ZoneMinder Forums

I have set up a camera to cover my drive but am struggling to get the motion detection to work. It works OK if I walk right in front of the camera but not if I walk down near the car.

I have tried to add in another zone just covering the car but that also fails to activate when I walk near it.

I've read the instructions regarding zones but am still confused about the various settings. I assume that me walking by the car doesn't cover enough pixels to activate?

Could anyone please try to explain what I am doing wrong.

I was going to upload pictures of my driveway and also the settings I have for my zones - how can I do this on the forums? Or if I cant does anyone want to take a look at them if I email them.

Thanks

Following on from the previous post, I think the fact it is not generating alarms may be because it is generating a permanent alarm, therefore the alert never finishes.
I've tried changing/adding zones but nothing seems to help.

I have tested my digital camera for this again and it works fine. Starting to think it is the setup and hardware I am using.

I am putting the camera into the front AV socket of an old video recorder, and then sending the output of the video recorder into a TV card.

This works fine for my dig camera as it is intended to play through a TV, with motion detection working fine. The security camera seems to have a bit more noise on it - the sort where JPEGs compress but it seems to move around bit. I was wondering whether this would be confusing the motion detection?

Has anyone else tried this setup, or do I need a dedicated pure video in card rather than a TV in card? Just wondering whether there is too much conversion of resolution and modulation going on to accuratly measure the movement.

Thanks once again!

I had this problem with the default settings. Here is how I fixed it.

• Limit the maximum FPS whilst testing
  In zones, set the Minimum Pixel Threshold to something like 12 for your active zone.
  Enable ZM_RECORD_EVENT_STATS if not already set and restart.
  Reduce the Minimum Alarmed, Filtered and Blob areas way lower than the defaults.
  Now capture a series of test events including the minimum activity you would class as an alarm.
  Look at the stats and use these to set the limits for the zone, I ended up using pixel units although these will be invalid if you change resolution.
  When you're happy, turn off stats etc and increase capture rate to suit your machine.

The value for Minimum Pixel Threshold is highly dependant on your type of camera and lighting scenario but I found 12 to work ok for me. Again you can tell a lot from the stats as to how much noise you think is being picked up.