[SOLVED] No alarms triggered

[cookiemonster]

Hello,
So here I am thinking myself clever but failing myserably. I've been using ZM on a freebsd jail for ages, with the default zone on each of my two cameras.
I've moved from that setup to a Proxmox host and running ZM on a newly built Ubuntu 20.04 VM. Due to the resource constraints with less memory, I've needed to go from default zone to small ones, something I've been meaning to do for ages. Here's where I've been stuck for days, trying different settings but there are no alarms triggered.
I'm changing only one of the camera at the time, to get movement settings working before applying the learnings to the other. I'll refer to "the camera".
ZM is version 1.36.12. The camera is Reolink RLC-420-5MP. The streaming is working OK. Source is Ffmpeg with TCP method, resolution is 2560 X 1920 in 24 bit colour. These settings are in ZM and matching the camera settings via it's UI. There the framerate is set to 6 fps, and no fps settings are set in ZM, the fields in the General tab are left empty.
The camera is mounted outside and facing a drive and road. I want to capture people & vehicles movement in front of my house basically.

I've setup two active zones and disabled the default "All" one. I've read multiple times and tried the different wiki and manual pages suggestions.
For the first zone I've started with all presets, starting with default and then each other. No alarms get triggered.
Then as per wiki, being an outdoors camera I started working with pixels but even setting the values to very low, no alarms get triggered.
These are the current zone values:

Type: Active

Units: Pixels

Alarm Check Method AlarmedPixels
Min/Max Pixel Threshold (0-255) 5 , 0
Filter Width/Height (pixels) greyedout
Zone Area 525833 greyedout
Min/Max Alarmed Area 4 , 0
Min/Max Filtered Area greyedout
Min/Max Blob Area greyedout
Min/Max Blobs greyedout
Overload Frame Ignore Count 0
Extend Alarm Frame Count

No errors in the log, just normal capturing and analysing ones. Can anyone suggest what I could try, I'm really stumped.
Thanks.

[Andyrh]

I have a 8MP camera pointed at a road, ~60 feet away and it detects people.
The big difference I see is the Alarm Detect Method. I use blobs.

[cookiemonster]

Perhaps is useful to give an idea with a picture.

[cookiemonster]

I have a 8MP camera pointed at a road, ~60 feet away and it detects people.
The big difference I see is the Alarm Detect Method. I use blobs.

We were posting at the same time.
Thanks Andy. I agree it is most likely I'll need to move to Blobs and that's where I start, with one of the profiles setting it for blobs but no alarmns, hence I've had to start from the basics up, starting with AlarmedPixels but still no alarms.
Any ideas what settings should work to at least trigger on anything will be most useful.

[cookiemonster]

My zone 1-front is the one I am using to start, to force an alarm, any alarm, even if is to a large truck passing by.
I go and change the preset to any, change the Units to "Percent" and change back preset to "Best, High sensitivity". That sets the area to 100 and I read as ZM now sees the values as percentage of the zone, as per docs:

Alarm Check Methods
...
For reference purposes, the Zone Area box shows the area of the entire region of interest. In percent mode, this is 100. In Pixels mode, this is the pixel count of the region.
...

The purpose is to ensure the values used by the algorithm are based on 100% of the zone.

Then I change the method from blobs to AlarmedPixels so I only need one set of parameters.
Min/Max Pixel Threshold (0-255) has been defaulted to 20. I leave it on that.
Min/Max Alarmed Area has defaulted to 8 and blank.
With these, no alarms even with a vehicle, people passing, etc.
So I think to myself, there must be values that are too high. I need to lower them.

I then move the values all the way down to:
Min/Max Pixel Threshold (0-255) 1.
Min/Max Alarmed Area has defaulted to 8 and blank. No alarms.

Now I go to
Min/Max Pixel Threshold (0-255) 1.
Min/Max Alarmed Area has defaulted to 1 and blank. No alarms with passing vehicles or people.

I'm sure I'm failing to understand the documentation but if the Minimal Pixel threshold suggested to start with is 40 and I got it down to 1, I was expecting there should be going mad with alarms and I needed to quickly start increasing values until there were fewer positives.

I can't yet change the Units from percent to Pixels I can't yet see what relative values are to begin with.

So how do people start, clearly I'm doing it wrong.

[Andyrh]

Mine is not unlike yours. Perhaps this picture will help. At that distance at 8MP a person is about 8,000 pixels when on the road.

FrontYardSettings.png (957.61 KiB) Viewed 2982 times

[cookiemonster]

I really appreciate the help and sharing your settings. I've copied all except the max alarmed and filtered areas. It seems you're using about 71% of your one area, so I replicated the percentage.
No alarms yet but it gives me values to start from. I will now start lowering from the 8000 and see if I can measure the pixel sizes for a person on my area.
Thank you. I'll report back.

[Andyrh]

A trick I use is to have someone stand in the area I want to detect and draw a box around them. ZM will tell me how many pixels are in the box.

[cookiemonster]

Thanks. I have done that and gives me a pixel count of around 1600 pixels. I imagine that the image has to be actual size and not be scaled, so put the viewer at actual scale, then took a desktop snapshot and then used an image editor to draw the box and count pixels. I hope that's a way to do it.
Then I put my my Min/Max alarmed area and Min/Max Filtered area to those instead of your 8000. This is after testing with 8000. I left the Min/Max pixel threshold on 25.
I started reducing from 8000 and I'm now all the way to 800, with Min pixel threshold down to 20 and still no alarms.
I'm so puzzled. Any more ideas Andy or anyone reading, please send them my way.

[cookiemonster]

I've reduced the min Pixel threshold down to 15; the min alarmed area and min filtered alre all the way to 100 with the units still in pixels.
Min blobls also on 100. The Maximums have been cleared in case images are hitting a high boundary that is not needed at the moment.
Not even passing cars trigger an alarm !.

I'm going to move them all the min they accept. What a headscratcher.

[cookiemonster]

Nada.
The min Pixel threshold down to 5; the min alarmed area and min filtered alre all the way to 5 with the units still in pixels.
Min blobls also on 5.
A large truck, a sedan car and a few people passed independently, at normal speeds, and nothing generated an alarm.

Any ideas anyone ?

[Andyrh]

It is a head scratcher.

The MIn/Max Pixel Threshold determines the amount of color change. Mine is set a little high to help with shadows. You might set it to 0/255.
Are you using modect for the camera?
In the camera settings I have reference blend set at 3.125% and the alarm blend set at 6.25%.

[cookiemonster]

Hey.
Definitively on Modect mode.
Reference Image Blend %ge is 12.5% Outdoors.
Alarm Reference Image Blend %ge is 6.25%.

I'll change now to match yours. It is an unusual English summer weather in that is very sunny, it might be a factor.
Also my ZN version is 1.36.12. I've added the "proposed" Isaac's repo for 1.36 series and brings a proposed 1.36.20-jammy1 over the ubuntu stable repo.
"zoneminder/jammy 1.36.20~20220712.20-jammy1 amd64 [upgradable from: 1.36.12+dfsg1-1]"
I'll hold fire on doing this upgrade, too much change but I'll be happy to hear opinions if is worth doing.

[cookiemonster]

I've lowered the blend, and reduced Min/maz thresholds to 1 and 255, it won't allow 0.
Nothing
Here are my settings. Would you mind having a look? I might have something else wrong.

[Andyrh]

I think it is not related, but the Image Buffer Size (frames) value is recommended to be 3-5. Click the '?' and see what it says.

I am at a loss. I do not see anything that would cause it to not trigger.