Camera freezing causes motion detection to trigger

infernoboy

I have a script to manually control the IR on my camera because the built-in automatic IR control in the camera is unreliable (It'll turn on even when there is enough light). This script detects the light level in the room, checks if the camera in question is "ACTIVE" in SecuritySpy, sets it to "PASSIVE", turns the IR on or off, then 7 seconds later re-activates the camera. I do this to prevent the IR change from triggering motion detection, as it has happened. Here's where the problem comes in: SecuriySpy is detecting motion because it would seem the camera is "freezing" and then resuming. I can't be sure what's happening in this situation, but I thought SecuritySpy was designed to ignore motion triggers that are the result of a full-frame change, such as lighting.

The camera is a DCS-5020L.
My settings for this particular camera are post- and pre-capture 5 seconds, recompress video is off, recompress audio is on.
Here's the video it captured: http://bit.ly/MotionError
Here's the mask setup for the camera: http://i.imgur.com/Nvx7H4P.png

The camera is using wi-fi via Internet Sharing connected directly to an iMac running SecuritySpy in a virtual machine, so bandwidth is not an issue.

Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but this particular camera is used for intruder detection and triggers an alarm. I understand this is probably an issue with the camera itself when toggling IR, but any help with this would be appreciated!

infernoboy

I've since changed the setup. The cameras are now on their own dedicated wi-fi network on a dedicated router and the issue persists on SecuritySpy 4.0.5

Ben

I think the issue here is that the mask blocks out almost all the frame, so there aren't very many pixels on which SecuritySpy can base its motion detection. Instead, I would suggest masking (in green) the two screens only, leaving the rest of the room unmasked. This should give you much better results.

infernoboy

I understand what you're saying, but this particular setup is used for my alarm system. As soon as motion is detected, a countdown starts. If the correct alarm code is not put into my wall-mounted iPod within 30 seconds, the alarm sounds, texts are sent to my phone with pictures, and videos are uploaded offsite for safe keeping. That being the case, I can't have the entire frame triggering this; only the front door opening should, which is how it's working right now.

I can deal with the false-positives, though. I just wanted to know if I could prevent them—it scares my dog!

infernoboy

I recall reading that motion detection doesn't work well below 5 FPS. It looks like my camera is dropping to below that sometimes when toggling IR. Perhaps a setting to turn off motion detection if the FPS drops below 5 would help? Is it possible to "ask" security spy what the current FPS of a particular camera is via AppleScript or the web server api?