Help in setting up alerts in BI (5.6.1.0), for very common driveway view setup

jrbeddow

Getting comfortable
Joined
Oct 26, 2021
Messages
370
Reaction score
485
Location
USA
Hello all, I am looking for some help or suggestions in regards to BI alerts.

I have setup (in BlueIris 5.6.1.0) two cameras (EmpireTech 5442 series) that look over my driveway/front entrance out into the street, but am looking for some suggestions in ways to improve my alerts from those cameras. I have no trouble getting all the triggers that I want, as I am using both the native on-camera IVS rules to get External/ONVIF triggers, as well as running BI motion detection in conjunction with DeepStack (soon to migrate to CodeProject AI?). In other words, on the timeline I can find every Alert "event" that I need, but it is specifically the outgoing Pushover Alerts that could use some refinements.

Here are sample images from the cameras, I will explain the Motion Zones in a moment:
1663543098015.png
1663543123498.png
In BI, I have the following Motion Zones defined:
Zone A is the outermost portion (the majority of the street and beyond)
Zone B is the sidewalk and the first (nearest) portion of the street (about the first 2-3 feet "outward", as no cars really use that section on a regular basis)
Zone C is everything inside my property line (inward from the sidewalk)
Zone G (for General) as an overall view (full frame), as it is generally recommended for object tracking purposes. For reference, I have tried doing this both with and without this "G" zone, with little or no practical difference.

I use Continuous + Triggered for recording (sub-streams all the time, which switch to main (high-res) stream when triggered).
I have setup the Motion Zone/Object Crosses Zones as follows: B,C,AB-C,B-C
In effect, the Trigger portion is all good as far as I can tell: I get a Timeline "Alert" (event and high-res recording) for every person walking by on the sidewalk or within my property.

However, I don't need a phone alert (via Pushover) for every person walking by on the sidewalk, especially during the daytime (I do want them at night, as only a few folks walk by after dark), so I have tried various schemes under Alerts, but none have been completely successful.

At first, it would appear that simply triggering the Alert on External/ONVIF as well as Zone C (with the "Any" box checked) during the daytime would suffice.
At Night, the profile switches to a similar one that uses the External/ONVIF with Zone C and adds Zone B (sidewalk), also with the "Any" box checked.

But, no, this doesn't really work for some reason, as it seems to not track people that walk onto my property from the sidewalk or street consistently. It generally works for motion that starts within my property line, but not every time when the motion starts out on the sidewalk or street then turns onto my property.

As such, I have tried quite a few variants; I have experimented with added time waits that allow for adding extra triggers within a certain period of time, and this helps, but it too has various downsides (frequently I get multiple alerts for single events, and unwanted ones when it adds triggers from events that happen fully in the street zone (like a car passing by in Zone A, so verified by Deepstack) while a trigger (like shadows moving) in Zone C (on my property, but not verified by DeepStack). Lots of promise here, but loads of downsides too, so hard to find the balance.

I have come close many times, but I still feel like there is some obvious way for this to work that I haven't tried, so I am looking for suggestions or solutions for what must be a very common problem. I have watched every video and tutorial I can find on this, and while some have vaguely mentioned this scenario, they haven't completely gone over the solution.

TIA
 

vfast

n3wb
Joined
Aug 26, 2015
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Hey - so I think you need to break your issues into several parts. Simplify your camera setup and triggers - scheduling - notifications.

Perhaps starting your journey/setup again. I recently came back to BI for a new house after a few years of renting. AI wasn't a thing many years ago for my original setup. I found this video unique (if you haven't watched it already) . I skipped Deepstack and am running Codeproject.

Good luck with it all :D
 

jrbeddow

Getting comfortable
Joined
Oct 26, 2021
Messages
370
Reaction score
485
Location
USA
Hey - so I think you need to break your issues into several parts. Simplify your camera setup and triggers - scheduling - notifications.

Perhaps starting your journey/setup again. I recently came back to BI for a new house after a few years of renting. AI wasn't a thing many years ago for my original setup. I found this video unique (if you haven't watched it already) . I skipped Deepstack and am running Codeproject.

Good luck with it all :D
Yeah, I am well aware of that video, and I have run both DeepStack and more recently CodeProjectAI. I have no issues with triggering, and those triggers do result in Alerts on the timeline (that show ALL the appropriate zone crossings), but unfortunately without resorting to a short delay timer into the Alert settings BI doesn't see all the zone crossings before making the decision to send or cancel my Pushover alert (confirmed by looking at the log file).
 
Top