Recommendations for IR-triggered POE trail cameras?

[TheWaterbug]

TL; DR: I want two IR-triggered cameras to catch moar coyotes.



I have two cheap Reolink RLC-410 cameras looking up and down the equestrian trail at the back border to my property. Click here to stand approximately where Wile E. is standing in the above photo, and then pan around to see the red dots where the cameras are currently mounted. I have a string of outdoor-rated Cat5e running to each camera, because I'm too far away from the main house for WiFi to be reliable, and there's no other source of power anywhere close.

Sometimes the cameras work fine, and the image-based motion trigger catches the action, like this horse and rider:



Other times one or both cameras will just miss the action entirely, for reasons unknown. For example the "uphill" camera caught the coyote as shown above, but the "downhill" camera did not trigger. I don't think it's a matter of sensitivity, as I've caught lots of other events on this camera; it's just intermittent.

I also have problems with swaying trees triggering the motion capture.

Finally, I've been unhappy with the Reolink cameras, because the RTSP streams stutter in low light. In this video the left side is the native Reolink client, and the right side is VLC playing back the RSTP stream.

So I'm thinking I'd want to use a PIR sensor to detect the presence of any warm body, be it human, horse, or coyote, and then trigger both cameras to record for X seconds. Wyze has such a feature in its little $20 cameras and Wyze Sense Kit, but it doesn't actually work all that well, and I can't use WiFi cameras in this location.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

 

[looney2ns]

Relink cameras are problematic. Stick with dahua or hikvision.

 

[brianegge]

If you put in some high quality cameras, you can get video clips of the coyotes. I’m well down that route with my setup, but there are various commercial tools which do the same.

 

[TheWaterbug]

Thanks for the recommendations thus far.

Do there exist any cameras that allow for one PIR sensor to trigger two cameras? e.g. these two cameras have overlapping fields of view, and ideally I'd like to have one PIR sensor that triggers both cameras.

 

[TheWaterbug]

BTW, I did get some nice coyote footage this morning, albeit in full sunlight. But this highlights a continuing series of problems with my Reolink cameras. The other camera didn't trigger on this motion, despite he was clearly in the detection zone. I would like to have seen his face.

 

[chaosengine]

You don't need a PIR sensor, you need a VMS like Blue Iris to record 24/7 (to catch everything and/or to combine motion detection of cameras and VMS to catch most, also allows to combine alerting e.g. motion on cam A also triggers recording on cam B) and you need better cams like Dahua's 5442 series for better low-light recordings: Fox

 

[TheWaterbug]

You don't need a PIR sensor, you need a VMS like Blue Iris to record 24/7 (to catch everything and/or to combine motion detection of cameras and VMS to catch most, also allows to combine alerting e.g. motion on cam A also triggers recording on cam B) and you need better cams like Dahua's 5442 series for better low-light recordings: Fox

I tried setting up Luxriot Free version last year, and I couldn't get it working. It appears to be designed for someone who manages security cameras for a living, as opposed to a homeowner who wants to look for the occasional coyote. Is BI easier to set up and use? The price is right.

Can a VMS like BI or Luxriot extract "real" motion from swaying trees?

I have this HP Microserver (Opteron X3216 Dual-core (2 Core) 1.6GHz 8GB, SSD boot drive and two 3.5" spinners in a 16 TB Storage Space with 2 bays free) doing nothing right now. Is it performant enough to run a VMS?

 

[chaosengine]

BI is easy to use, comes with great UI3 web gui but like every VMS it has tons of options, so studying manual and this forum is a must. Your HP server is too weak to run it, maybe two cameras but it's not future-proof for more. The VMS itself can't do AI based motion detection and all cameras with built-in AI functions are made to detect only persons, cars and to prevent false alarms caused by shadows, leaves and animals... The VMS makes handling of recordings much easier, you don't have to struggle with lot's of single files produced by the cameras, so false alarms become less problematic and it offers the ability to use 3rd party or self-made AI systems for detection: AI
Unfortunately there is currently no ready to use, easy AI to detect animals.

 

[brianegge]

Camect Home: Your Cameras Made Easy, Smart, Private, and Affordable. is a commercial off-the-shelf solution, which includes AI animal detection. The BI / DeepStream seems to be the most common in this forum, but the default AI with deepstream is not going to have a coyote class, but might identify the animal as a cat, dog or fox, which would get you close enough.

 

[TheWaterbug]

BI is easy to use, comes with great UI3 web gui but like every VMS it has tons of options, so studying manual and this forum is a must. Your HP server is too weak to run it, maybe two cameras but it's not future-proof for more.

Ah, I mis-spoke. My box actually has a X3418 Quad-Core. The X3216 Dual-core was the box I returned.

But it's still an AMD which means no Intel Quick Sync, which is no bueno. Anyone know if BI has plans to support VCE?

I'm fiddling with BI right now, but I see from the notes that "direct to disc" is a paid feature only, and can't be turned on the demo. Is that correct? It seems like an odd limitation in that the purpose of a demo is to see if something will work well. The demo is time-limited, so it's not as if someone can get away without paying for it.

I do have another test box lying around with an i5-3470s and QuickSync support. I may try that instead and see if it performs acceptably for my application.

 

[Flintstone61]

Ah, I mis-spoke. My box actually has a X3418 Quad-Core. The X3216 Dual-core was the box I returned.

But it's still an AMD which means no Intel Quick Sync, which is no bueno. Anyone know if BI has plans to support VCE?

I'm fiddling with BI right now, but I see from the notes that "direct to disc" is a paid feature only, and can't be turned on the demo. Is that correct? It seems like an odd limitation in that the purpose of a demo is to see if something will work well. The demo is time-limited, so it's not as if someone can get away without paying for it.

I do have another test box lying around with an i5-3470s and QuickSync support. I may try that instead and see if it performs acceptably for my application.

The i5-3470 should easily do a couple camera's, I have about 12 running on an i7-3770s.

 

[TheWaterbug]

I bought a pair of Amcrest IP5M-B1186EW-28MM units to replace the Reolink RLC-410 units down on the trail, and this morning I caught my first coyote. I need to do a bit of work on the external IR illuminator and the camera settings, and I also need to finally set up an BI installation. But this is straight out of the camera, captured by its internal motion detection.

 

[TheWaterbug]

I now finally have 2 cameras with reliable in-camera motion trigger, which allows stuff like this (watch at least 50 seconds in, when the 2nd camera turns on):