Snow - blow me...

[NightLife]

Ok, I give, how are you guys getting around snow triggering your Dahua cameras? I think I've done what I can so far with the exception of calibrating everything. I keep looking at that area in the Dahua web interface and it makes me wonder if it is at all related or important to this. And if I leave the motion detection up to the Synology NAS there is an area which allows the user to ignore short motions of 1,2,,,n seconds, but I can't find that in the Color4K-X menus. I have defined an intrusion rule, and I know that must be working because it's capturing animals coming and going but pines inches behind, bent over in the wind, aren't triggering anything including any motion detections. So what is it with snow? 3 or 4 random flakes blow by and it's suddenly alarms blaring, all hands on deck!


This really needs to be sorted, because it's only the end of November and we likely have another 5-6 months of snow to come yet.


If anyone can draw up a really quick list of things to look for, I'll start checking into them. In the past 12 hrs my NAS has gorged itself on false snow triggered, useless recordings to the tune of ~20GB.


*Are you guys leaving motion up to the camera, or is that so lacking that the majority of you have handed that over to BI etc?



Thanks

 

[NightLife]

And, naturally, it's demonstrating it can easily be a random, unpredictable triggering. I just tried a sample recording when I saw some flakes just now thinking it might trigger, but nothing did. Which is odd because all through the day and evening it would trigger when any flakes showed up. The only change I made tonight was to sync the camera time with my NAS, and I may have told it to sync on the hour. Would an asynchronous camera/NAS time mess anything up which sync'ing everything could have helped?

Here is another sample video I just took. I began a manual recording, and within a short time something triggered the camera. It's hard to really say what, and I have to question whether it is indeed motion - it could be an audio trigger. I left those setting default, but did enable it. Perhaps the wind picks up and a blast sets off the camera. I only have it enabled because we have animals which regularly come to these rocks and sometimes there are fights to re-establish the pecking order, and I wanted to be able to capture those, regardless whether those animals are in frame or not.

Here is the video which I began, and then saw a trigger happening early on..it should be noted though that whatever tried to trigger a recording while I already had a manual recording going was very short lived.

View attachment Something triggered the camera early on in this manual recording.mp4

 

[NightLife]

And seconds ago the camera triggered a motion event somehow, with nothing really going on except a few flakes and some wind. And I hear the alarm going off again now ..

Maybe someone wiser can spot what may be triggering the camera. It would be pretty useful if a user could not only identify that the camera was set off by motion detection, but were directed to precisely which setting led to that detection/triggering in the camera/NAS/NVR/BI settings. Right now, on the NAS in the list of recordings it will tag a recording with a colour, and this one below was green so that makes it a motion detection if memory serves.

View attachment Triggered event - motion.mp4

 

[dudemaar]

snow definitely messes with my picture now. but I'm not getting any false triggers with using deepstack AI in BI. All default deepstack settings too.

 

[NightLife]

In my NAS I just checked, and I have audio triggering disabled in terms of it asking me for a source - I chose "disable", so perhaps I can at least rule that out. Looking in the Dahua web interface though under audio you can see even at default settings the wind is often in the red.


Maybe I will eventually repurpose the NAS to be a media server upstairs. If I do I guess I'll have to look closely at the cult of BI..ha. Everyone appears to love it. Maybe my camera(s) deserve that kinda love, but I still want to hold out hope stubbornly that the Synology NAS, as feeble as it is, can pull this off.

It's funny though, the more sh!t that rears it's head, and subsequently falls away in defeat after much research, studying and tweaking the stronger and more reliable both ourselves and our systems become.


Thanks for the input @dudemaar . I see you're in CA as well, so I know you feel some of this frustration. "Summer in Canada is like a bad week of skiing..", so we'd better brace for a long, dark winter...eh?

 

[NightLife]

Apologies for what appears to be a horrendous recording below. I decided to systematically eliminate any triggers until I was only left with motion, and I began looking at all the areas where that was concerned. I was in the process of finishing cleaning everything up when I decided to watch the live feed on the Dahua web interface, whereas I normally watch the feed through a Chrome browser, and I may be on to something. I've never seen this stuff before - the triggering offenders appear to be revealed by various coloured shapes which appear and frame what I think the camera is responding to. If this is the case, then I think in a few cases it's just unclean area defining because these happen to be a damned weed or plant waving in the wind. I'm pretty sure it's shooting the camera the bird, rather than waving but you get the point. ha

Here is a screen capture video I took to show what I'm referring to. Now to figure a means to eliminate those offensive weeds. There are 2 things at play here I think - on one hand I have defined an intrusion rule, and that's simply a defined area in which, naturally, the weeds lay within. I don't see a means to eliminate small patches of ground within that defined area. BUT there is another area which allows me to define areas by clicking on grid squares, and in that setting I can certainly just unclick those weed squares. (mmm, weed squares ).

*Note: To complicate things a bit, I looked at the live feed through this same interface just now and there is a red square bouncing around on the rocks to the right. I'm not sure why, but it thinks it's seeing something important..

View attachment Triggering seen through Dahua web live feed.mov

















And the red area bouncing around for no apparent reason (that I know of). Someone here will know.

View attachment Screen Recording 2021-11-28 at 08.16.09.mov

 

[NightLife]

Under my IVS rule, I spotted "Pixel Counter", and entered 50x50, and saved that. Going back to the live feed now I see the red square has changed to a blue square, which incidentally is the colour of my Smart Plan. And so far all seems quiet. I figure the more data points I include the better chance of sorting this out. It's likely one simple setting hidden somewhere which is tripping things up.

View attachment Red sq to blue sq after defining Pixel Counter to 50x50.mov

 

[garycrist]

I have watched my 4K-X invent "people" and "faces" in the cloud formations. (hint, hint)
But we humans know the difference! I love trying to figure out what the cam "detects".

 

[bigredfish]

I want your backyard

Trade ya one month per year, no snowflakes here in Floriduh

 

[oh6hfx]

Do you have a normal motion detection and IVS on the same time? I should put motion detection off and just rely on IVS. Normal (traditional) motion detection triggers on snowing and whatever.

 

[NightLife]

Do you have a normal motion detection and IVS on the same time? I should put motion detection off and just rely on IVS. Normal (traditional) motion detection triggers on snowing and whatever.

I just checked, and I do. I thought they might both need to be active for it all to jive. For now I will keep them both in play until the snow comes back to see if eliminating motion detection, but leaving IVS rules keeps the snow triggers at bay.

I did, however, just UNcheck face detection, and as Gary noted that's what those squares were .. it was trying to detect faces! Now the square, of any colour are gone. One trigger down

It will be nice to slowly add one thing back after I purge the fake triggers, so I'm back to exploiting as much as the Dahua AI as I can.

 

[NightLife]

I want your backyard

Trade ya one month per year, no snowflakes here in Floriduh

Dude, I did Florida long ago .. I sat on Cocoa beach watching the shuttle launch. Never again. I can do hot, but not that hot! Talk about sheer lethargy. You learn to appreciate seasonal changes, as nice as even an all year temperate climate might be.

 

[oh6hfx]

I just checked, and I do. I thought they might both need to be active for it all to jive. For now I will keep them both in play until the snow comes back to see if eliminating motion detection, but leaving IVS rules keeps the snow triggers at bay.

Ok, that might be the reason. Motion detection and IVS are different things. Probably motion detection is still included because with older NVRs don't understand IVS triggers. Does your camera model have AI with object filter to trigger only humans and/or vehicles? If those are ticked it might not trigger animals.

Btw, -15c here at the moment

 

[NightLife]

Ok, that might be the reason. Motion detection and IVS are different things. Probably motion detection is still included because with older NVRs don't understand IVS triggers. Does your camera model have AI with object filter to trigger only humans and/or vehicles? If those are ticked it might not trigger animals.

Btw, -15c here at the moment

Thanks, I just unchecked smart motion detection where the full color camera I have tries to filter for humans and/or vehicles because .. wait for it - it was AGAIN blinking away with blue boxes on those same rocks! Once I disabled smart filtering those boxes disappeared once again. I suppose when I see boxes bouncing around like this I should begin to assume it's the camera AI trying to ID faces or humans, or even faces. I have all disabled for now I believe.

My camera is one of the newest out - it's one of Andy's stellar Color4K-X cameras, so I suspect it has a good AI repertoire.


It's not too chilly out yet, but it will get down to -30 to -50 soon enough. We're probably at similar latitudes, and I can guarantee you our woods look identical I bet from what I've seen in other Finnish contacts photos.

 

[bigredfish]

It's not too chilly out yet, but it will get down to -30 to -50 soon enough……

Ok I take it back

 

[NightLife]

Ok I take it back

Oh, c'monnnn, it's a dry cold! It can actually feel invigorating on the skin, just ask @oh6hfx , he knows what I mean. He probably started jumping out of his sauna (pronounced 'sowNah') and into the lake when he was just a boy.

 

[NightLife]

Well, it is definitely my IVS. I saw there was still a lingering blue box, but once I disabled IVS it too disappeared.

The confusing part is that my Synology Surveillance Station software have a list of IVS triggers which can be enabled or disabled. I've pared it down to only the IVS, but I'm left wondering if it too can be left unchecked, and if the NAS will then still continue to record as directed when the 'camera' IVS rule for intrusion is triggered. It becomes doubly challenging when the user has both the camera AI to deal with, as well as a NAS.

*The level was there so I could try calibrating lengths, but on the Mac so far that is futile.

Watch, in 10 minutes another blue box will appear.

 

[NightLife]

And as if on queue, I now have not one, but two blue boxes. This is after eliminated everything I can think of in terms of smart detection of cars, humans, and so on. All that is left is my 1 single IVS intrusion rule. And while it looks like the AI is trying to ID something, it isn't really triggering to record. I'll uncheck the Synology IVS intrusion to see if that helps. I'll include a screen capture of the Synology screen as well for any keeners who happen by, and might be more familiar with the Synology side of the equation.





*EDIT: I unchecked these 2 above, and it achieved nothing. Going back to the Dahua live feed I could see 3 or 4 blue boxes bouncing around on the rocks. Does everyone else get these? Maybe it's perfectly standard, and the Dahua AI is always working in the background whether face rec or whatever is enabled, and this type of thing will show up on the feed as an overlay?

 

[oh6hfx]

*EDIT: I unchecked these 2 above, and it achieved nothing. Going back to the Dahua live feed I could see 3 or 4 blue boxes bouncing around on the rocks. Does everyone else get these? Maybe it's perfectly standard, and the Dahua AI is always working in the background whether face rec or whatever is enabled, and this type of thing will show up on the feed as an overlay?

Yes, in my AI cameras I have this too. Blue or yellow boxes here and there, when AI is trying to figure out if there is actual object or something in the background which just looks like an object. When object crosses the rule line/intrusion area, the rule blinks red
couple of times to indicate that IVS has been tripped and action (record and/or something else) starts.

 

[oh6hfx]

Oh, c'monnnn, it's a dry cold! It can actually feel invigorating on the skin, just ask @oh6hfx , he knows what I mean. He probably started jumping out of his sauna (pronounced 'sowNah') and into the lake when he was just a boy.

Just had 3km walk in nice -15c. Your -30 to -50c sounds really COLD, I think coldest I have felt here has been -37c.. Sometimes indeed going out to swim in the snow and then back to sauna