Need help tweaking motion detection

erkme73

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This camera is about 2' off the ground, and less than 5' from the edge the driveway, facing the entrance from the road. It's at that location and height to best be able to capture license plates as vehicles leave (TN is a rear tag only state).

Camera.jpg

It also lets me know if anyone is coming down the driveway. I have the following motion zones B (red), C (green), and D (yellow) turned on to trigger an alert - if ANY of these get tripped:

BCD zones.jpg

I also have zone A (the entire screen) turned on to record, but it will not trigger an alert. My motion detection settings are as follows:

MD settings.jpg

I've decreased the sensitivity and require at least a 0.4 second amount of movement before triggering. Object detection is also enabled, requiring a 150 pixel movement to trigger. I've disabled "reset detector when", since any vehicle moving this closely to the camera will inherently result in a change of 100% of the video frame. With it enabled, it would ignore most vehicles.

With these settings, I'm still getting hammered with alerts (meaning B, C, and/or D are tripping) anytime a fast moving cloud casts a shadow:


There seems to be no middle-ground. Either I desensitize the detection settings to the point that I get no false alarms, and I miss out on nearly all legitimate targets, or I set it to catch all targets, but get inundated with false alarms.

Since this is a vacation property, which sits primarily vacant, and virtually all local homes have been burglarized at least once, it is essential that I can rely on the alert notifications. Lately, with it going off several times per hour, I've become desensitized to the point it's getting dangerous.

Ultimately, with my next visit to the property, I will tie my PIR driveway alert beam into the home automation system, and use that to trigger alerts in BI. But until then, I'm at a loss as to how to get BI to play nice.
 

Abbell

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Does raising the contrast help? Leave the size smaller and increase the contrast as it may ignore the clouds.
 

erkme73

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Gave it a go, but still got a bunch of false alarms, and missed a big truck that drove past the camera as the sun set.
 

Abbell

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Change the change time to .2s and see if that helps. I am still working on tweaking my cams to post any insights you have. So far my arch enemy was a wasp trying to build a nest...ack
 

beepsilver

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You know I've never tried setting my cameras to night mode when the clouds/sun do their thing....just wondering aloud really if you're able to get what you need from actual targets with night mode enabled...and, as I said I've never tried it, but wondering if those conditions would set off your camera while in night mode. Might be worth a try until you can get out there to make your adjustments.
 

Abbell

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That is a great point... You would just have to set up a night profile. I need to do that for my cams. I wonder if I should set up a wasp profile..lol
 
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