Spiders Bugs and Alarms

[rderkis]

[FONT=&amp]Most of us have been troubled by bugs setting off our motion sensors. I have several cameras outside (under the eaves) that are especially susceptible to these false alarms.

Good Tip -- I found that by placing mothballs in a stainless steel tea ball infuser and hanging it behind (outside) cameras gets rid of many of the pests.


These false alarms usually happen at night. Because the bug is so close to the camera's ir light they always appear vary bright white. My question is --

Is there a way to make BI motion detector ignore bright white movement?
If not it would sure be a great addition to the software
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rderkis Posts: 1Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2011 5:53 pm

 

[PSPCommOp]

[FONT=&]Most of us have been troubled by bugs setting off our motion sensors. I have several cameras outside (under the eaves) that are especially susceptible to these false alarms.

Good Tip -- I found that by placing mothballs in a stainless steel tea ball infuser and hanging it behind (outside) cameras gets rid of many of the pests.


These false alarms usually happen at night. Because the bug is so close to the camera's ir light they always appear vary bright white. My question is --

Is there a way to make BI motion detector ignore bright white movement?
If not it would sure be a great addition to the software
[/FONT]
rderkis Posts: 1Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2011 5:53 pm

Motion trigger is an imperfect science. Read more thru the forum and you'll see there isn't much of a happy consensus other then adding an external PIR sensor for better detection, or adding external IR Illuminators someplace away from the camera itself so they aren't attracted to the camera face. You can obviously tinker with the size of the object, contrast, distance traveled, etc in BI but it seems most recommend the PIR or IR Illuminators I mentioned above

 

[rderkis]

Motion trigger is an imperfect science. Read more thru the forum and you'll see there isn't much of a happy consensus other then adding an external PIR sensor for better detection, or adding external IR Illuminators someplace away from the camera itself so they aren't attracted to the camera face. You can obviously tinker with the size of the object, contrast, distance traveled, etc in BI but it seems most recommend the PIR or IR Illuminators I mentioned above

I have written motion sensor algorithms and plenty of other software programs. The blue iris software could be modified fairly easily to disregard motion of a specific color. For example red or green motion could be ignored. There has been no reason to include that kind of check in the blue iris software. But looking at my cameras last night I realized anything really close and right in front of camera (IE Spider) at night with IR on is a vary bright white.
A option to disregard anything that white would really be in order!

 

[nayr]

I have written motion sensor algorithms and plenty of other software programs. The blue iris software could be modified fairly easily to disregard motion of a specific color. For example red or green motion could be ignored. There has been no reason to include that kind of check in the blue iris software. But looking at my cameras last night I realized anything really close and right in front of camera (IE Spider) at night with IR on is a vary bright white.
A option to disregard anything that white would really be in order!

Ive encountered several prowlers wearing reflective clothing, hoodies and hats.. think they are aware that they fuck up IR cameras..

at night everything black and white, such filtering would not be filtering colors at all.. just contrast..

video motion detection is always susceptible to this stuff, who cares.. if you try to tune it away it'll miss actual real events.. what about people with flashlights and other stuff?

 

[rderkis]

You do understand the concept of a option right?
Can't the same fears you just expressed be true of all the other options, including the mask and size thresholds?
Why would anyone be so dead set against a option, even if it was a option to disregard the color red because all my employes wear red. You are the one that stated it is a imperfect science.

 

[nayr]

you do understand that if you got this option you want and tried to enable a 'ignore big bright objects' filter at night you would basically fix one problem while introducing several more problems?

I dont think it would work near as well as you think it would, red, blue, green, yellow.. they all look grey at night where bugs are a problem.. so what exactly is filtering out colors going to do on a black and white video? im curious to know.

Your idea does not pass a smoke test.. developers have better things to work on than implement features that are useless just to make users happy.

 

[rderkis]

I dont think it would work near as well as you think it would, red, blue, green, yellow.. they all look grey at night where bugs are a problem.. so what exactly is filtering out colors going to do on a black and white video? im curious to know.

Ah, so you figured it out
That's just how my camera looks at night, all grays. Even white cloths come out as shades of gray at night. A black and white video should be called a black and gray video.
The only thing a vary bright white is the bugs that are within 6" of camera at night.
Now it is true that perhaps a burglar dressed completely in highly reflective white might fool it, But so far vary few burlers dress that way for some unknown reason.

I think it would work exactly like I expect. Much much fewer false alarms because of bugs at night.

 

[Q™]

[FONT=&amp]...Good Tip -- I found that by placing mothballs in a stainless steel tea ball infuser and hanging it behind (outside) cameras gets rid of many of the pests...[/FONT]

Others have suggested a scrunchie soaked in AntiBugJuice and wrapped around the camera works well.

 

[rderkis]

Sounds like a good idea to me but I hate exposing myself to insecticides, I would do it but am hesitant. The moth balls seem to work all summer but they smell bad if not used outside. And I guess mothballs are a form of insecticide but they seem to repel not kill.