ZoneMinder Forums

you will need an external sensor if using it outside, id suggest an opal elite as that gives programming and clean switch outputs, or a voltek pir and pulse count module.

Those cheaper units are for inside use.

James

you will but the camera wouldnt see the light come on unless it was visible, and you set a zone in this area.

oys wrote:How about using a PIR floodlight? They also have the advantage that they might make someone think twice before doing anything dubious.

Do you think I will be able to get an accurate motion signature from the floodlights even during daytime?

FWIW, I have a PIR motion detector floodlight that is tied in with my ZM system. The light is a Leviton unit with X-10 capability; it sends out a specific X-10 command when it detects motion. Using a HEYU script I trigger the ZM camera that overlooks the area to make sure it records whatever triggered the motion sensor. It works well, however the floodlight has a photocell and only sends the X-10 commands when it's dark enough for the flood lights to come on.

If you want 24 hour per day triggering you'll probably have to go with a standalone PIR unit.

oys wrote:How are you guys detecting motion outdoors?

I've been playing around with various settings for detecting cars and people in a courtyard, but I have not had much success at filtering out false positives. The difficulty comes with sudden changes in lighting levels, e.g. clouds passing over the sun.
...
What should I be looking for in one of these? Obviously it needs to be waterproof if mounted outdoors, but how does range/sensitivity relate to price?

I've used such a thing for nearly 3 years now and am very satisfied.
I use the FS20 radio system (vendors in Germany are ELV and Conrad, maybe it is available under a different brand in your country) with outdoor PIRs. Central processing unit for the PIRs and some more radio based actors and sensors is the open source tool FHEM (http://www.fhem.de). With FHEM and the ZM function of "triggers" a logical connection can be made very easily.

td

It works well, however the floodlight has a photocell and only sends the X-10 commands when it's dark enough

Any reason you can't put opaque tape over the photocell so it works 24/7?

I've used X10 stuff for years, but its not reliable enough for anything important and the key event you want to record could come and go in the X10-heyu latency interval.

Don't know if this has already been discussed, but I have a Vivotek IP6122 camera which I'm planning to attach to a PIR sensor. I made this simple script for querying the camera for input status and if input is high, launch recording (response is either H or L, fifth character of cgi response). I'm planning to make similar script for Axis 2400 as well. If there are better methods to do this, I'm all ears

#!/bin/bash
# alarm test script for Vivotek IP6122
url="192.168.1.10/cgi-bin/getdi.cgi?"
monitor_id="1"

while :
do
response=$(curl --connect-timeout 5 $url | cut -c 5)
if [ $response = "H" ]
then
echo "$monitor_id|on+10|255" >/dev/tcp/localhost/6802
fi
done