Camera Triggered by Floating Artifacts

M

MarkusAgustus

Getting the hang of it
May 26, 2018
45
64
Canada
Hello,

I have an IPC-T5442T-ZE camera installed under the soffits on my front lawn. It's zoomed about 50%. The camera has been in this location for about 3 years without issue. Last night it triggered about 100 alerts. Watching the footage there are two white balls with a faint line between them that floated around the image all night. With light they disappear. When my motion light went on they disappeared and with the morning sun they also went away. Any ideas what caused this? Is the camera failing? Can it be fixed? Please see attached video. Thank you.
 

Attachments

  • Like
Reactions: Smilingreen
That is a spider web. Just get a long handled broom or brush and wipe around the lens. There is a thing called a cobweb duster designed for purposes like this.
 
As an Amazon Associate IPCamTalk earns from qualifying purchases.
  • Like
Reactions: Flintstone61, bigredfish, Smilingreen and 2 others
The reason this is visible only when the camera is in its regular IR mode is because the strand of spider web is very close to the IR LED on the camera, causing it to be very intensely illuminated. When your motion-triggered floodlight comes on, it may cause the camera to speed up its exposure and/or reduce IR intensity which causes the spider web to become less visually significant.

So if this becomes a regular problem, or you are bothered by snow, rain, dust/pollen, insects, etc in front of the camera at night, you can largely eliminate the problem by turning off the camera's built-in IR and using external lighting instead positioned at least a few feet away from the camera.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Flintstone61, Smilingreen, MarkusAgustus and 1 other person
Thank you!
I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. This time of year I didn't expect a spider since the temperature can still drop below zero degrees Celsius at night but I'm definitely going to clean the lens. Maybe the little bugger was hibernating in my camera for the winter and just woke up!:)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Flintstone61, Smilingreen and bp2008
MarkusAgustus said:
Hello,

I have an IPC-T5442T-ZE camera installed under the soffits on my front lawn. It's zoomed about 50%. The camera has been in this location for about 3 years without issue. Last night it triggered about 100 alerts. Watching the footage there are two white balls with a faint line between them that floated around the image all night. With light they disappear. When my motion light went on they disappeared and with the morning sun they also went away. Any ideas what caused this? Is the camera failing? Can it be fixed? Please see attached video. Thank you.
Click to expand...
Right now, floating pollen in the air shows up on my new Dahua PTZ camera at night. It looks like a snow storm. My old Hikvision PTZ camera never showed the pollen at night. Only spider webs and big moths.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Flintstone61, MarkusAgustus and bigredfish
MarkusAgustus said:
Hello,

I have an IPC-T5442T-ZE camera installed under the soffits on my front lawn. It's zoomed about 50%. The camera has been in this location for about 3 years without issue. Last night it triggered about 100 alerts. Watching the footage there are two white balls with a faint line between them that floated around the image all night. With light they disappear. When my motion light went on they disappeared and with the morning sun they also went away. Any ideas what caused this? Is the camera failing? Can it be fixed? Please see attached video. Thank you.
Click to expand...

Itty bitty aliens, OR spider web
 
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: Flintstone61, MarkusAgustus and Smilingreen
I experience a floating spider web (EDIT: or fog 'storm') on any one of 3 outside cameras between 1-2 times per month. Two of the cameras are turrets, the 3rd is a pan-tilt. One of the turrets is illuminated by an external IR source. The turrets use IVS detection, the pan-tilt does not have AI, and is triggered by BI motion detection.

My record for the pan-tilt camera so far is 204 false alerts with 'nothing found' memo over a period of 226 minutes (12:21:54 AM to 04:08:26 AM). That's ~13 false alerts every 15 minutes!! The record for the turrets is 3 false alerts every 15 minutes, averaged over 9 hours.

When I wake up and see this happening to the Pan-Tilt camera, I've discovered that about 1/3 times, simply 'shaking' the camera - by toggling it to the leftmost and rightmost presets - will knock off the offending web. In all other cases, my go-to action is to toggle the camera to a non-alerting no-motion-detection profile. Then I must try to not forget to restore the profile in the morning.

For anyone paying attention to my posts, it will be a no surprise that I find this manual approach intolerable. Thus, I've written a Powershell script to automatically detect these situations and take action.

The approach uses Windows Task Scheduler to execute the script only at nighttime. It polls the camera's alertlist every 15 minutes and counts the number of new alerts with a 'nothing found' AI memo. If the count exceeds a specific threshold, say 7, the script performs any of a number of actions, like pausing the camera until dawn, or changing the camera's profile until dawn, etc.

I've been debugging the script for a few months. I plan to share it when it actually works as expected for a number of events in a row..
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: looney2ns, MarkusAgustus and bigredfish
MarkusAgustus said:
Hello,

I have an IPC-T5442T-ZE camera installed under the soffits on my front lawn. It's zoomed about 50%. The camera has been in this location for about 3 years without issue. Last night it triggered about 100 alerts. Watching the footage there are two white balls with a faint line between them that floated around the image all night. With light they disappear. When my motion light went on they disappeared and with the morning sun they also went away. Any ideas what caused this? Is the camera failing? Can it be fixed? Please see attached video. Thank you.
Click to expand...

Are you using MD/SMD or IVS or both?

Most here do not experience this if using IVS only.
 
I get the spider web white dot triggers often with IVS. Even with the S3 having the human, vehicle, and animal filters on.
 
Dang. I better knock on some wood. Mine never do and I do get that occasional white dot spider web nonsense.
 
wittaj said:
Dang. I better knock on some wood. Mine never do and I do get that occasional white dot spider web nonsense.
Click to expand...
It's the same principle that when my wife is driving she gets mostly green lights. When I drive they turn red in my face so I have to slam on the brakes. I'm convinced the cameras at the intersections have facial recognition to do this.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: bigredfish
I'll stick up for @tigerwillow. I can say I have seen a spider web trigger my IVS. Very rare but it has happened. For me its usually when the spider is literally walking around on the lens cover and you can count his fingers as opposed to just the web

But if it happens 1x every 3+ months I'd be surprised
 
  • Like
Reactions: tigerwillow1
wittaj said:
Are you using MD/SMD or IVS or both?

Most here do not experience this if using IVS only.
Click to expand...
I am using the basic MD that comes with Blue Iris. To be honest, I've barely looked at Blue Iris for a few years. For me it runs without issue and for the most part the basic alerts worked good enough. I have 8 cameras and it just seems to keep working. I guess it might be time to get educated on the newer AI models. I did clean all of my cameras today and this one didn't appear to have any spider webs. If there was one then perhaps the wind blew it off before I got there or whatever was responsible for the artifacts were very small. At any rate, the sun is will go down soon and I'll be able to see if cleaning the lens and IR makes any difference.
 
Since you have the 5442, it has built-in AI and for most of us is superior to basic MD.

Go into the camera GUI and set up smart plan with IVS, then go to the IVS screen and draw IVS rules (tripwire or intrusion box) and then select the AI you want it to trigger on (human or vehicle).

Make sure MD and SMD are turned OFF in the camera.

Then in BI, there are a few places you need to set this up in BI (assuming you already set up the IVS rules in the camera GUI):

In Camera configure setting check the box "Get ONVIF triggers".

1729872550455.png




Hit Find/Inspect on the camera setting to pull the coding for the triggers.

Go into Motion Setting and select the "Cameras digital input" box OR "ONVIF/CAMERA EVENTS" based on which BI version you have. Turn off BI Motion Detection if you don't want to use it:

1729872617699.png






On the Alerts tab uncheck the Motions Zones tab (those are alerting you to any BI motion in those areas in Zones A thru H) and select ONVIF and External check boxes.

1729872667440.png




On the "On alert..." actions, select how you want to be alerted (email, push, SMS, etc.)


See this thread on how using just Dahua AI may be sufficient for your needs (and other cameras with AI would perform similar):

Who uses Dahua AI capable cameras? Reliable AI for triggering events? Pro's/con's?
 
  • Like
Reactions: MarkusAgustus
No
 
  • Like
Reactions: MarkusAgustus
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom