Daytime Motion Sensing (Not so sensinglier...)

ob1coyote

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I'm still trying some troubleshooting steps on my own, but I have two questions at the moment.

1. A Logitech Alert 750 camera I have been using to cover my driveway has recently decided to not detect nearly anything in the daylight except for the shadow of a tree blowing in the wind...
I never really had any issues with this cam in the past. It did record too much shadow motion (the tree), but I'd be happy living with that if it would also go back to recording desired events. My driveway takes up a majority of the frame and I can walk my fat arse out to the foreground of the camera wearing all black and get in and drive both cars off and not a single frame of it will be recorded. This camera once caught and help prosecute a man for stealing from my garage and now someone could take everything I own right out the garage into a moving van in the center of the frame and I wouldn't have a single second of any of it, unless the wind blows and the shadow of the tree sets off the motion.
At night, BI will pick up a gnat flying by at full speed (I have the motion rectangles turned on for testing purposes). At night it will pick up a 3 foot tall child picking his nose in the far background... It often triggers from faint headlights indirectly reflecting off the side of my cars. But, in the day it won't pick me up doing jumping jacks in the foreground or the EMT giving me CPR after the 10th jumping jack...
I thought maybe it was a contrast issue, white cars, white driveway, etc, so I played with the motion size and contrast slider, setting them both to far left (most sensitive) and that didn't seem to make a difference. It never picks up anything in daylight.
Just before I started writing this I deleted and re-added the camera to BI. So, nothing is masked out and everything is back to default (except I turned on the motion rectangles and set the minimum object size to most sensitive) and a large black truck just pulled up next door and still nothing.

It's set up back to nearly default and yet it still will not perform as it once did for over a year using BI. The picture seems perfectly normal so, I have to assume it's a BI issue. BI just interprets the image as it's received, correct? I'd be willing to believe it's the Logitech camera itself, but I don't see how.

2. Now that I have deleted and re-added the camera in BI, can I re-associate the previous recordings of that camera with the newly re-added instance of that camera. If yes, how?

Your help is greatly appreciated.

*Additional info
Blue Iris Release 4.4.3.3 x 64
running on Win 10 Pro x64 with a core I5 3570k,16GB RAM Nvidia 770 GTX. BI runs at about 15% CPU with main window open and 3 cameras displayed. I can play CPU/Memory intensive games at night (when that camera works pretty well) and not even notice at all that hit to the CPU usage.
I recently migrated the entire BI setup from a really slow "media server" that wasn't handling it too well. IIRC the issue was present shortly prior to the migration, but I probably assumed it was the woefully underpowered hardware on the other PC.
All I can think of at the moment. Will answer any questions you folks come up with.
 

ob1coyote

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I had previously tweaked a LOT of settings trying to get it to work like it used to. Thought it best to start from nearly default.
As soon as the wind starts blowing I'll have to mask off the tree.

2016_09_10_20_31_07.png
 

fenderman

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Everything pretty much default after deleting/re-adding the camera. No masking or zones setup.

Trigger settings
https://s6.postimg.io/5mtfs1zsh/Trigger.png

Motion Sensor settings
https://s6.postimg.io/6mjqnrey9/Motion_sensor.png

Object detection settings
https://s6.postimg.io/4j9bg3f5d/Object_detection.png
Lower you make time to 0.7
try disabling object detection for testing.
Unrelated, but your break time should be at least 30 seconds...or you will miss important footage.
Ensure that BI is receiving a proper stream (not low frame rates) during testing...
 

ob1coyote

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I've fooled with Object detection before, but it was probably in conjunction with changing half a dozen other settings at the same time. Will try it out one option at a time this time and see what happens... Was wondering if I should/could just leave it in 'night mode' 24/7 and see if that perhaps makes a difference with the contrast.. or something.

When this particular camera was working, the longer break time just resulted in hours and hours of clips of the tree shadow moving on/across the ground to the point I stopped reviewing videos because there was just too much to go through to find anything meaningful. In the distance, all I really care about is vehicles. The short break time seems to work OK with motion in the foreground and center frame. If someone stands still in that area for longer than 8 -10 seconds then it used to do just fine picking them back up after, but I'll put it on the list of things to try.
I can't mask off the area where the shadows fall because that's practically everywhere I want to capture someone on my property... Wish I could just cut the tree down.

As for frame rates, right now in 'night mode' it's averaging a pathetic 6 frames per second with a bitrate of ~150 kB/s. It gets upwards of 10 - 12 fps in the daylight. It's always been that way. My Hikvision cameras get a pretty consistent 29 fps 24/7 but, I'm trying to make this Logitech cam last as long as possible because I can't afford to replace it at this time.

Don't mean to seem like I'm arguing. Just trying to work out in writing as to why this is happening to this one particular Logitech camera out of the two of them. BI motion detection works perfectly on the other Logitech and nothing seems to have changed with the camera except the past few months or 100 degree + weather, but that doesn't seem to have an effect on the image, the frame rate, or the bitrate.
 

ob1coyote

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Also, I vaguely remember reading a post on this site a long time ago about setting up separate day/night profiles for the same camera. Doubt that will help if I can't get it to work at all in the day...
 

fenderman

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The only thing I can think of is that BI is not getting a proper stream. You can test run the recorded video though blue iris motion detector to see..if the camera has an iframe/key frame interval setting match it to the frame rate.

As far as break time, better to have more video than less, you will be sorely sorry. Reviewing video every day is silly.
You can also fine tune alerts in the alert tab as well as setup a cloned camera with a higher threshold in motion settings for alerts only.
Finally, you can sell the 750 on ebay for a forture and buy another 2 or more hikvisions...
 

ob1coyote

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I review the video daily because we have bad neighbors that vandalize our cars, throw trash in the back of my truck, and people that they have over to their home have stolen from our garage. If I don't review the video then I don't see those things and if I don't review it daily then I have even more hours of tree shadows to sit through while trying to find something important....
This time I happened to be looking at my monitor when this happened. If I wasn't, and I didn't review footage daily then I may have never bothered to sift through hours of tree-shadow footage (and birds that nest behind this camera, forgot to mention that part) and I would just wonder where it was I left my DeWalt cordless drill....

Unless I misunderstand the function of alerts, and I probably do, I don't set up alerts because they would trigger constantly. That would be much sillier than spending 20 minutes just clicking through clips for the day.

I'm trying to figure out what you mean about missing something with low break time. Maybe I'm thinking of it incorrectly. To my understanding, motion triggers recording for the duration of the break time, in my case it's eight seconds. Every time motion is detected that eight second timer is reset and BI keeps recording. If the eight seconds run out because nothing has moved then the recording ends and a new one begins the next time motion is detected.
So, if someone walks past the camera for ten seconds I get ten seconds of them walking past plus eight seconds of the scene after they're gone. I'm not sure why I'd want thirty seconds of nothing after they've walked by rather than eight seconds. I've tested this on my indoor cameras that often catch my dogs walking around the house. Lower break time cuts down on recording of nothing happening after something happens, doesn't it? Perhaps it's just within my particular scenario that I don't see the point of it and it might be better suited for other scenarios/environments?

I thought about selling the Logitech cams, but anything that requires going into the attic (where the adapters are) while it's 110 degrees outside gets put on hold til winter, lol.
I'll look into the cloned camera thing. That's something I did not know about. I'll do some reading and figure it out.

It's noon here and I have plenty of tree footage from this morning.... for some reason, object rectangles and motion highlights aren't showing up on screen or in recordings. So, I don't know if the occasional car driving by is triggering the recording or it's just coincidental to the tree moving at the same time.
 

ob1coyote

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*Motion highlights seem to be working now. I'm guessing object rectangles aren't showing up because object detection was turned off....

I just tested by walking out to the driveway and walking around my cars and got no recording at all, while the tree limbs are still setting off recordings occasionally.
I still need to look into the iframe/key frame interval setting you mentioned.
 
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ob1coyote

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Still having no luck with daytime recording.... I know it's a BI issue now. I fired up Logitech Alert and the camera itself catches EVERYTHING (camera has a memory card and does its own motion capture). I'm wondering if a sort-of-recent BI update has changed something for that model camera configuration.
 

fenderman

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Still having no luck with daytime recording.... I know it's a BI issue now. I fired up Logitech Alert and the camera itself catches EVERYTHING (camera has a memory card and does its own motion capture). I'm wondering if a sort-of-recent BI update has changed something for that model camera configuration.
There still may be a network issue or something preventing BI from getting a proper feed.
 
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