Motion detection triggering on IR beam, car headlights etc

[Gilean]

Hello!

I just turned on motion detection for all my Dahua cameras (four HDW5231RP-ZE and two SD49225T-HN) yesterday evening, and this morning I checked what I got. Well, seems like my PTZ cams touring around, shoot IR beam across my yard and that triggers those cams that happen to see them. Most of my recordings were caused by this.

The second most common trigger was a car that passed by and its headlights hit my wall or somewhere so that camera saw motion there and started recording.

Third most common cause for recordings were caused by a moth flying near a camera.

When it's daytime, none of these happen, so this is problem during the night. I tried to search forums and google but didn't find anything about this. How are you people configured motion triggers, that PTZ IR beams, car headlights or moths do not trigger alerts/recordings? I cannot unmask all those areas where headlights or IR beams will hit, so how should I configure my cams so they do not care about those three things?

 

[bigredfish]

You can't.

You can, like I do, limit false triggers by spending time tweeking MD settings and using them in locations where you dont get too many external false motion events. But better method is to use IVS rules such as Tripwire and Intrusion boxes.

Very best method is the use of external PIR sensors, but a fair amount more work involved...

 

[looney2ns]

Or use Blue Iris that has much better motion detecting handling.

 

[Gilean]

I tweaked those motion detection areas a bit for each camera so I have to see tomorrow if it helped at least a bit. For some reason I couldn't draw tripwire areas at all, and even that checking/unchecking MD boxes is pain, as UI shows different things based on if you do it in small window or full screen... :/ That was with Chrome plugin though, I guess I will have to try Pale Moon or IE if IE agrees to work with me...

Blue Iris is no doubt better in many ways, unfortunately I found out about it AFTER I bought NVR so now I have to deal with it... Maybe once I will build a dedicated PC for my cameras and install Blue Iris on that.

 

[fenderman]

I tweaked those motion detection areas a bit for each camera so I have to see tomorrow if it helped at least a bit. For some reason I couldn't draw tripwire areas at all, and even that checking/unchecking MD boxes is pain, as UI shows different things based on if you do it in small window or full screen... :/ That was with Chrome plugin though, I guess I will have to try Pale Moon or IE if IE agrees to work with me...

Blue Iris is no doubt better in many ways, unfortunately I found out about it AFTER I bought NVR so now I have to deal with it... Maybe once I will build a dedicated PC for my cameras and install Blue Iris on that.

You don't have to build anything a 100 dollar PC will handle your load.

 

[Gilean]

I only realized a couple of days ago that I don't have to have my cameras connected right into NVR in order for them to work, so now half of my cameras are working in my local network. With that in mind, I could just buy another POE switch to add those cameras that are still connected to my NVR to my local network, and then use my old HTPC with Blue Iris for recording. Now that's an idea! I actually downloaded Blue Iris and tested it briefly with my PTZ camera. What I noticed that at least when touring, you can actually set preset points with BI lower than 15 seconds - although camera software itself does not allow that! And it actually works. But privacy masking is something that is not working with Blue Iris or (which is entirely possible) I haven't found out how to do that yet. I can add an image overlay for those areas that I don't want to see, but unlike camera's own privacy masking function, that image stays in the same place, no matter which way PTZ cam is heading. Camera's own privacy mask "stays" in that place and direction where you want: for example if there is something in North you don't want to see and draw a square over that spot, it stays on North, but with BI's overlay, it is visible in South as well!

For some reason with Dahua's turret cams, drawing privacy masks works perfectly, and you can move them etc, but with PTZ cameras, mouse cursor is out of place and once you draw something, you cannot move it anymore. That's why I would have hoped Blue Iris handles this better.

Anyway, it's clear that PTZ cameras with their IR beams mess up motion detection. With those turret cams that I tweaked yesterday by drawing smaller motion detection mask and are on another side of my house where are no PTZ cams, they didn't trigger a single alarms last night, but other cameras saw constant movement by those PTZ IR beams, so I guess I have to use tripwires instead etc.