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Motion detection

drsdrs
edited July 2015 in SecuritySpy
Hi Ben
I have a little question about motion detection zone (green)

is that the green area is the area in which performs Motion detection or is it an exclusion zone?

Thanks

Comments

  • Within the green area, motion is ignored. So paint green over all areas of the image where you want to ignore movement.
  • It's a real challenge setting up motion detection. Another thing to watch out for is that the camera itself can have 'live' or 'trigger' detection areas. So if you weren't aware of this you'd be setting up motion detection areas in security spy on top of an area already defined in the camera. Depending upon your camera model you will be able to access the cameras trigger areas on a browser then check in Security Spy if these conflict or overlap etc. if you've got that sorted out then you have to deal with the fact that the cameras might not actually be detecting 'motion' at all. Many of them simply respond to changes in pixel illumination and that is processed as motion. So if you're monitoring an exterior situation you will have a wide range of light factors causing 'motion detection' but no actual subjects at all, animals, birds, vehicles or people to cause any 'motion' detection.
  • I found its motion detection is quite effective, I wish its setup is polygon base where the user drags the vertices instead of clicking like crazy to turn on tiny rectangles.

    I use a bunch of Axis cameras with their MD build in but don't know how to let SS make use of it. Any suggestions?
  • edited July 2015
    yes the selection of little green rectangles are a bit fiddly but you usually only have to do it once so not a biggy for me. I'm experimenting with the motion detection myself. Asking a few questions like.

    1 I'm assuming the entire field of view is always 'active' by default ( Though one of my cameras is noticeably less sensitive dealing with motion coming into the filed of view from the left ??? A person can be halfway across the field of view before triggering anything )

    2 I think the motion detection is always active in the camera so selecting or deselecting in the browser or SS doesn't turn it off or on at all but simply tells the software to ignore it or process it as 'movement'.
    Try this. Turn off motion detection in the browser, open SS and turn MD on and make an active selection. If it works then it's as I thought, the motion detection is actually always on. So in that case SS can make full use of it. I wish though that the detection functioned more like PIR.
    I wonder actually if anyone knows of a range of domestic cameras that DO function with PIR
  • To clarify, SecuritySpy doesn't use any of the camera's own motion-detection functionality; it's all done internally by SecuritySpy, by analysing the video pixels.

    Without a mask set, the full frame of the camera will be used for motion detection. There is no particular reason why objects on the left of the frame will trigger motion detection differently than objects on the right, unless the perspective of the camera's view means that objects on the right are closer to the camera (and therefore bigger).

    In the Camera Settings window, I know it's a bit fiddly to draw the mask and we're going to improve this in the next major update. However you don't have to individually click the green pixels as suggested above; you can click and drag to draw lines and whole areas. So it's relatively painless to define a mask, and as Peter says, it usually only has to be done one.

    Hope this clarifies a few things.
  • edited July 2015
    Thanks for clarifying this Ben. Do you know how these cameras 'inbuilt' detection typically register motion ? is it also based on pixel analysis ?
  • Hi Peter - yes I would guess that most do pixel analysis, comparing a pixel across frames to see how it changes, and using this in some kind of model to predict motion.
  • Thank you. I'm going to have to hunt for one that uses PIR, light changes, shadows, bushes, rain etc are really frustrating.
  • I was going to post a new thread but I think my comment is best made here...

    I'm having an issue where I'm constantly getting motion detection emails however I've defined my mask clearly over the areas I don't want motion detected (I'm very confident in this).

    The camera is observing a door which has a glass window in it and the glare from the mid-day sun seems to be triggering the detection, although I can't tell where else on the frame to add exclusion areas.

    It'd be great to have the option to have the pixels where motion was detected highlighted on the frame, either when it's emailed to you or saved on disk.

    Thanks Ben,

    Justin
  • You can also adjust sensitivity, and how long motion needs to be detected for to reduce "false positives". (and then test by walking through the camera view area)
  • Hi Justin - if you can email us a couple of examples of the false-positive detections then we'll take a look and see if we can make any suggestions. Certainly if the sun is being reflected directly into the camera from a window, this could cause problems for the motion detection algorithm (and could actually damage the camera's image sensor), so relocating the camera or changing its angle of view to exclude the window might help.
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