JP2002112246A - Surveillance camera apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a surveillance camera apparatus that can efficiently store images before and after the occurrence of abnormity in a state of acquiring real time images. SOLUTION: The surveillance camera apparatus is provided with a primary buffer 8 in which images picked up by a camera section 1 are sequentially endlessly written and with an abnormity occurrence discrimination section 4 that discriminates occurrence of abnormity. The primary buffer 8 acts like a ring buffer in which new images are sequentially endlessly overwritten and the storage area is fixed to a real time image area after the write addresses by a prescribed number are consecutively changed on the occurrence of abnormity.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a surveillance camera which retains images before and after occurrence of an abnormality while acquiring real-time images.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art The configuration of a conventional surveillance camera device is shown in FIG. In FIG. 11, reference numeral 1 denotes a camera unit using a CCD as an image sensor, 2 denotes a primary buffer into which images (frame images: the same applies hereinafter) taken by the camera unit 1 are sequentially and endlessly written, and 3 denotes a primary buffer when an abnormality occurs. An abnormality occurrence memory for copying an image of the buffer 2, an abnormality determination device 4 for determining the occurrence of an abnormality when an abnormality occurs, a timer / counter unit for generating processing timing and the like, 6
Reference numeral denotes a transmission buffer in which an image in the primary buffer 2 is copied in response to a transmission request from the outside. Reference numeral 7 denotes a LAN to which a transmission request is sent and to which the image copied in the transmission buffer 6 is transferred.

As described above, conventionally, an image picked up by the camera unit 1 is always written endlessly by overwriting in the primary buffer 2, and when the abnormality determination unit 4 determines that an abnormality has occurred, the image in the primary buffer 2 is stored. Is copied to the abnormality memory 3 and taken in. The image fetched into the memory 3 at the time of occurrence of an abnormality was later reproduced and used for investigating the occurrence of the abnormality. In addition, when a transfer request of a captured image is received from the outside, the image in the transmission buffer 6 is transferred via the LAN 7.

[0004]

However, in this system, when an abnormality occurs, an image held in the primary buffer 2 is read from the primary buffer 2 and written into the memory 3 for the occurrence of an abnormality. It was time consuming and inefficient. Further, at the time of this copy, a new image cannot be written in the primary buffer 2, and a real-time image at this time cannot be obtained.

An object of the present invention is to provide a surveillance camera device which can always write a real-time image and can also hold images before and after occurrence of an abnormality.

[0006]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a primary buffer in which images picked up by a camera section are sequentially and endlessly written, and an abnormality occurrence determining section for determining occurrence of an abnormality. Wherein said primary buffer comprises:
The writing position is fixed to the real-time image area after the writing position continuously changes by a predetermined number by determining the occurrence of the abnormality by the abnormality occurrence determination unit.

In a second aspect based on the first aspect, the write position of the primary buffer changes endlessly throughout the entire memory space until the abnormality occurrence determination section determines that an abnormality has occurred.

In a third aspect based on the first aspect, the primary buffer is connected to the first image area in which the endless writing is performed, and the first buffer is continuously connected to the first image area by the abnormality occurrence determination unit determining the occurrence of an abnormality. The second where sequential writing is performed
And the third as the real-time image area
Are provided as independent memory spaces.

A fourth aspect of the present invention is directed to any one of the first to third aspects.
In one aspect of the invention, in the primary buffer, the image from the camera section is thinned out by 1 / N and written by the position designation of the endless writing being shifted to the next every N times of overwriting.

In a fifth aspect based on the fourth aspect, the primary buffer is arranged such that, for the image thinned out by 1 / N, the primary buffer on the side older than the time when the abnormality occurrence determination section determines the occurrence of the abnormality. The thinning rate was increased so that the thinning was performed.

[0011]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of a surveillance camera device according to the present invention. The same components as those shown in FIG. 11 are denoted by the same reference numerals. In the present embodiment, a ring buffer having a capacity larger than the capacity of the primary buffer 2 shown in FIG. use. Reference numeral 9 denotes a timer / counter unit for generating timing for processing such as writing and reading.

FIG. 2 shows the contents of the primary buffer 8.
rd_ptr is a read pointer, wr_ptr is a write pointer, FirstAderss is a start address, and LastAddress is a last address. FIG. 3 shows the contents of the transmission buffer 6, where sd_tpr is a transmission buffer pointer.

Next, the writing to the primary buffer 8 will be described with reference to the flowcharts of FIGS. 4, 5, 7, and 8.

As shown in FIG. 4, when a write request is issued from the camera unit 1 to the primary buffer 8, a read request is sent to the primary buffer 8. If not, the access right to the primary buffer 8 is acquired. When the access right is acquired, the write position to the primary buffer 8 is determined next.

As shown in FIG. 5, a normal write position is a write counter (wr_cnt) at a specific write position.
Is determined to count to WRITE_NEXT times (N times) before proceeding to the next writing position. In other words, the writing position remains in the same area until N consecutive writings are completed. As a result, consecutive images are overwritten N times, so that writing by the 1 / N thinning-out method is performed.

On the other hand, when an abnormality occurs, there is an interrupt of an external trigger (occurrence of an abnormality) as shown in FIG. 7, the lock flag (lock_flg) becomes 1, and the lock counter (rock_cnt)
Is reset to 0. Then, the writing position advances one by one from the time of occurrence of the abnormality, and the lock counter (lock_c
nt) counts a predetermined number of ROCK_MAX_CNT times, resets the write counter (wr_cnt) to 0, and locks (fixes) the write position there.

In the above description, in each of the normal and abnormal cases, each time a write position is determined, one image is written therein.
Access right is returned. In FIG. 5, File
Size indicates the file size of the image, and in this embodiment, is a fixed value (varies when the image is a compressed image).

As described above, in the primary buffer 8,
Until the occurrence of the abnormality, one of the N consecutive images is written to the image sent from the camera unit 1 so that the image is thinned out and written endlessly. A predetermined number of continuous images are written, and then the writing position is locked. Real-time images are sequentially overwritten on the locked writing positions.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing the contents of the primary buffer 8 after locking. If an error occurs at the time of writing the image F (T), a predetermined number of continuous images are written after the writing is completed. F (T) to F (T + 2)} are performed, and then writing is locked. This lock is in its primary buffer 8
Is copied to the transmission buffer 6 and then released. The image FO at the locked writing position is obtained by sequentially overwriting the image sent from the camera unit 1,
The real-time image is recorded here.

Next, reading from the primary buffer 8 will be described with reference to FIG. When a read request from an FTP server, a browser, or the like arrives from the LAN 7, the access right to the primary buffer 8 is acquired when no image is written from the camera unit 1. Then, the write start address of the transmission buffer 6 (sd_pt
r) and the read start address (r
(d_ptr) is specified and then read, and one image is copied to the transmission buffer 6. When this is completed, the access right to the primary buffer 8 is returned, and thereafter, this is repeated, and the image is copied to the transmission buffer 6 for each image. In this way, the images are read out as moving images or still images in chronological order.

This can be done for locked images, real-time images, and unlocked images. The image read out in this way can be displayed on the monitor as a multi-image to be displayed in multiple divisions or a highlighted image with a frame. In addition, the starting point of reading from the primary buffer 8 can be arbitrarily specified, and a predetermined number of sheets can be read in an arbitrary direction temporally from an arbitrary position before or after the occurrence of the abnormality.

In the above-described method for storing images by endless writing to the primary buffer 8, the thinning is performed every N images, and the oldest image file is sequentially discarded (overwritten). The thinning rate is fixed and the efficiency is not good. Therefore, when an abnormality occurs while an image is being saved at a fixed thinning rate, the thinning rate is reduced near the time of occurrence of the abnormality, and sequentially increased as it becomes older, and thinning is performed again at a high speed. Images after abnormal occurrence can be stored for a longer time. In this case, the past image may be thinned out in a daring manner.

For example, as shown in FIG. 9, the image of F (T-3N) is overwritten on the image of F (T-2N), and the image of F (T-3N) is added to the original area where the image of F (T-3N) was located. By overwriting the image of (T-5N), the images of F (T-2N) and F (T-4N) at positions away from the time of occurrence of the abnormality are thinned out. By repeating such thinning, images can be stored with high efficiency without impairing the format of the ring buffer.

The primary buffer 8 may be replaced with a ring buffer for writing data as shown in FIG. That is, before the trigger of the occurrence of the abnormality, the writing is continuously updated endlessly in a plurality of areas TB in the form of a ring buffer. When the real-time image area RT is left, the write pointer (wr_ptr) is fixed there. In this case, each of the area TB before the trigger input, the area TA after the trigger input, and the real-time image area RT is partitioned as an independent memory space, and the address is fixed, so that the reading process is facilitated.

Although the above description has been made on the assumption that the image output from the camera unit 1 is not compressed, a compressed image can also be captured. In this case, a file system that uses a management table that manages the file size of the image and the start address when the file size is written to the primary buffer 8 is introduced, and writing / reading of the compressed image to / from the primary buffer 8 is performed.

[0026]

As described above, according to the present invention, images before and after the occurrence of an abnormality can be efficiently held in a state where a real-time image can be obtained.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a surveillance camera device of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of a primary buffer (ring buffer).

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram of a transmission buffer.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of writing.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of a write position determination.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart of reading.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of capturing an external trigger.

FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram of contents of a primary buffer after locking.

FIG. 9 is an explanatory diagram of further thinning of an image in a primary buffer.

FIG. 10 is an explanatory diagram of a modification in which a part of the primary buffer is used as a ring buffer.

FIG. 11 is a block diagram of a conventional surveillance camera device.

 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continued on the front page (72) Inventor Naoyuki Inoue 1116, Suenaga, Takatsu-ku, Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture Inside the Fujitsu General Co., Ltd. 72) Inventor Tsutomu Uno 1116 Suenaga, Takatsu-ku, Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture Inside Fujitsu General Co., Ltd. 1116 Suenaga, Takatsu-ku, Kawasaki F-term in Fujitsu General Limited (reference) 5C054 AA02 CC01 CH01 DA09 EA07 FF03 GA00 GB01 GD01 GD06 GD09 HA00

Claims (5)

[Claims] A primary buffer in which images picked up by a camera unit are sequentially and endlessly written; and an abnormality occurrence determination unit that determines the occurrence of an abnormality. A surveillance camera device wherein the writing position is fixed to a real-time image area after a predetermined number of continuous changes by the determination. 2. The surveillance camera device according to claim 1, wherein the writing position of the primary buffer changes endlessly throughout the entire memory space until the abnormality occurrence determination unit determines that an abnormality has occurred. Surveillance camera device. 3. The surveillance camera device according to claim 1, wherein the primary buffer is connected to a first image area in which the endless writing is performed and the abnormality occurrence determination unit determines that an abnormality has occurred. A surveillance camera device comprising: a second image area in which writing is sequentially performed by a computer; and a third image area serving as the real-time image area as independent memory spaces. 4. The surveillance camera device according to claim 1, wherein the primary buffer is configured such that a position designation of the endless writing is shifted to the next every N times of overwriting, whereby the camera unit A surveillance camera device characterized in that an image from the camera is thinned by 1 / N and written. 5. The surveillance camera device according to claim 4, wherein the primary buffer is a side of the image thinned out by 1 / N, which is older than a side when the abnormality occurrence determination unit determines that an abnormality has occurred. A surveillance camera device characterized in that the thinning rate is increased by increasing the thinning rate.