Insects and Cameras

[ClipperMiami]

I know this is going to sound stupid but I'm having an odd problem with some of my cameras. I find tiny insects stringing very fine threads across the face of some of my cameras, perhaps tiny spiders leaving their webs.

Not only does this sometimes almost completely obscure the camera vision but in trying to use the motion detection capability of Blue Iris I find the motion of these gossamer threads trips the detection. They are invisible to the naked eye but because they are so close to the camera lens they appear as huge out-of-focus moving objects to the camera.

Has anyone encountered this and have a suggested remedy? An oil based insecticide rubbed on the camera housing and the glass over the IR illuminators (being careful to avoid the lens cover) perhaps so it will survive the rain?

Any ideas, it's really irritating

 

[fenderman]

http://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/3461-What-would-make-a-good-spider-web-removal-tool?highlight=spider
Turret cameras with separate IR led's are less prone to this issue.
Turing off the IR and using an external IR is another option..

 

[ClipperMiami]

I guess I should have realized that others must have had this problem already

 

[JMan]

I spray a little Ortho insect killer around the camera area. Helps for a month or so, just be careful not to spray the lens cover. You can also spray on a rag and rub area. There is also Terro spider spray...good stuff.

 

[nayr]

stop using motion detection, its pretty much worthless outdoors.. just remove the webs as needed.

 

[mik]

Turret cameras or dome cameras. The bullet attract the 8 legged vision hoggers!

 

[ClipperMiami]

"stop using motion detection, its pretty much worthless outdoors"

I'm beginning to realize that

 

[The_Penguin]

stop using motion detection, its pretty much worthless outdoors.. just remove the webs as needed.

What's the alternative?

 

[ruppmeister]

What's the alternative?

Record 24/7

 

[Razer]

No way, Motion detection works great for me anyway. I disable IR on the cameras to keep the bugs away and it works fine. Motion can be trouble on some cameras, but I find on my Hik/LTS cameras that motion is great and the only way to go and has minimal falsing. I have at least 900 of my 1,100 cameras outdoors and only motion recording and falsing is fine. Some cameras have almost no falsing at all, others will still false because of swaying shadows during some hours of the day or whatever but I'd rather check two hours of intermittent falsing than 24 hours of constant recording watching for whatever to happen!

We literally use the recorded footage every single day for something, I just checked my dropbox folder specific to sharing footage with the cops and we have 24 current active cases where they still are using the footage and needing access. We delete them from there when the cops get what they need and store it locally. Motion is working fine for us!