Whole scene lighting change / IR issue
I have an AppleScript action set up on my driveway camera to, upon sensing motion, turn on the carport light (the light has a Wemo switch) and then turn of the light off 5 minutes later.
Recently (last month or two maybe?), on the driveway camera, these lighting changes are not recognized as a whole-scene lighting change, so it triggers the motion sensor, turning on the light again. Sometimes just once or twice, other times it can bounce on and off for hours. Turning down sensitivity helps, but I need the sensitivity for the actual proper operation of the camera.
My *suspicion* is that since we have a white SUV, the reflection of the carport light on the car's roof (much closer and more reflective than the driveway) is tricking SecuritySpy into thinking it's a localized lighting change.
Here's a sample recording from earlier this evening;
https://www.tallent.us/postedfiles/DrivewayLightIssue.m4v
Order of events:
00:00 Recording starts just after the porch light is turned off.
00:07 Camera senses dark and activates its IR LEDs. Precapture is set to 5 seconds, so I think this it the culprit.
00:09 Wemo switch activates porch light.
00:18 Camera turns off IR LEDs and switches back to visual light.
A stop-gap I've been *thinking* of implementing is modifying my AppleScript to temporarily disable the camera for about 10 seconds when it turns off the porch light. But obviously this isn't ideal.
Is there a setting that would prevent this issue, or something that could be tweaked in a future version to avoid it?
Thanks!
Recently (last month or two maybe?), on the driveway camera, these lighting changes are not recognized as a whole-scene lighting change, so it triggers the motion sensor, turning on the light again. Sometimes just once or twice, other times it can bounce on and off for hours. Turning down sensitivity helps, but I need the sensitivity for the actual proper operation of the camera.
My *suspicion* is that since we have a white SUV, the reflection of the carport light on the car's roof (much closer and more reflective than the driveway) is tricking SecuritySpy into thinking it's a localized lighting change.
Here's a sample recording from earlier this evening;
https://www.tallent.us/postedfiles/DrivewayLightIssue.m4v
Order of events:
00:00 Recording starts just after the porch light is turned off.
00:07 Camera senses dark and activates its IR LEDs. Precapture is set to 5 seconds, so I think this it the culprit.
00:09 Wemo switch activates porch light.
00:18 Camera turns off IR LEDs and switches back to visual light.
A stop-gap I've been *thinking* of implementing is modifying my AppleScript to temporarily disable the camera for about 10 seconds when it turns off the porch light. But obviously this isn't ideal.
Is there a setting that would prevent this issue, or something that could be tweaked in a future version to avoid it?
Thanks!
Comments
Thanks for the detailed explanation and video.
As you mention, SecuritySpy does attempt to detect and ignore full-frame changes caused by lighting and camera sensitivity changes etc. However in your case, your white vehicle in the only thing that will be seen to change significantly when the light goes off, and this isn't large enough in the frame for SecuritySpy to detect this as a whole-frame change.
I would suggest leaving the sensitivity at the standard setting of 50, and instead increasing the "trigger time" setting. Try 2 or 2.5 seconds. Hopefully the transient nature of the change will mean that it is ignored by SecuritySpy's motion detection algorithm.
As you say, the other option would be to disarm the camera just before the light turns off, and then arm it a few seconds later.