Advanced Triggering

[jrich523]

I was wondering if there was a way to restrict triggers from one camera based on another.

In this case there are two camera that are of importance. One is at my front door, designed to grab the face of anyone coming to the door, the problem is that it also has a view of the road behind it so i get a lot of notifications about cars going by. I have tweaked the region and other motion settings to help remove some of the false positives but i still get enough that i dont actually look at notifications.

I did see that I can do Motion zone crossing, so i could say if they come from the right then record (walking up the walkway) but that would still get cars leaving but not coming which will help cut it back a bit but wont prevent the false positives.

In comes the second camera, which has a view of the walkway to the front door. Is there any way that i could have a zone setup for the walkway that would make it so that the door camera will only record/notify the trigger if the other trigger went first within x seconds or whatever?

I know you can do trigger groups, which will sort of work this way but it will ignore the trigger on the door camera and just base it off the time of the front driveway camera (record camera A after B trigger for 20 seconds).

I guess the pseudo code would be something like this?

if(DoorCam.ZoneA == Triggered)
if(DrivewayCam.ZoneB.LastTriggeredTime + 20seconds < datetime::now() )


Thoughts?

 

[fenderman]

simply remove the road from all used zones...

 

[jrich523]

Tried that. Because of the angle and the steps up to the door, it has a great view of the road. I've done what i can to really fine tune the zone and its a LOT better than it was, but still getting too many false positives, which is why im looking for a stronger method.

 

[fenderman]

Tried that. Because of the angle and the steps up to the door, it has a great view of the road. I've done what i can to really fine tune the zone and its a LOT better than it was, but still getting too many false positives, which is why im looking for a stronger method.

I dont understand...if the road is not selected for motion trigger then nothing traveling on the road will be detected.

 

[jrich523]

You can see that the camera is low giving it a more level view of what is behind the steps. The road goes right in front of the fence and trucks tend to trigger it when they go by. You can also see how the other camera has a great view of the walkway allowing me to zone out that section as the trigger point.

Hopefully the views help make my pseudo code make more sense.

Im thinking perhaps the best bet is to do what i stated originally. Set the trigger on Cam1 to do the group trigger and just record it for 30 seconds or whatever it is..

The real end goal here is to be able to get a good face shot of anyone going to the door and send that off to my phone so i can quickly see who is there.

Really appreciate the responses
Thanks!

 

[fenderman]

Post images of your zones as you have them set now..

 

[jrich523]

I currently have the zones removed because I had enabled the 'show object rectangles' so i could get a better idea of what was being captured where.

The other thing i had previously tried that i maybe just didnt do well, was selecting a smaller zone between the hand railings like drawn. The issue I had was i was unable to get the right size motion trigger (min. object size, min. contrast) to get the small zone to work correctly.

If i could get that to work correctly, it would probably meet my need without doing anything too crazy but no matter what i did with those two properties i could never get the tiny zone to trigger correctly.

If you agree that the outlined zone looks reasonable, i'll set that up once again and fine tune as best i can and then report back here.

thanks again!

 

[jrich523]

One more thing I'll add.. because we're a corner home, the headlights do some odd things at night causing triggers due to contrast changes. As you can see by the red box, it looks like the light reflecting off the column is the main issue there.The outline i showed above shouldn't have this problem, but i thought it might be important to know.

 

[Tizeye]

I dont understand...if the road is not selected for motion trigger then nothing traveling on the road will be detected.

I have a similar issue where restrict out the road and sidewalk. Works quite well during daytime. Night time is a whole different issue. Sensitivity is pulled back where noticed raccoons walking across driveway DID NOT trigger an event...just happened to see the movement live...and that is a good thing. With IR lighting realize can do little about moths who suddenly take up 100% of view, but the big issue are car headlights. Thankfully, the cars stay on the road and out of the motion trigger area, but their headlights will light up the motion area - particularly when turning a corner and the intersection isn't even in the FOV of the camera - and trigger an event. Had a similar where neighbor was walking dog (and not picking up after) at 3:30 AM. Stayed on sidewalk out of detection area, but flashlight swinging wildly with his stride was all over the yard and even wall of the house, triggering an event.

 

[Tizeye]

Here is an example just happened to have on this computer as I emailed the county after their worker insisted she checked GPS of their vehicles and none violated the 6AM noise ordinance. (lassic brushoff) The motion detect area was along the top of the door/screen and not the upper part or that sidewalk in view below the bird feeder, so would pick up activity in the yard prior to entry as well as a successful entry. Even had to trim it back on the left side to exclude the door as turning the kitchen light on would trigger an event. A few seconds earlier, the street sweeper turned the corner, lighting up the area in the motion zone and triggered the event then I captured this frame to send to the county.

 

[fenderman]

improper setup...you guys need to post all your settings including zones..

 

[jrich523]

based off this conversation, here are my current settings, which have been working well so far, but its only been a day. Also the reason its so high is because of the garbage truck, which i'll be able to validate next tuesday when trash day rolls around again.

Also

For the Object Detection i have the following
Objectg Travels: 100
Reset Detector When - Object Size Exceeds 67%

That last setting i was trying to use to help with the headlight glare that fills the screen.

 

[xdq]

Why not have two zones, one above the other?

Create a zone that covers your entire porch entrance - Zone G
Create a zone below where you currently have one - Zone A
Create a zone above this, roughly where your current one is - Zone B
Make sure that zones A and B have a gap between them.
Require that objects pass from zone A>B (or A-B)
Having zone G encompass both A and B will ensure that objects are continuously within 'a' zone and therefore count towards any make time you set.

That's my understanding based on a couple of months of BI experience and works well in my garden where headlights move from perpendicular to parallel right in front of my house.

 

[jrich523]

hmm i had considered something like that but it was more so to prevent a trigger from people leaving. I was considering having a zone near the door (bottom right) and the one i currently have. That being said, I think your idea gives me a finer trigger on the way in and will hopefully not trigger on the way out! i'll screw around with that a bit, thanks!

 

[xdq]

Here's a silly solution.... buy a crappy camera, mount it in the ideal location for detection (not worried about capturing actual detail with it) and use it to trigger your proper camera

 

[jrich523]

well in that case couldnt i use a PIR (smartthings in play as well)?
Also i do have the other camera pointing at the walkway so i could group them and make sure the walkway cam triggers (Based on a zone) before allowing the porch camera to trigger. I was actually considering using a zone on that cam to turn on the outside lights if someone walks up the walkway at night so that would least make that zone a 2 for 1

i guess i was trying to avoid that because it felt more costly/complex...

 

[xdq]

PIR is a good idea - I've already got my SmartThings set up with BlueIris Fusion to trigger recordings whenever my door/window sensors are opened.

Thinking of using your cam1 as the trigger; if you already have rules set up on cam1 that you don't want to disturb by adding the trigger you could always make a copy of it, eg cam1a. This doesn't increase your bandwidth and shouldn't add much to CPU usage. Cam1a could then be solely used for triggering cam4.

Multiple motion rules/camera is something I struggled with when moving to BI from SightHound.

 

[jrich523]

lol yeah i actually already did the copy since the zone for walkway trigger is different than the record zones, and you are right, minimal impact from the clone, however it does do weird things with the UI2 and the phone app (weird as in hidden cam's still show up)

actually i just posted on smartthings for help on that side of things for the trigger stuff.
External Trigger

 

[xdq]

There's an option in the app settings to show or hide hidden/disabled cameras

or to disable entire groups:
select the group view (lower left of the main BI screen)
click on the group settings button (gear)
deselect "Enable group webcast"

 

[jrich523]

for Android it was under settings and there was a dropdown called "hide cameras" which i changed to "hidden" and that seemed to do the trick. Could have sworn i looked before but maybe the option title was changed with a recent release. at any rate, thanks!