Motion Detector settings




Motion detector.

Motion detector allows you to turn your computer to full video surveillance and event registration system even in your absence.

For example, if you have a simple web camera device and you want to know how much visitors are come to your shop per day - just turn your camera to door and setup the necessary sensitivity of motion detector (to avoid false alarm). So, by the end of day you will have all visitors, which come and leave your shop (with bargain or not :) in archive.

Second example: suppose, you have a great car and you usually place it near your house of office. To feel yourself comfortable direct the camera to your «ferrari», turn motion detector on and specify the reaction (alarm), for example - play sound or sending SMS. Now you will know about any event occurred around your car. Moreover all these events will be saved to archive (as photos or videos).

And the last example: If you usually need to leave your children at home alone or with babysitter. And if you worry about their comfort and safety. Just turn on computer with Webcam Looker running with connected web camera and motion detector tuned. At the end of the day you will be able to overlook all events occurred at home in your absence (and make the corresponding conclusions :).
Remark: In this example the motion detector is not necessary, but it is advisable because it allows you to economize free disk space greatly as compared with continuous recording mode. Especially if you want to record video clips.

You can even detect the motion absence! The motion absence tracking is useful when you want to know how frequently something do not move (like windmill or your hamster in the cage wheel). For example, you can adjust the motion detector area to catch the windmill stop (so you can track the calm).

We hope, that you will find more other motion detector usage examples, which will be useful, funny and interesting for you.

Now we'll try to describe how to setup the motion detector in details.



Motion detector configuration.

Assume you have a camera source and you want to detect the motion by it. First of all go to the Settings/Sources dialog, then select the «Use motion detector» radio button and press «Add Area» (or «Detector settings») button. The motion detector settings dialog will appear. There is one area already added for you. Here are some steps to adjust the detector's area for your needs:
  • Change area's position and size by mouse dragging.
  • Set the sensible name for area (for example - «My room»).
  • Then the most interesting thing is «Sensitivity level»: «Min» level means that detector will alarm for all motions even for very little (like camera noise or light vibration), so we recommend to use not very big level to prevent false detections (for example, use level 10). The level 0 means the area will be fired continuously - independently of motion presence.
  • «Alarm delay». This parameter is usable to prevent false detections of short duration motions like turning light on or off in room or suddenly the bird fly beside the camera. For example, if you specify 2 seconds - the detector will alarm only after 2 seconds of continuous motion detection.
  • Click «Add destination» to specify the alarm destinations (like recording video or photos, play sound, etc.).



    • Note: to track motion absence (instead of motion presence by default), check the option «Detect only motion absence during XX seconds/minutes/hours». And specify the time interval to wait before alarm. Note: this option provides only one-time action (one photo instead several photos with the same image) between two motions.



    Advanced area setup

    Advanced area setup allows you to specify areas with any shape. Use this ability for nonrectangular object tracking (like road or an apple on the table), or only around the object. For example, you can watch around the aquarium with your favorite goldfishes.

    To open advanced area setup dialog go to «Settings / Sources / Detector settings (Add area)» and press button «Advanced area setup».

    In dialog use left and right mouse buttons to set or drop active blocks in rectangular area. Only active block will be used in motion detection.

    Use next buttons to speed up area shape setup:
    «Clear» - to clear all active blocks;
    «Select all» - to select all blocks as active;
    «Inverse» - to change all active block to nonactive and vice versa.

    Remark: If no active blocks selected - the whole rectangular area will be used for motion detection.

    Advice: If you want to watch the rectangular object - do not use advanced area setup (this feature slows down the motion detector a little).



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