Here we go! We got more FLOW for you! FLOW 1.16 is out now and this article will bring you up to date on all the exciting new features and improvements that enhance your FLOW experience. The biggest and most anticipated addition are cooperative cameras with which you can record trajectories over large areas while holding the complete information for the entire trajectory. This feature can help with achieving even better adaptive traffic control, getting perfect OD matrices for complex scenes, and more… Next, there is the highly sought-after Evidence feature to log all the different traffic violations and other important events you detect with FLOW. Next are visibility state detection, new I/O interface communication type, notifications tab, or reworked SDLC with the new interface. Read on to learn about these new features and changes in more depth!

Cameras, a crucial component of the video analytics solution setups, are directly exposed to external weather conditions where visibility is severely affected by various elements and factors such as rain, ice, fog, soil, ..etc. Hence, it is critical to detect bad visibility conditions to automatically switch them to an error state when sufficient data output quality cannot be achieved. Despite these occurrences being rare it is important to know when these conditions are present for traffic controllers to be able to switch to automatic traffic control mode. For this purpose, we have designed the visibility state detection which allows all FLOW devices to detect both abrupt and gradual changes in the input image that impact the accuracy of traffic object detection and tracking.

For this to work, the trajectory indicator and contrast indicator need to be properly set up in FLOW Analytics settings. The visibility state is then depicted as a widget in the provided analytics and can be accessed through REST and Webhook interfaces. It is also automatically included in UDP data payloads and SDLC communication, serving as a sensor error indicator. You can learn more about this feature in the full guide.

FLOW 1.16 supports additional connection types aka communication mode for IO devices the WEB and SECURED WEB. The WEB connection allows you to control multiple FLOW devices, but it doesn't handle conflicts when multiple devices try to control the same RELAY, so it's important to avoid controlling one I/O interface from multiple FLOW devices. The SECURED WEB connection works similarly to the WEB connection, but it adds an authorization header for increased security. You can learn more about I/O interfaces and their communication types here.

FLOW now features a powerful capability to re-identify vehicles seen on different cameras. Trajectories from the cooperative cameras are projected in a common geo-registered space and they can be connected based on pre-set rules. This way, you can get a complete overview of a roundabout from a few cameras installed on a central pole … almost as if you were flying a drone above the intersection.

Cooperative cameras allow for more advanced tasks such as assembling O-D matrices in scenarios where a single camera can not capture all the input and output gates. To make the feature even better, we do not require overlaps between the cameras that are to be made cooperative.

The FLOW Traffic Evidence feature represents an advancement in traffic event documentation. It enables users to specify which images should be captured to document specific traffic events. As a result, only particular situations are recorded, and these images can be obtained in one output once available. For example, you could configure the system to capture images for a vehicle making a U-turn at three different stages: entering the intersection while the vehicle's license plate is still visible, during the vehicle's maneuver within the intersection, and finally, as the vehicle exits the intersection. This feature makes FLOW a highly customizable tool for precise traffic monitoring and analysis. You can read how to set up evidence gathering for section speed and gap times here.

FLOW now has a Notifications tab where you can see notifications from all connected FLOW devices using the same BLOCK. These notifications include camera stream status, visibility status, file download notifications, and more… Additionally, FLOW 1.16 has a reworked SDLC interface that now supports 64 channel converters and can communicate error states.

To summarize, FLOW version 1.16 brings a comprehensive set of updates and enhancements to the FLOW framework. The introduction of visibility state detection allows for the accurate identification of changes in input images and improves the reliability of FLOW solutions. Cooperative cameras bring the power of video analytics to the next level making them viable even for large-scale intersections while increasing the possible robustness of the gathered traffic data. Furthermore, the new I/O interface connection types, WEB and SECURED WEB, provide additional convenient and secure ways to communicate with connected I/O interfaces. The notifications tab centralizes system activity monitoring. Bulk operations help to streamline server-side deployments and lastly the Traffic Evidence feature enables selective image capture for precise traffic event documentation while

We are excited to bring these changes to FLOW and hope that you find them valuable. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out to us using the button on the bottom right or by emailing us at info@datafromsky.com. Your satisfaction is our top priority!

Download the latest version of FLOW Insights .exe here or the portable version .zip here.

You can find the full FLOW Changelog here.

Let the traffic flow with FLOW!