Page 1 of 1

Keep alarm while light is on

Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:25 pm
by robi
Hi All!

I have a situation where a camera is watching an area which is illuminated by a motion-detection switched lamp. The camera is side-located, and has a wider-angle lens, to be able to catch movement on the surrounding area.

The motion-detector switch is very well located, and triggers the light on only when real movement happens around the watched object. It lights around 3 minutes, and switches it off.

Normal motion also happens in the camera view, but that creates a lot of false alarms. That is a problem.

Situation is similar like when you have a house on a street, and you place the camera cross the street to have a good overview of it; a motion-detected lamp above the door, that switches on only if someone is stepping in front of the door. The problem is that cars and people passing by keep generating false alarms. The light above the door is very good though, it only turns on if one approaches the door, it's immune to cars and other movement on the street.

I need a way to connect the light with the camera, and that's pretty easy selecting a small zone that only contains the bulb. The problem is, that in this case alarm will be triggered only when the bulb turns on, and when it turns off. It may be on for a longer time, and during this period the alarm will end... And will alarm again when the light goes off. I will have no recorded pictures between.

So the solution I think it would be to keep the alarm on, while the light is on. Somehow select the area with the lightbulb, and specify, if average pixels colour is say > then 250/250/250 (approx. white), then keep alarm on, if pixel color fall below this, stop alarming.

Any ideas?

Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 9:00 pm
by Sika
What about setting your "Buffer Post Event" to match the 3 minutes (or longer) that the security light is on for.

Sika

Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:31 pm
by robi
Sika wrote:What about setting your "Buffer Post Event" to match the 3 minutes (or longer) that the security light is on for.

Sika
Not good. If real events happen, and light stays on for 10 minutes, I miss 7 minutes out of what happened over there.

question

Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 1:05 pm
by darkpaw
I don't have a suggestion for your problem, unfortunately, but I do have a question.

What do you use to power the camera across the street from the house? I assume he video is using something like an 800mA wireless, but what about the power to supply to the camera and the transmitter?