How to send SMS notifications on camera events

Often it is a requirement to send SMS alerts when a camera detects motion or some other event occurs. SMS alerts can be useful to notify security personal or other parties to take action. They are received on mobile phones and are opened at a much higher rate than e-mails. This page gives you some information on how to get started with SMS alerts.

Sending SMS alerts from camera events

To send an SMS alert on a camera event, such as motion detection you can use a combination of two software: Ozeki camera recorder and Ozeki alarm system or the latest Ozeki SMS gateway to send SMS messages. The Ozeki camera recorder app is capable of converting motion detection events into standard Ozeki messages. The Ozeki alarm system (and the Ozeki SMS Gateway) can forward these standard messages to mobile phones in the forms of SMS or E-mail.

Which is better: SMS or E-mail alerts from camera events

If you implement camera motion detection with Ozeki Camera SDK or you simply configure it in Ozeki Camera recorder, you will be able to handle the event itself and you will also receie the video frame that triggered the event. The video frame is a picture in bmp format (it can also be converted to jpg or png).

To send a notification based on such an event you can use both SMS and E-mail sending through SMS has the disadvantage, that you cannot attach the picture to the messages, since SMS messages can only carry text. If you send the alert in E-mail you can put the alert text information (date of event, location, camera name, etc) into the e-mail subject or body, and you can attach the captured frame that triggered the event as a standard image attachment.

How will my SMS notification be received

If you send an SMS notification it will be received by a mobile phone in most cases. It will be displayed the same way as a standard text message (sent by onther mobile phone) is displayed. In this case the SMS will be processed by the default SMS application runing inside the phone.

It is worth mentioning that it is possible to install SMS gateway applications on mobile phones. For example if the recipient mobil phone is an Android smartphone Ozeki SMS gateway for Android can be installed on it. Mobile network operators and SMS aggregators can also routes such SMS messages to a standard windows sms gateway application, such az Ozeki SMS Gateway for Windows. These windows base SMS gateway systems can be operated by security companies, who are monitoring buildings, homes and offices. If an SMS alert reaches such an SMS gateway system it is often forwarded through the built in SMPP server of the SMS gateway directly to the monitoring and alerting system of the security company. This monitoring and alerting systems have a so called SMPP client module, that is configured to connect to the SMPP server, and is configured to accept alerts.