Ignore Spider Web

[sperrywilliamc]

I have a fairly large problem with spider web strands, one strand, being picked up as a person. One strand in front of the camera at night will fool Sighthound into thinking its a person and there will be several hundred incidents to review to see if something else exists. Even worse is if you can't get to the video for a few days and you find there are several thousands of incidents and no one will check out the video. The best option would be an email alert that could be sent when the software detects a possible spider web and then ignores the video until fixed. Or, a function put in to set threshold where the software will only mark an incident every x minutes so that I won't see 20-50 incident videos per minute.

[ryan]

Hi sperrywilliamc,

Sorry to hear you're experiencing trouble with spider webs. We're actively working on our algorithms to make them better than ever, if you have any sample videos you'd like me to pass along to our computer vision team let me know and I'd be glad to do so.

There may be some rule combinations that help eliminate the trouble you're seeing, but it's a bit difficult to say without seeing the scene. I've heard that a little wd-40 can deter many types of spiders from entering a given area, though I haven't tried that myself.

Best,
- ryan

[webloader]

I've had the same problem. The conclusion I have come to is that it is only a problem at night, due to the IR illuminator built in to the camera. I haven't been able to test it yet, but using a separate illuminator that was mounted away from the camera should solve the problem, as the web itself then won't be illuminated.

Ryan, if you want to test your vision analytics, then simply take a camera with built in IR, place it in a darkened room so that the IR kicks in, and then have a piece of cotton / thread in front of the camera with a small weight on the bottom to keep it tensioned, and move it slightly. What you will see is a vertical, bright, translucent line in front of the main video image. Because it is so close to the lens the camera can 'see through it' to some of the actual scene image, almost like an X-ray effect, so perhaps you could detect that?

[Max]

Hi Ryan,

I get the same thing almost every night, some nights over 1000 false positives (as either person or unknown) per camera, when the spiderwebs blow in the wind.

I also think the only option is to get separate IR illumination.
This will also solve the false positives of the rain coming up as people.
Thanks for the tip on the WD40, will try.

I tried to upload a video, but it was 6Mb, then I compressed it to 1Mb, then got the next error that .mp4 files are not permitted?
Perhaps some tweaks to the uploader are needed?
Have attached a jpeg so you can see what it looks like.

Max