Demo to Full

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n3wb
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Hey all, not sure if this should be here or not. I am wondering if anyone has used Trackrcam. I found it on Google from here, www.trackrcam.com and have been using the demo version for awhile and it seems cool, has tracking and promises better frame rates, recordings etc when registered and for the money, just wondering though, thanks.
 

bp2008

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I have not used that. Honestly it looks a lot like something I might have created myself if I hadn't found Blue Iris.

Back in 2007 or 2008 I built a similar (but much less featured) motion detection program using the same motion detection software they did. It was never anything worthy of public release, but I still use it today in a few locations where a full Blue Iris license is not worth the cost. So I can appreciate the amount of work that has surely gone into trackrcam. Based on the History page it is a fairly active project.

However, considering I did not try the demo and can only make assumptions from the web page, I see quite a few serious limitations.

1. No mention of a web interface, or any remote viewing capabilities at all. I bet you are expected to log in with Teamviewer for remote viewing.
2. No mention of video format support. The history does mention FFMPEG but only in the context of compressing recordings, so I bet it can't consume anything but a jpeg-based video source. I can't stress enough how much of a limitation this is, with today's cameras.

And this one I am sure about:

3. It isn't free; it costs $30 and the only thing it has over Blue Iris is motion tracking for what is no-doubt a small set of PTZ cameras.
 

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n3wb
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Thanks bp2008 but I did bite the bullet and got the full version. First complaint, your right no web interface, I knew that though, can live without it myself but have been informed its already in the works in a near release so bonus there and we will see. Do like is the motion detection, its almost to sensitive sometimes especially on the smallest setting, it chases leaves blowing around lol. I have 6 cameras, 3 different makers, 3 ptz and it runs them all at mjpeg with all 6 enabled, tracking, it uses 120 megs of ram with the cpu bouncing between 48 and 58 so pretty good for the $30 though. I'll add some more after some more playing with it, thanks
 

bp2008

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I see. It does not sound particularly efficient with CPU time, which is no surprise since it takes a lot of CPU time to decode that many jpeg images. I bet CPU usage spikes like crazy when it is running ffmpeg to recompress a recording. What CPU model is that?

I know the motion detection provided by the aforge.net framework is very sensitive! It will catch blowing leaves, moving shadows, spider webs in front of an infrared camera at night, and often just changes in ambient light levels a cloudy day!

I was able to reduce the false alarms in my own motion detection software by making it work with motion zones so it would ignore certain parts of the image where this type of motion was common. Later I expanded on that by adding a complicated little feature that I call "null motion zones". If motion is detected in a null motion zone, then the rest of the motion in the frame is ignored, thereby reducing the chance of having the program decide to send an alert. So I would draw null motion zones over the sky or rooftops or high up on a wall where there would never be a person. On a cloudy day, lighting changes typically affect the entire frame, so the null motion zones would cancel out the motion for the entire frame and I would get far fewer alerts. The downside of course is that someone could walk right past the camera during one of those lighting changes and it would never be noticed because of the motion in the null motion zone preventing the image from being treated as important. For me, the tradeoff was worth it!
 

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Sorry bp I have been busy. The CPU is an AMD 2400 with 8 gigs ram, ATI card so nothing spectacular but all that is on that system is is the TrackRCAM, and a couple other softwares I was trying, virus protect, win 7 etc. A little over my pay grade on the multi zone but I did pass a request for two zones. if I rotate the camera at dinner time for the night to a different view I would like it concentrating on different areas of that view so we will see. The cpu does go up if a few of the cameras are recording or tracking but I don't noticed anything crazy, I don't have anything recording spikes when I'm not here so not sure though but I do like. The web server has been added to TrackRCAM so it is pretty good for my needs.
 

bp2008

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Hmm. "AMD Athlon XP 2400+" is really slow by today's standards, so I'd say that program is doing pretty well actually!
 
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