Mowing the lawn...

[WildDoktor]

So, I just bought BI and have a single camera, and am getting alerts on people and dogs. Yay!

Question: What do you all do about alerts when you have to go out and mow the lawn? Or wash the car? Or sit out in the hot tub? Do you manually stop the alerts somehow? Or pause all recording? Or...something else?

 

[gwminor48]

Are you recording continuous or just when triggered?

 

[WildDoktor]

I've followed "The Hook Up" and record a continuous sub-stream, send jpgs to AI Tools, and record the HD stream when triggered.

 

[gwminor48]

I usually turn off the motion detection temporarily when I'm mowing but I record continuously so if something happens while I'm mowing I haven't missed anything except the alerts, so I would just have to look through the clips to find something of interest. If you only record when triggered then you miss whatever happened - hopefully only you mowing. So you can either hope no video is needed or you can go through and delete the videos when you are done mowing.

 

[biggen]

I record continuously but let the alerts run. Don't change anything when mowing the lawn, etc...

 

[handinpalm]

Setup different profiles for when you are at home (cutting grass) and when away, so you do not get alerts when at home, unless you set it that way. I select an "away" profile when I leave and select a "home"profile when I return. You can clone your camera for different triggers and set up in your profiles also.

 

[pmcross]

I record 24/7 and have a temporary profile set up to not send push notifications (alerts still get captured as usual) while I am cutting grass, etc. I just change the profile when I start and either change it back manually when done, but if I forget to change it back I have the temporary profile set up to revert back after 120 mins. There have been times where I have forgotten to change the profile initially and just receive the alerts while cutting grass, etc.

 

[windguy]

Question: What do you all do about alerts when you have to go out and mow the lawn? Or wash the car? Or sit out in the hot tub?

Welcome to the IPCT forum.

Since you're new to the forum, you probably missed reading a really important Wiki regarding the necessity in sharing hot tub videos with other IPCT forum members. Please post those videos so we can help critique your camera settings.
So yes, leave those alerts enabled all the time.

BTW - I leave all the alerts running while continuously recording video.
Seeing myself on video doing chores around the yard is just a reminder that I'm old frucker.

 

[sebastiantombs]

I just let mine go on normal schedules. Alerts are nothing more than pointers in the 24/7 recording and take up hardly any space. Besides, that way I get to see what I do out there and realize I, too, am an old, old frucker.

 

[WildDoktor]

Old dudes, unite! If I had a hot tub, you would not want to see me in it. Just sayin'.

For now I'm limited on hdd space, and I've not gotten a baseline yet on how big the hd recordings are, so that's one reason I'm asking. However, I do record in h.265, and delete older recordings, and limit to 20GB of total space, so I guess I could just leave everything as-is and let the recordings get purged.

I also have (for now) alerts set to text me (so I know when I'm asleep if somebody's burning the flag on my front porch...the reason I now have a camera!), I suppose I could schedule those alerts to pause when I normally mow my lawn. But random stuff like going out for the mail or groceries; i suppose I'm just gonna have to live with text messages about those events.

 

[pmcross]

I have a night/after hours profile that switches when I arm my alarm system for the night. I have a different alert sound via push as well as text notifications which are set as an emergency override on my phone so that I am sure that I receive attention grabbing alerts while sleeping.

 

[samplenhold]

I record continuous. Right now I use three profiles, Active (when we are not away overnight), Late Night (2am-5am), and Away (overnight). I let the Alerts fire off on the Active profile. The Late Night profile sends notifications and a sound alert through the BI PC speakers for certain cams that have been triggered by people but not animals (like cats, possums, and racoons). If we are not going to be home overnight, I use the Away profile for certain cams to send notifications. All three profiles record Alerts.

 

[WildDoktor]

Thanks guys, this is great info! I suppose my setup will evolve as I get to know the capabilities of the software, and I'll figure out more of what I'm looking to accomplish as time goes on.

 

[JNDATHP]

...limit to 20GB of total space...

On my system, 4 hours is about 2 GB per camera.

If you can swing it Newegg.com has a WD 4 TB purple drive for 99.99

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[WildDoktor]

Wow; that's a smokin' deal! Remember when a 10Mb hard drive cost $1k??

I have a 3TB drive sitting in the PC ready to go; but I somehow lost the extra modular power cables for my power supply, so I need to order one up before I can use the hdd.

 

[WildDoktor]

On my system, 4 hours is about 2 GB per camera.

Is that your main / HD camera feed? That's not bad...

 

[JNDATHP]

Wow; that's a smokin' deal! Remember when a 10Mb hard drive cost $1k??

I have a 3TB drive sitting in the PC ready to go; but I somehow lost the extra modular power cables for my power supply, so I need to order one up before I can use the hdd.

Yes, I do. Back then my first computer was an Eagle CPM and cost 5,000!

 

[JNDATHP]

Is that your main / HD camera feed? That's not bad...

Yes