicious posts.

So how do security cameras use AI?

Well, security cameras are able to perform tasks such as facial recognition, intruder detection by monitoring set perimeters, motion detection and even temperature detection among many others. With Dahua cameras, this technology is built in to the device itself – and they are split into two technologies called WizSense and Wizmind. But what is the difference?

WizSense

WizSense could be classed as Dahua’s ‘entry-level’ AI solution, but the power and breadth of analytics available makes it far from that. WizSense is designed to provide great AI features while keeping things simple for every day users.

Some of the features included in WizSense include:

  • SMD – This stands for Smart Motion Detection. SMD uses AI to distinguish between humans and other objects that may cause false alarms, such as a fox running through a back garden, or between vehicles and vehicle-like objects.
  • Perimeter Protection – This feature uses AI to monitor a set area and can trigger an alarm when the area is breached. For example, you may want to trigger an alarm when an intruder passes a set line that borders your driveway.
  • Active Deterrence – Built-in spotlights and audible siren provide an extremely overt method of warding off intruders.
  • Thermal Imaging – when combined with thermal cameras, WizSense can detect dangerous occurrences, such as a sudden change in temperature, or the start of a fire.
  • AI Coding – Using AI, precious storage can be saved by focusing on making sure humans and vehicles are sharp, while allowing other unneeded parts of footage such as the sky, for example, to be less clear.
  • Facial Recognition – Captured facial features can be compared to images in a database and used in applications such as access control, preventing strangers from entering premises.

WizMind

Conversely, WizMind can be thought of as the ‘enterprise/business’ version of Dahua’s AI technologies, providing more in-depth analysis for large retail applications, or large car parks in cities for example. This includes:

Humans

  • Facial Recognition 2.0 – On top of the basic functionality provided in WizSense, 2.0 provides search by entry frequency (for example, to find people appearing more than 5 times), customer traffic statistics such as age and gender and the ability to exclude staff from this as well as the prevention of people who have already been counted.
  • Privacy Protection 2.0 – Provides real-time mosaic/pixelation of human targets while allowing the ‘un-masking’ of certain targets for use as evidence to comply with GDPR.
  • Human Video Metadata 2.0 – Provides the ability to extract up to 28+ attributes for humans, vehicles etc. such as clothing type, clothing colour and even PPE detection. These attributes can be searched for, reducing time to find specific footage.
  • People Counting – Tracking human targets in an area to provide accurate statistics about footfall and preventing overcrowding in a pandemic.
  • Heat Map – Provides heat maps showing number of people in any one area such as a certain part of a supermarket, as well as average stand time.
  • Stereo Analysis – Allows for the detection of certain behaviours such as falling (useful in care homes or supermarket), lingering too long or detecting distance between people, such as minimum distance in a pandemic.
  • Wide Area Security – Provides features such as crowd density comparison, vehicle density and can create time-lapse videos.
  • Smart Tracking – Automatically moves PTZ cameras to keep the target in the scene at all times.

Vehicles

  • ANPR 2.0 – Captures highly accurate number plate details.
  • Vehicle Video Metadata 2.0 – Extracts vehicle attributes, such as vehicle colour, make, model etc.
  • Illegal Parking Detection 2.0 – Monitors a set area and provides overlays for license plate, violation time, violation location and duration to be used as evidence for parking infractions.
  • Parking Space Management – Detection of the number of vehicles in an outdoor parking area to work out how many spaces remain.

Thermal Imaging

  • Long Range Surveillance – Provides a highly accurate thermal image of a scene from a long distance.
  • Boat Detection – Provides an easy way to monitor boats at night via thermal imaging.
  • Fire Detection – Able to detect a fire starting from long distances, for example a forest fire.

Objects

  • Object Monitoring – Allows for the detection of objects such as unattended suitcases to allow them to be returned to the owner, or more malicious objects.

As you can see, while WizSense provides an ample amount of features for residential and small business applications, WizMind brings a whole extra level of artificial intelligence features for a range of large businesses who require in-depth monitoring capabilities.

Many of these features compliment each other too, for example in the case of WizSense, a perimeter could be set, and when it is broken, perimeter protection can trigger active deterrence to ward off the intruder. Meanwhile facial recognition could be used in case active deterrence is ignored for future evidence.

In the case of WizMind, the owner of a care home may want to use facial recognition to allow or deny access and base this on temperature to stop ill people from entering, followed by using a mosaic mask on faces inside the care home to protect privacy. At the same time they may want to use stereo analysis to check for care home residents falling.

Alternatively, a car park owner may want to collect number plates on entry to facilitate a ticketless entry/exit system, while using parking space management to report to users how many spaces remain. At the same time, they may want to record car attributes in case of non-payment.

So there you have it. If your next project is a residential install with high value assets, you may opt to go for WizSense products, whereas if you are quoting on a supermarket project, WizMind will allow the owners to deep dive into analytics to keep their customers safe, all while finding out valuable information about them in order to improve the business.

Back to blog