Break time breaks my brain... and IDK Why

[st0rmcr0vv]

Sorry if this is the wrong category but I'm kind of at my wits end; I've been using BI for three years. I have zero idea of how to do what I want to do. People and documentation just say simply "set make time and break time" but I've played with the settings inputting even some extreme numbers but there doesn't seem to be a difference in how\when triggers\recordings happen.

- IRL example; I have dumpster divers. I want to capture footage of them arriving, getting out of the car, hopping in the dumpster, throwing bags out, making a god awful mess, loading up a few things in their car, getting in their car and their car leaving. Up until a few months ago where I tweaked a few settings I got car pulls up, 5-15 seconds of footage and then another recording of car already backing out and leaving. After tweaking settings I get zero triggers or recordings on that one camera and even after putting the settings back to match the other outdoor cameras (which still trigger and record but have always given me an anemic 5-15 seconds of footage; The dumpster camera still does nothing. So I'm starting the camera configuration from scratch.

Is "motion" ignored if it's smaller than the motion that triggered the current\previous event? i.e. a person getting out of a car wont be considered motion because the car moved more pixels? IDK, kind of seems to be what I'm running up against. The motion sensor "min object size" on the preview looks like something as small as a rodent would trigger the camera so... I'm obviously misinterpreting a setting(s) or something.

I guess in user specifications I am trying to accomplish this: Camera is Triggered when car pulls in or person walks up and records for as long as there is motion and approximately 2 minutes after motions stops and then RE-Triggers immediately if motion starts again. That's it. I don't know why I'm lost. Can someone breakdown in a simple way; what are the "trigger" and "record" settings to do this? Are there more settings in other tabs that are required to do what I'm trying to do. It seems like a fairly straight forward thing to set up but... Here i am.

Thanks in advance.

[Pogo]

You may want to double check your zone setting for the camera to make sure it wasn't left 'inverted' from setting up a zone or zones. That would certainly explain the lack of triggers. (Been there done that more than once and will again I'm sure.)

Otherwise, the first thing you'll probably want to do is delete the problem camera completely and indeed start from scratch again. Then just set it up for basic motion detection and don't worry about object detection until you get some zone triggers working. Cars and people and bags of trash getting tossed around should be more than adequate to generate a trigger or two without getting too fancy.

Set your trigger to stay active unless re-triggered within 10 seconds for starters. If triggers continue within that 10 second window, recording should continue for the length of time specified as the maximum duration for the particular chunk of activity unless triggering stops for a longer period than specified -- 10 seconds in this example. A new trigger will start it all over again. I use 300 seconds for a general duration setting which accommodates up to 5 minute clip lengths which completes a pretty basic (but effective) triggering setup for generally detectable zone activity. If you're also recording continuously it's a real fast way to identify areas/times of interest.

Motion A.jpg (100.3 KiB) Viewed 1329 times

For basic recording of this type of activity, I use a scaled down storage setting for 'New' clips that combines these 5 minute segments into 15 minute files for quick review and temporary storage until determining what to do with them -- if anything. It's basically a very efficient quick scrub setup to go through lots of stuff quickly using the clip viewer without having to go through hours of stuff just for a quick look-see or having to dick around with the timeline, though I realize folks have their methods for that as well.

Record A.jpg (110.25 KiB) Viewed 1329 times

If you're hell bent on object detection, chop the default values in half and go from there.

Object A.jpg (55.18 KiB) Viewed 1329 times

Lots of trial and error involved but is a starting point that can get you going in just about any type of scene.
Good luck.

[broachoski]

@POGO know his stuff.
I would suggest full time CONTINUOUS recording also. Disc space is cheap.

[Pogo]

Thanks, but all I know is what I've managed to make work for me and that's about it. If it'll work for someone else too, cool. LOL

By no means am I anything more than a mere embryo when it comes to BI.