Motion Detection Changes in 6.20

cstout

I'm being flooded with the email notification below. Especially funny because the camera I'm getting the most notifications from is...a parking lot where I certainly hope cars are staying stationary. ;-)

A stationary vehicle is visible to camera "Parking Lot", which will interfere with moving vehicle detection - either fully obscure it using the motion mask, or disable vehicle detection for this camera.

I noticed that my cameras' motion detection settings all got changed to (or this was added) "Human/Vehicle Moves." I'm unclear on if this is a replacement or addition to regular motion detection. I want to stop these notifications, but I don't want to disable motion detection recording. For this particular installation, I don't need separation of human/vehicle MD and regular motion threshold recording works fine.

If I get rid of the "Human/Vehicle Moves" trigger that's there now, will that stop the emails? Will regular MD still work? It looks like I have to remove that trigger and then re-add "Motion Detection" which then labels as "Anything Moves."

tl;dr: I don't want to be notified about stationary vehicles and still want motion detection recordings based on the previously set MD threshold - how do I do that?

cstout

I suppose I'm confused over the settings because there are triggers for Motion and Actions. I don't use any actions and I changed the motion capture trigger to "Human Moves" after I started getting all the vehicle notification emails but I'm still getting those emails for stationary vehicles even with it set only to "Human Moves" which makes me wonder if this is the wrong setting for what's generating the email.

asfafa

I'm also confused about what the best settings are after upgrading to 6.20 and getting non-stop email alerts. I have cameras that overlook my drive, my neighbour's drive, and our shared drive - I want to make sure that SS picks up when cars on the drives drive off, when cars arrive, as well as keep an eye on anyone who approaches the stationary cars.

Ben

When you have the AI object classifier enabled, the detection pipeline is as follows:

1. A frontline motion detector triggers when it detects motion anywhere in the frame
2. The part of the frame that contains the motion is cropped and sent to the classifier
3. The classifier produces a probability that there is a human/vehicle/animal in that cropped image
4. If this matches your trigger settings, recording and/or actions are triggered

The classifier is very accurate and determining whether there is a vehicle present or not, but it cannot distinguish a stationary vehicle from a moving one. So, consider a situation where you don't want animal detection, but there is an animal moving in front of a vehicle: that section of the frame containing both the animal and the vehicle is sent to the classifier, it detects the vehicle, and causes an unwanted trigger. Therefore this is a situation that needs to be dealt with to reduce the chance of these kinds of false-positives, hence this (new) warning.

This warning is generated if:

• Vehicle detection is enabled for either Motion Capture or Actions
• There is a stationary vehicle in the camera's view

There are two possible solutions:

1. Fully mask the area where the vehicle resides. But this only works if the vehicle is in a consistent position, and you don't care about other motion in this area, because all motion will be ignored by the mask. This isn't really practical for a parking lot situation.
2. Remove the vehicle option from both the Motion Capture and Actions triggers. You can still limit triggers to humans and/or animals, rather than turning off the AI altogether and relying merely on the motion detector alone (which works well but will produce more false-positives than when using the AI as a second filter).

Finally, in a situation where you have a location where a single vehicle will come and go, like a driveway or garage, and you want to be notified of this, here's a good solution (not relevant to the parking lot situation, but I'm including this for completeness for other users who may stumble across this post):

With cars that come and go from a garage/driveway, it's much better to use the presence detection feature rather than the motion detection feature. This is described in the manual under Settings > Cameras > Detection. Remove "Vehicle" from the motion-detection triggers for both Motion Capture and Actions, and instead add a presence detection trigger with the vehicle option enabled. Then you will get a trigger when a vehicle arrives/leaves the camera's view.

cstout

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it appears that I will continue receiving these notifications unless I alter the way I want to be notified about motion. Currently, I've got the cameras set to "Anything Moves" for the trigger for motion capture. I don't use Actions at this location, unless Actions are used behind the scenes for push notifications via the iOS app. Just continuous+motion recordings w/push notifications for motion detection in the app.

So, with that, does "Anything Moves" evaluate the whole image for motion, like it historically has done, or does that just collect all categories (human, vehicle, animal)? If it's just a collection of all categories, that might explain why I keep getting vehicle notifications.

What I don't want is to disable vehicle from triggers and then not get a motion detection notification when a vehicle comes driving down the side of the building (which happens frequently). Right now, I'm getting the notification, but also getting an email telling me there's a stationary vehicle. That's the notification that's making me crazy. The stationary vehicle is normal and acceptable within view of this camera and I don't want to be notified about that via email. I do, however, want to receive a notification when/if a car is triggering motion detection - or a person - or a tree falling - or something falling from the sky. Haha. I just want all motion to be detected and I don't want to be emailed about parked cars. Is that possible currently?

Ben

Hi @cstout it must be the Action trigger that is causing this message then (yes, push notifications to the iOS app are classed as Actions, so you are using Actions). Since you have a stationary vehicle in this camera's view, the problem it's describing is real, e.g.:

• A tree shadow moves near the car
• That part of the image is classified
• The classifier sees the stationary vehicle; Actions are triggered - false positive

This is the situation that the message is designed to warn you about. If you're fine with the false positives, and you just want to mute the warning, go to Settings > Email, and change the "Error report" setting from "All Errors And Warnings" to just "All Errors".