Alert triggers when camera is armed

[davidturvey]

I have a weird issue, when I click arm cameras and set a delay I get a movement alert when the countdown is reached and the camera is turned on. i.e. as soon as the rules are activated after the delay the rule will fire. Have anyone else had this problem?
I'm using the basic edition with a Microsoft LifeCam HD.

[Semper Vaporo]

I am sure you will get an answer from VDV soon, but I have a couple of comments. I use a Microsoft Lifecam HD-5000 as one of 5 cameras on my system and have not seen the problem you describe. However I have seen a rule trigger because the camera seems to arbitrarily decide to go through an automatic re-focus adjustment. I wonder if that may be associated with your problem.

I also suppose your problem might be affected by what the rule is looking for; whether seeing motion in the entire view, or in a box, or crossing a line, etc.

Anyway, I have a fix for the Auto-Focus feature causing a rule to trigger.

My "fix" is a bit convoluted and is not a permanent fix, i.e.: I have to repeat the fix at least every time I re-connect the camera to the computer (not a "connect" via VDV, but plugging it into the USB port of the PC). I also SOMETIMES have to do it again after a power down and reboot, but not every time, which leaves me quite confused as to where the setting is being stored and how it is handled by the camera and the Microsoft drivers.

Every USB cam (and, I am sure, IP cams, too) has some common features, such as Focus, Brightness, Contrast, etc. and some have the ability to make adjustments to those settings and some do automatic adjustments to them as the scene changes.

The Lifecam has more controls than any of my other cameras, but the only program that I have found to affect the features is an old program that Microsoft USED TO provide with Windows, named "AMCAP". It is still available for download from several places if you search the web for "AMCAP.EXE" (be sure to add the ".exe" part or you will get way too many hits about American corporate capitalization and stock exchange info!)

Winders will not allow two programs to access the camera at the same time, so you have to run AMCAP while VDV is NOT connected to the camera. Either do this before running VDV or turn the camera off in VDV before you run AMCAP. Once parameters are set, they will stay that way until you unplug the camera and through most reboots (even a full "restart" where the computer turns off and back on), but if you unplug the camera or leave the computer off too long you will have to redo them.

Run AMCAP and select the Lifecam. Then select "Video Capture Filter" from the "Options" menu. You will then see a dialogbox with two tabs.

The 1st tab, "Video Proc Amp" will have 9 sliders with adjacent text boxes (showing the numerical value of the slider) and checkboxes. Most of the checkboxes will be disabled; i.e.: you cannot enable an AUTO feature ("WhiteBalance" is the only one that has an AUTO-feature on the 1st tab). But you can move most of the sliders to adjust the feature it controls. There is also a "Default" button to set everything back to a standard setting (quite useful when I get carried away making changes!)

Select the 2nd tab, "Camera Control" and it shows a similar display of 7 slider controls (and that frustration-saving "Default" button!) Two of the features have an enable-able AUTO- feature, both of which will be enabled. I recommend UNchecking the "Focus" feature and then drag the slider all the way to the left to set the "Focus" at infinity ("0" in the textbox). You might want to adjust the focus to your liking, depending on what the view is in your system.

Now, click "OK" to save the settings. Then EXIT the AMCAP program and run VDV (if not already running) and Turn On the camera.

I wonder if this will affect your problem. I have other cameras that trigger a rule when they do some massive auto-adjustment to the brightness, but I have not found a way to disable that AUTO-feature from happening on those cameras. It does not happen with the Lifecam,so apparently when it makes auto-adjustment to the brightness it is gentle enough to not throw a curve to VDV.

[davidturvey]

Thanks! I'll give that a try when I get home from work. It is a very weird problem, I should have also said I never used to have this problem - its started happening one day!

[ryan]

Thanks for the in depth response semper! Auto focus can definitely be problematic. As I mentioned in a different post on USB cameras -

Autofocus is great for video chat where you don't mind a bit of blurriness for a second. To a vision algorithm, however, it appears as though suddenly the entire scene has shifted and it will take a second or so to recover, perhaps generating false positives in the meantime. Also, for security you don't want the scene going blurry every time somebody steps into the field of view, especially if they are hurrying through and you won't have time to capture them clearly.

Hopefully the instructions Semper provided have helped, but if not or if you have any other trouble let us know!