Hikvision GPS / Positioning Upload heartbeat
A quiet ANPR camera can be perfectly healthy even when no vehicles have passed. Ruby ANPR uses the Hikvision positioning upload, where available, to distinguish camera health from vehicle activity.
During deployment testing, a Hikvision ANPR camera was seen sending a small request approximately once per minute with:
This is not a vehicle capture
The positioning request is useful because it proves the camera is still able to reach the Ruby ANPR endpoint. Ruby ANPR treats an authenticated request as evidence that the camera is alive and updates its Last seen time.
The heartbeat itself does not create a registration capture.
Enable GPS / Positioning Upload
On compatible firmware, enable the camera's GPS / Positioning Upload feature and set the upload interval to 60 seconds. Exact menu placement can vary by model and firmware, so use the feature name rather than assuming one universal menu path.
Why Last Seen and Last Capture are different
This distinction is important:
A rural entrance may have no vehicles for several hours but still show a current Last seen timestamp. That tells the operator the camera is communicating even though there has been no new traffic.
How Ruby ANPR presents camera health
- Online — the camera has been seen recently.
- Recently seen — communication is older but still inside the configured intermediate threshold.
- Offline — no recent heartbeat or authenticated communication has been received.
- Disabled — the camera has been disabled in the Ruby ANPR portal.
Why this matters operationally
Without a heartbeat, an operator may not know whether an empty dashboard means “no vehicles have passed” or “the camera stopped communicating hours ago.” A 60-second health signal makes that distinction much clearer.
If the heartbeat is not available on your model
Do not assume the camera is incompatible with ANPR event delivery. GPS / Positioning Upload is a useful health feature, but the core compatibility requirement is still the ability to send ANPR events to the server. Camera-health behaviour can vary by model and firmware.
If Last Seen stops updating
- Confirm the Positioning Upload feature is still enabled.
- Check the configured interval.
- Verify DNS and HTTPS connectivity.
- Check whether vehicle events still arrive.
- Review web-server access logs for incoming camera requests.