When the face isn't recognized: common causes and how to avoid them

The enrollment photo

The most common cause is at the source: the photo used for the enrollment. Old ID photos, filtered selfies, dark images or ones with a small face produce a poor model, and the terminal starts refusing under normal conditions. The classic sign is the same person refused several times while their neighbors go through without trouble.

A good photo is recent, taken head-on, with even light, without sunglasses or a cap, with the face filling a good part of the frame and a neutral expression. Taking the photo on the spot, at the condominium itself, usually gives a better result than asking the resident to send one. When the photo comes from the resident, check each one before sending it to the terminals, and return the ones that won't do with a short explanation.

Light: sun in front and shadow behind

The second most frequent cause is the light where the terminal sits. Sun hitting the camera directly, at certain hours, washes out the image. A person with the sun behind them shows up as a dark silhouette. In both cases, the refusals cluster at one time of day and one door, and the access history shows it.

The fixes are physical: a cover or a visor over the terminal, a small change of position or angle, and lighting in the approach area for the night.

Height, angle and distance

A terminal mounted too high frames tall adults well and everyone else poorly. A terminal that is too upright asks people to stop square in front of it, which nobody does in a hurry. Distance matters too: each model has a recognition range, and anyone who stops too close or too far isn't read.

Those are installation adjustments, and the installer should come back to make them when the refusals point to a specific door rather than specific people. A good clue is to compare two doors of the same building: if the same person goes through one fine and is refused at the other, the problem is the door.

The way people walk through

Part of the refusals comes from behavior, and guidance solves it. The most common cases:

• A cap, a hood, sunglasses or a mask covering part of the face.
• Approaching from the side, looking at the phone, without facing the terminal.
• Walking through at a run, without giving the terminal the instant it needs.
• Two people in the frame at the same time, one behind the other.
• An open umbrella in front of the face on rainy days.

A notice with a drawing of the right way to stand, placed next to the terminal, is worth more than any technical adjustment for these cases.

The enrollment didn't reach the terminal

There is also the case where the person is enrolled in the dashboard, but the terminal at that door never received them. It happens when the device was off at the time of the upload, when its memory is full or when the network between the local device and the terminal failed. The symptom is different: the person is recognized at one door and refused at another.

A good system shows, terminal by terminal, whether the enrollment arrived, and retries on its own when the device comes back. Without that, the administration finds out about the problem from the complaint, days later, and without knowing how many other people are in the same situation.

How Abriu handles it

At Abriu, the access history records refused accesses with the person, door, time and method, with filters to see whether the refusals cluster around someone, a door or a time of day. The photo can be taken on the spot with the phone's camera and replaced in the enrollment, and the dashboard adjusts the image before sending it to the terminals.

Every upload is checked: the dashboard shows, terminal by terminal, whether the person is there, and the hub retries when a device that was off comes back. The dashboard e-mails the administrators when a terminal's memory is nearly full and when uploads failed. Light, height and angle are installation adjustments, made during the site visit and revisited when the history points to a door.