Super-noob question about zones, event frequency

[schuitz]

Hi,

I've been testing my netcam in my laundry room "staging area" for the past week or so, with 1.22.1 on a fresh FC5 install. Everything seems mostly happy, and I've been twiddling with zone settings for the monitor to try and get all of the events.

What I'm looking for is some guidance to help figure out the optimal zone settings. I end up with a large volume of modect events when I'm walking around the room. In some instances I think there should be longer, continuous alarms rather than individual alarms.

My zone settings are obviously not picking up motion in between, and so I get two short events (say) with some missing activity rather than one long one. Sometimes there is a bit of overlap, as I've left the default pre-post alarm roll of 10 frames and my cam gets around 3fps.

The scene is reasonably well lit (in the basement) although at these light levels there is a fair bit of noise from the camera.

So,

1) Is this the nature of how modect works?
2) Is there any mechanism beyond scripting for merging events that happen very close together into one continuous event? Or,
3) Are my zone settings totally wrong?

Sorry for the noob question, my dig through the forums archives didn't get too far.
MikeS

[jameswilson]

Setting up the motion detection is an art form and any ideas that will make it easier would be great, but i fyou extend you post alarm number it will still be in post alarm when the motion detector triggers again and as such will extend the existing event instaed of stopping then starting a new one

[schuitz]

I'll say. Thanks for the suggestion about increasing the post-roll. Right now my biggest challenge just seems to be getting zma to identify an alarm during the day, for my new driveway location. I'm sure i will have a few more questions.

Thanks
MikeS

[jameswilson]

drop the min values in min blob, filtered area etc