Motion detection expectations?

[SteveV]

I have a vacation property located 600 miles away from my primary residence. The property has three Amcrest 3MP cameras all located outside and mounted to the soffits. I'm currently using Amcrest's motion detection at the lowest sensitivity and threshold to detect motion but the amount of nuisance motion detection makes the system nearly useless. Leaves, shadows from tree branches swaying in the wind, insects, etc., all result in dozens (sometimes hundreds!) of daily alerts that I'm now ignoring them.

I'm really only interested in motion detection for people coming onto the property while I'm away. What should my expectations be with SightHound? I know that there's a 14 day trial but I'm generally only there for a couple for weeks at a time and evaluating multiple products means waiting between on-site visits.

I'm hoping to determine how much better SightHound might be at eliminating false positive compared to something like BlueIris which costs less the 25% of the SightHound Pro license.

Thanks -- Steve

[Rocinante]

Turn off Amcrest's motion detection and use Sighthound's (assuming the trial version allows this).

You don't need to apply motion detection on everything in the camera's range.
Experiment with the entering/exiting region, door, and crossing a boundary settings.
Basically, you would be drawing lines on only the areas you want to monitor for movement.

BlueIris is a good program, but you have to make many manual adjustments for it to work properly. You don't have to do that with Sighthound.

[SteveV]

As far as I can tell the trial version is a time-limited version of the Pro license so, yes, it should be able to detect motion. My outdoor cameras are capturing a fairly large field of view and access to the property could occur from a number of different directions so it's not clear to me how to make regions and boundaries work in this context.

Picture a soffit mounted camera located at one end of the house. The camera's field of view sees both windows on the front of the house, the front stoop and door, the walkway, and a good portion of the front yard. Someone could access the property by cutting across the yard towards the front door or windows, walking up the walkway towards the camera, or from behind the camera towards the walkway and front door.

Would I create lines across all of the possible routes of ingress?

[Kbond]

Hello Steve,

First off, if you need more time to evaluate Sighthound Video, you can write to [email protected] and we can extend your trial period.

Secondly, we do have a mid-tier license which seems like that would be a better fit for you. The mid-tier license supports 6 cameras and only costs $120. If you want more information about that, you can contact our lead sales engineer, Steve, at [email protected].

Finally, it is hard to determine how you should set up your rules without seeing your specific scene. If you would like support to take a deeper look into this, you can email us either a video or image of the scene you want to detect people on. We will be able to analyze that and give you pointers as needed.

I hope this helps. Please don't hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions or concerns, thank you!

[SteveV]

Hi Kbond,

An extended eval period certainly would help since I'm guessing it might take some time to dial the detection settings in. I'll be on-site starting this weekend and I'll know more once I have the SH trial installed. If all looks good, I'll email support and request the extension if needed.

The six-camera license would be perfect since it's unlikely I'll ever add more than that but I'm assuming that the license is upgradeable to a pro license if I do go over 6 cameras?

Awesome suggestion regarding emailing support pictures of the camera images--I'll shot them an email referencing this thread.

Thanks -- Steve

[Kbond]

Hey Steve,

I'm glad that was helpful. And yes, if you purchase a Home license, it is upgradable. You will just pay the difference in the price points. I've alerted my support team to keep an eye out for your requests. We will be standing by for any other questions you might have, thank you!

-Kevin

[SteveV]

Email with pictures sent to support.

Thanks again -- Steve