Different actions, single camera ('doorbell cam')
Like many of the users here I have been using Security Spy for many years and love the software. I'm a big fan of applications like this that get the job done as simple as possible, big thanks to Ben for the continued support.
I have a camera, as I suspect many of you, that covers my front walk way, yard, etc. However only a small section of the frame would indicate that someone is coming to the front door. Is there a way to have a unique action for this subset area, that would be used much like a doorbell? i.e. if I get a notification from this action it would indicate someone is a few feet from my front door.
I've considered getting a doorbell camera, but seems a bit overkill for just knowing if someone has came to the front door.
Comments
-
Great to hear that you are enjoying the software!
You can set a mask under Settings > Cameras > Triggers, exposing just this area of the camera's image to motion detection. However, this mask would apply to all Motion Capture recording and Actions for this cameras, so this probably isn't what you want.
A workaround is to add the camera a second time to SecuritySpy - make sure to use identical device settings, and the second instance won't be counted towards your license limit. Mask out most of the frame, leaving just the area of interest exposed (but make sure this isn't too small, otherwise motion detection can't work effectively). You will probably also want to turn on the human AI object detector here, to minimise false-positive detections. Then configure the Actions for this camera instance to notify you in whatever way you want.
-
Awesome thanks Ben, didn't even cross my mind to add the camera a 2nd time. My plan is to play a door bell sound on a HomeKit device, when a human is detected walking near the door. After doing some searching, I saw this thread and feedback from yourself and sasquatch29 seems to accomplish exactly what I was thinking next being sending audio to a HomePod. I didn't think at all of the use case that sasquatch29 mentioned but that's a great idea to detect someone outside our home after hours and play a sound /recording.
https://bensoftware.com/forum/discussion/3661/homehelper-action-to-activate-scenes
-
Sounds great. FYI the next update of SecuritySpy will have the ability to play alert sounds to cameras via two-way audio, so this could be a viable alternative if your camera has a built-in speaker with two-way audio functionality.
