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Nebli Environment

Sending alerts to your console

Send every alert that opens or closes to HikCentral Professional as an event, so it raises an alarm on the camera on the same pole.

Who this is for: the administrator who connects Nebli Environment to the video console, and the integrator who sets up the receiving side.

Before you start:

  • You are an Administrator (People and access). Delivery targets are for administrators only.
  • Your HikCentral Professional has its Generic Event receiver reachable over HTTPS from the internet, on port 443 or 15443, at a name (not an IP address).
  • You know which HikCentral camera sits on each pole.

Every alert is always shown in Nebli Environment, whether or not it is also sent on (Alerts and rules).

Create a target

  1. Go to Settings › Delivery targets and choose New target.
  2. Fill in:
    • Name: for example "Central console".
    • Receiver address: the Generic Event receiver, https://, a name, port 443 or 15443, and no parameters.
    • Credential: what the receiver expects. It is typed once and never shown again; the card later says only when it was saved, and Replace sets a new one.
  3. Choose Create.

Deliver alerts to this target turns sending on and off without deleting the target.

An address on a private network is refused unless your installation lists it. In Nebli's cloud, private addresses are always refused.

Map each node to its camera

Under Cameras by node, give each node the Camera id in HikCentral of the camera on the same pole. You can type them in the table, or Import CSV (node, camera) with two columns:

node,camera
<node id>,<camera id>
  • An import is all or nothing. If any row is wrong, no row is saved and every refused row is listed with its reason (for example "invalid camera id", "node repeated" or "that node is not the organisation's"). The file can be up to 512 KB.
  • Export downloads the current map in the same format.
  • The card counts nodes with no camera. Their alerts are still sent, without a camera, so the alarm in HikCentral carries no video.

Test it

  • Test on a row sends one test event with that row's camera, so you can see the alarm land on the right camera.
  • Test delivery sends one test event for the target.

The card shows what the receiver answered: its status code and a short excerpt. You can test again after a minute.

What HikCentral receives

Each time an alert opens or closes, Nebli Environment sends one event to the receiver, in the shape HikCentral Professional's Generic Event receiver takes:

{"Request":{
  "Source":"NEBLI <node id>",
  "Title":"NEBLI PM25 OPEN",
  "Describe":"NEBLI PM25 OPEN node=<node id> camera=<camera id> value=62.4 threshold=55 alert=<alert id> <link to the node page>"}}
  • OPEN when the alert opens, CLOSE when it closes.
  • The channel key is in capitals. A node with no camera mapped is sent with camera=none.
  • The line carries ids, the channel key, the value and the threshold as numbers, and a link to the node page. It never carries a node, rule or site name, so no name typed in Nebli Environment can make a line that matches another camera's rule.
  • The credential, when the target has one, goes in the Authorization: Bearer header.

In HikCentral Professional, set up a Generic Event that matches this text and link it to an alarm on the camera. The operator then sees the alarm in HikCentral with that camera's video, and follows the link for the values and charts. See HikCentral Professional's own documentation for its Generic Event and alarm settings.

When a delivery fails

  • The receiver is unreachable, answers 429, or answers with a 5xx code: the delivery is tried again, first after 30 seconds and then at doubling intervals up to 30 minutes, at most 8 tries in all.
  • Any other refusal, a redirect, or an address that is not allowed: the delivery fails and is not tried again.
  • A failed delivery never stops the alert: it stays open in Nebli Environment as usual.

On the alert, Delivered to shows each target with acknowledged or failed. On the network page, Delivery targets lists each target with its last delivery and its failed deliveries, and View deliveries opens every alert change sent to it: the time, node, channel, open or closed, the exact line the receiver got, its status code and excerpt, and the retries (Network health).

What has been verified

  • Delivery has been tested against a simulated receiver that takes the documented HikCentral Professional Generic Event format. It has not yet been tested against a HikCentral Professional installation. The Deliveries view labels a simulated receiver as simulated, so it is never shown as HikCentral Professional.
  • Sending to HikCentral Master is not confirmed. The screens say "HikCentral Master pending access".

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