Skyline + Wildlife camera set up

[pcericm]

I just wanted to follow up my original post here: Wildlife / skyline camera for extreme conditions as to what I ended up doing for my project. First and foremost thanks to @EMPIRETECANDY in getting me squared away with getting the camera shipped and up and running. Also thanks to the input from folks on the forum as well.

I ended up with the PTZ4K45-AI and was able to get it installed into the best location for what I am using it for. What a beast this thing is! I've finally pushed the livestream live here: (sorry, we are having awful smoke issues as of the last few days so the image quality is a bit hampered).

One of the issues that I encountered is not being able to have it identify and track animals, which was a bit of a bummer but I was able to work around the issue using frigate + PTZ controls. So far it has worked decently well and I think I can get it to do even better as I fine tune the different object configuration options. The classifiers are a little off, but that's ok - it detects deer/elk as horses (I mean, I can see it lol), and I have had a few false positives on the sheep classifier (we have big horn sheep here, too). All in all I think I've got it working pretty well for now. I'm also using frigate as a local restream of the 4K RSTP stream so I can hammer on that if I want to pull random video recordings without opening up any additional connections to the camera.

Here's an overview of what I've got going so far. Let me know if you have any questions

 

[DezertManiac]

Hello Fellow streamer, I operate the livestream below. I'm still learning and haven't fully configured to my liking. You are definitely ahead of the game than me as far as configuration, overlays, ffmpeg, etc. Was about to start messing with OBS, what are the cons?
Subscribed, can't wait for the snow to arrive and see the beauty of your stream, let me know if you have any questions.

Big Bear California Live Camera 24/7

Welcome to Big Bear Lake Live Stream! You are watching a live stream of the city of Big Bear Lake, California. The lake is located in the San Bernardino Moun...

www.youtube.com

 

[pcericm]

Hello Fellow streamer, I operate the livestream below. I'm still learning and haven't fully configured to my liking. You are definitely ahead of the game than me as far as configuration, overlays, ffmpeg, etc. Was about to start messing with OBS, what are the cons?
Subscribed, can't wait for the snow to arrive and see the beauty of your stream, let me know if you have any questions.

Big Bear California Live Camera 24/7

Welcome to Big Bear Lake Live Stream! You are watching a live stream of the city of Big Bear Lake, California. The lake is located in the San Bernardino Moun...

www.youtube.com

Followed! So I ended up skipping OBS for a couple of reasons : 1) there seems to be some performance issues with it running on the Mac Mini. I was getting all sorts of stalling with my stream, and it wouldn't even decode 4K with the hardware encoder (it works fine with ffmpeg). 2) I am comfortable writing code so ended up using python to build out a bunch of the processes around what I plan on doing with the the livestream and some of the stuff around it, such as time-lapse generation, etc... Plus running ffmpeg via python makes more sense on a headless server. Now running it this way is definitely a bit more of an upfront headache than just firing up OBS, and adding stuff will take a bit more of a programmatic approach than just slapping a source in OBS, but that's OK.

My goal is to be able to automated 100% of the things I want the project. For example using my local weather stations to determine if it's storming, attach to my frigate restream to 'record' for X amount of time, and then convert it into a time-lapse all on its own (also notice that none of my overlays are on this stuff). An example:

Should be fun to develop!

 

[DezertManiac]

Followed! So I ended up skipping OBS for a couple of reasons : 1) there seems to be some performance issues with it running on the Mac Mini. I was getting all sorts of stalling with my stream, and it wouldn't even decode 4K with the hardware encoder (it works fine with ffmpeg). 2) I am comfortable writing code so ended up using python to build out a bunch of the processes around what I plan on doing with the the livestream and some of the stuff around it, such as time-lapse generation, etc... Plus running ffmpeg via python makes more sense on a headless server. Now running it this way is definitely a bit more of an upfront headache than just firing up OBS, and adding stuff will take a bit more of a programmatic approach than just slapping a source in OBS, but that's OK.

My goal is to be able to automated 100% of the things I want the project. For example using my local weather stations to determine if it's storming, attach to my frigate restream to 'record' for X amount of time, and then convert it into a time-lapse all on its own (also notice that none of my overlays are on this stuff). An example:

Should be fun to develop!

Thanks for the info, yeah those are the two primary things I'm after overlay integration (logos, etc) and weather widget. Side note, fine tuning colors has been a bit of a challenge, I did study photography in college, so Im aware of how exposure, iso, aperture works, etc, the challenge with a PTZ is that overall exposure (ultimately, color/contrast etc) do change from preset to preset depending on Sun position, so it's just a matter of finding a good "balance". Cameras facing a set position are easy to color balance, PTZs are not. Although I admit mine is not perfect, I feel yours can benefit from adjusting highlights/saturation/contrast etc. Also, I found that if you compose a shot/preset that includes both sky and ground (trees, mountains etc) camera will have a hard time balancing the two elements (close ups mitigate this).

 

[pcericm]

Thanks for the info, yeah those are the two primary things I'm after overlay integration (logos, etc) and weather widget. Side note, fine tuning colors has been a bit of a challenge, I did study photography in college, so Im aware of how exposure, iso, aperture works, etc, the challenge with a PTZ is that overall exposure (ultimately, color/contrast etc) do change from preset to preset depending on Sun position, so it's just a matter of finding a good "balance". Cameras facing a set position are easy to color balance, PTZs are not. Although I admit mine is not perfect, I feel yours can benefit from adjusting highlights/saturation/contrast etc. Also, I found that if you compose a shot/preset that includes both sky and ground (trees, mountains etc) camera will have a hard time balancing the two elements (close ups mitigate this).

Yeah it's been a bit challenging to get the colors dialed, especially since we had been under a blanket of smoke recently so haven't had ideal conditions to get any of the colors tweaked. It's pretty close to being color matched with what the eyes see vs. being too bright, at least in the skyline views. There was a some wild washing out that was happening in some PTZ presets, which I just ended up changing position to hide some of those issues as I couldn't tune them out all that well. Today is an actual clear and nice day - looks far better.

I am working on getting the night sky stuff squared away as it does a good job capturing the stars, just need to start working on zoom and fixed position to do some live captures for time-lapsing.

 

[DezertManiac]

Nice, yeah, it looks a lot better today, i dig the close ups, I believe there is a small body of water in the wide shot (towards the middle?

 

[pcericm]

Nice, yeah, it looks a lot better today, i dig the close ups, I believe there is a small body of water in the wide shot (towards the middle?

Yup! It's actually a couple of miles away. The various PTZ preset stops in the sweep are where I typically see animals in hopes frigate will pick up their motion and track em. Trying to get the focus to be a bit better in some of these zones. I could in theory also change color settings for each PTZ preset if I wanted to move all of the movement to scripts, but I think I am too lazy for that lol.

 

[DezertManiac]

Yup! It's actually a couple of miles away. The various PTZ preset stops in the sweep are where I typically see animals in hopes frigate will pick up their motion and track em. Trying to get the focus to be a bit better in some of these zones. I could in theory also change color settings for each PTZ preset if I wanted to move all of the movement to scripts, but I think I am too lazy for that lol.

I think you are just too smart lol didn't know that was a possibility to set color settings for each preset

 

[pcericm]

I think you are just too smart lol didn't know that was a possibility to set color settings for each preset

Well I think you can change a lot of things through the API - I haven't looked that deep into color settings but it could be something where you trigger a PTZ preset move, set color, and done. It would be pretty easy to do. But keeping settings for every preset sounds silly lol.