New Motion Zones - Are they actually functional?

[pbets]

Was hoping to use zone crossing instead of a large blanket mask to avoid things like lighting changes (clouds, shadows and car headlights). The idea is to use multiple zones across the scene chopping it up into 6 or so slices that things need to cross in order to trip motion. I've tried a few things and can't seem to get it to work..at all. I wanted to have any two zones trip no matter which way objects crossed into them..so I tried two ways in the object detection settings so far.

Method1 A-B-C-D-E-F
Method2 A-B,C-D,E-F

Both failed to detect myself walking across the scene (both ways..setting very high ..should be catching flies ) and cars driving (taking up most of the scene).

What am I doing wrong here? Or are zones broken?

 

[xexitenglishx]

I am having the same issues. I just have it set up with A-B and Im walking past the lines and it will not trigger.. i have the make time set to 0.0 and the contrast and size all the way to the left to make it as sensitive as possible but nothing is working for me either. I think its still a buggy feature. Once this actually works it will greatly help me reduce false triggers so i hope its updated fast.

 

[hltljohn]

Just tested, and they seem to be working here. I did hear that the zones need to be adjacent, connecting to each other.

 

[pbets]

Yep made sure they all overlap a fair amount... No idea. Would be nice to get more details on setting up more than two or three zones etc

 

[xexitenglishx]

Even doing something like A-B or A>B doesnt work for me. I made solid bars across the screen and i went out and walked through both zones and nothing was triggered. Additionally, when i went back to look at my zones today..some were gone on certain cameras and some were still there. I think something might be messed up with my database since it compacts the DB every night. I think something might be messed up with the DB since the last upgrade. Im going to try to resetup all the cameras again but Im kinda dreading doing that so Im waiting to see if there is any other solution out there.

 

[xexitenglishx]

After rereading the post...do you guys mean that the zones themselves have to over lap. Like part of the A rectangle zone should overlap part of the B rectangle zone?

 

[atom]

I found the line crossing worked for me if the zones were touching/immediately adjacent to each other. I haven't tried overlapping.

 

[hltljohn]

I'm not sure that overlap is needed, but is seems that they at least need to abut each other. No space between zones. One thing that you can do to help trouble shoot this problem, is use "Test run Video through motion detector". First start a manual recording. Then walk through the zones. Stop recording then play the video with the Test enabled. This will show the Zone layout, and the motion detection. I believe that the Green outline shows motion detection, and red outline shows when a trigger occurs.

 

[xexitenglishx]

I will give that a try. I think i have it working now. I was trying to use the zones more as line crossing i.e. i draw 2 thin lines and someone would have to "break" both lines and the recording will start but I guess thats not how the BI zones are ment to be used. I will play around more and confirm this though.

 

[pbets]

Few updates have come and gone since I posted this. So I tried again to get multi zones working (simple stuff) and no go. Anyone get this working properly yet with more than 2 zones? If so..whats the syntax?

 

[Palmpilot]

I second @pbets request. I tried multiple zones with syntax similar to what is in the help file but it didn't work. No recording when I crossed between zones on my test run.

 

[pbets]

Looks like only one rule with two zones works. So you can use zone A and B for example and the rule A-B but that's it. So in my case instead of trying to use all the letters across my frame I used just A and B to cut up my frame into multiple zones I wanted to catch motion. Seems to work pretty good so far.

 

[Palmpilot]

Looks like only one rule with two zones works. So you can use zone A and B for example and the rule A-B but that's it. So in my case instead of trying to use all the letters across my frame I used just A and B to cut up my frame into multiple zones I wanted to catch motion. Seems to work pretty good so far.

Thanks! I will give it a try.

 

[sjthespian]

Add me to the list of people going crazy trying to get this working. I have a palm tree next to my driveway and am getting constant triggers in the afternoon if I make the driveway a single zone and the wind is blowing. However, striping zones across the driveway gives me virtually no triggers at all. Neither overlapping nor adjacent zones seems to make any difference.

For example, I am using Object Cross Zones: B-C at the moment with the following zones configured as B and C respectively:


I can walk around the driveway with my phone in hand and see green boxes pop up around me, but no matter how I cross the zones I never get a red box. I have also tried splitting the driveway into two big boxes but I still get no triggers. However the !@#&*!#% tree will *still* occasionally trigger motion, as seen below. I've played with cancel shadows and the min object size and contrast settings to no avail.

 

[sjthespian]

Here's something even more annoying... when the mail came this afternoon it only triggered on the mailman's shadow, not his body! Min contrast is set to 46, so it's not all that different from the default of 40 on my other cameras.

Here's the image with rectangles:

 

[anijet]

Do you use "Object Detection" on the Trigger Configure Page? Try un-checking it if you are using it and see if it works better.

 

[sjthespian]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried that earlier on, and the only effect was that I started getting events for the camera switching between IR and non-IR mode. However, that may have been before I had the B/C zones configured.

I heard back from support, they suggested configuring just two non-overlapping or adjacent zones. So far that seems to be helping, I created one zone that includes the area where I see the shadows from the tree and a second zone right in front of the garage. With a 60-frame pre-record, I am getting my car pulling in and our of the garage with no problems, I just need to see if it catches the mailman today before I can truly call this solved.

 

[MEZERR]

My zone setup is working great. I have a few of them. Example. AB>C, so someone has to pass through zones A, then B, and it triggers on C. My zones are butted up to each other, but some of them have 1 pixel in between. They have to be close enough so BI doesn't lose the object, and regain it in the next zone. In order to trigger, BI has to recognize the object, and keep it highlighted through your zones.

Also, since my zones are fairly small, I had to adjust my make time down to 0.01 seconds. If it stays at 1 second, it won't trigger as the person doesn't remain in each zone for 1 second.

Make sure you have object rectangle box highlighting, as it will show you the object that BI detects, and will show you when it triggers.