Trouble with zone crossing and motion detection

[iankaufmann]

Hey folks,

I am having a heck of a time getting my driveway camera to reliably alert when an object travels from the street into my yard/driveway. I feel like this should be a pretty simple operation, yet, I just watched my wife come home from a walk, check the mailbox across the street, then walk into our garage, and it won't trigger. My current settings work when a car pulls in, but not when a person walks up. I can get triggers when I DON'T have zone crossing on... but if I do that, I get notifications all day long from the trees and cloud coverage.

I have tried using Sentry AI, but as of a few weeks ago they removed the (beta) vehicle detection so when I have it on, it doesn't tell me when a car pulls up.

I do have things set to continuously record, so this problem is only about getting notifications/triggers. I want a notification when a person or a car pulls into the driveway.

I set up a simple test scenario tonight while my wife went for a walk. I was hoping to get a trigger when she came back, but it didn't happen.

I have the sensitivity settings ALL the way down for this test.





I have set up two non-overlapping zones, A and B:




And a catchall zone G:




Here is a screen capture of me replaying the event with the "test run video through motion detector" setting turned on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbE-CFP_mzI


I just can't see what I am doing wrong and how this obvious motion walking straight from zone A to zone B isn't triggering. (there would be a red box around the window if it triggered)

If I take off the zone crossing setting under object detection, I get a trigger as soon as she walks into frame.

Using the same settings on an earlier event when a car pulled into the driveway, I got a trigger too, so I know it is capable of triggering and it's not like it doesn't work at all.

I am stumped.

I don't have this problem with my doorbell camera, I get very reliable results with that, but it requires the person to walk from the driveway/yard up to the walkway on the porch. If they don't walk up to the porch, I don't get notified.

I thought maybe the distance that the driveway camera is placed from could be the problem, but since I have the object size and contrast all the way down, and because BI is obviously detecting the motion as you can see in the video, it's just not tracking it between the two zones.

Hopefully somebody has some insight and sorry if this post is too rambly, it's hard to get all of the details down and I am trying to make sure I express that I covered the basics!

Thank you for any help you can offer!

-Ian

[iankaufmann]

Change Edge vector to simple, ive personally found that edge doesn’t work that well with zone crossing.

I did try the simple algo... before this post, and now again after, but it doesn't seem to make a difference that I can see. I am going to leave it on simple for now and keep trying though. Makes sense why that might be... "simpler".

The clip I posted a screen cap of... if I turn off "cancel shadows", now that same clip will trigger. That's the first thing I changed other than completely turning off object detection that made a difference with that particular clip.

But, there are some other clips I am using to test from an hour earlier when we were both outside. She triggered it by walking from the right side of zone A into zone B, but not from walking from zone B to the left size of zone A, or from zone B to the street portion of zone A. It's just really hit or miss and I can't make sense of it because each clip is the same size object clearly being detected as motion, and clearly walking straight between two zones.

I still have all of the sensitivity options all the way down... and it's obvious that motion detection is not the problem. When debugging these clips, the motion is always tracked perfectly by BI... it's just the zone crossing.

I have tried resetting the zones again... switched "high definition" off and then re-built zones using the larger blocks. I tried it with overlapping zones and with leaving one "block" in between zones... it doesn't seem to make a difference.

I realize that nobody has a definite answer... there are so many variables at play. But it really seems like I'm feeding it optimal conditions here...

[reddawg]

In addition to IAmATeaf suggestion, try turning off "Object size exceeds" in Camera Settings -> Trigger -> Motion Sensor or increase it from 20 to 65.

The "Object size exceeds" settings stops or resets a trigger if the object size is too big, like a lighting change. If the percentage of "Object size exceeds" is too small, it could prevent motion from triggering. Better to leave them off.

[iankaufmann]

In addition to IAmATeaf suggestion, try turning off "Object size exceeds" in Camera Settings -> Trigger -> Motion Sensor or increase it from 20 to 65.

The "Object size exceeds" settings stops or resets a trigger if the object size is too big, like a lighting change. If the percentage of "Object size exceeds" is too small, it could prevent motion from triggering. Better to leave them off.

Yeah I will try to throttle that up a bit. That's another thing I've been playing around with because it seems like once I do get reliable motion/zone crossing working, then the clouds take over and set it off every few minutes.

I figured with the distance the camera is from the driveway, that nothing should be larger than 20% of the entire field of view.

I have another reply that I made before your post that is still pending moderation with some more info as well.

[MikeBwca]

Have you tried 'Black & White'? This uses grey shades.

When I've had problems fine tuning, I've cloned a camera 2 or 3 times (and more). Then, I can try several different combinations of settings to find one that works a lot quicker. It uses more cpu and disk WHILE your running the temporary clones. Yes, 'Run through motion detector' can be used, and I do use it. Nothing like real world tests.

I've also setup a camera by my desktop and tested zone triggering by passing an object thru the zones with different lighting conditions.

[iankaufmann]

Have you tried 'Black & White'? This uses grey shades.

When I've had problems fine tuning, I've cloned a camera 2 or 3 times (and more). Then, I can try several different combinations of settings to find one that works a lot quicker. It uses more cpu and disk WHILE your running the temporary clones. Yes, 'Run through motion detector' can be used, and I do use it. Nothing like real world tests.

I've also setup a camera by my desktop and tested zone triggering by passing an object thru the zones with different lighting conditions.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give that a go.

Been tweaking things all week long and I finally have it alerting properly if a car or person crosses from the street/side yard into the driveway or front yard. It's just that now I get a handful of false alarms throughout the day due to clouds and wind and shadows.

Maybe a combo of "black & white" and slowly throttling down the "object size exceeds" will help.

Need to also look into setting different profiles for different times of day, and possibly even different weather conditions, which I can trigger via home assistant.

[aerostar]

Hmm, interesting. I can think of a couple of things you might want to try.

1) Disable the high-definition detection
2) Clear all and Re-draw your zones. There seems to be a gap between your Zones A and B. Try overlapping them?

[reddawg]

Hmm, interesting. I can think of a couple of things you might want to try.

1) Disable the high-definition detection
2) Clear all and Re-draw your zones. There seems to be a gap between your Zones A and B. Try overlapping them?

When you have 2 zones (A & B), they should not overlap. A third zone should be created that envelopes both zones A & B. When adding zones to "Object crosses zones", only add zones A & B. Do not add zone C that envelopes zones A & B. This is all covered in the below YouTube video by HomeTech Video on "Blue Iris: Triggers - Object Detection". This YouTuber has many excellent Blue Iris video tutorials mostly based on Blue Iris 4 but still applies to Blue Iris 5.

https://youtu.be/KxP-_Coxat8

[iankaufmann]

Hmm, interesting. I can think of a couple of things you might want to try.

1) Disable the high-definition detection
2) Clear all and Re-draw your zones. There seems to be a gap between your Zones A and B. Try overlapping them?

I did try it both ways (overlapping and w/ a few pixels in between).

Currently have it with space between, with "High Definition" unchecked, "Black & White" checked.

It's working pretty well with the odd false positive here and there. Slowly ramping up the "distance traveled" and ramping down the "object size exceeds" until I stop getting motion every time the wind blows. I have an unfortunate tree placement making this so difficult to get perfect!

But, in the end, I can deal with a few false positives as long as it doesn't completely miss an obvious person walking up, which is where I was at in my original post.

Making progress!

It's obvious that the next step is multiple profiles based on if it's overcast or night time.

Thanks for all of the suggestions everyone!

[aerostar]

Ideally we also need profiles for WINDY CONDITIONS! Then we could connect our weather stations to BI and ease up on the detection rules when necessary.

I have a setup now that works very well on non-windy days, but when the wind kicks up, all hell breaks loose. Shadows be damned!