Timeout after motion detect

[Ebihen]

Hi Claude,

thanks for sharing your work! I'm very much enjoying your script. I'm running it on a Pi that is installed in my temporary workshop to document the process of building a small wooden sail boat. (www.aarnoudsebihen.wordpress.com)) Would it be possible to introduce a variable in your script that maximizes the number of motion triggered pictures per time? It would be good for me if I could let my Pi run your script and have it take a picture every 10 minutes if it detects motion.

Thanks in advance for your answer! Best regards,

Aarnoud

[pageauc]

Not sure if I understand your request.

When motion or motion tracking is detected you can take image(s), video or a quick timelapse series.. Motion tracking eliminates false positives by detecting if motion has moved a set distance of pixels away from the initial movement in a specified time period.
Motion (non tracking) is simply something moved in frame and this can be generated by lighting changes or random motion like a bush moving back and forth. That is why I set motion tracking as the default since it can eliminate false positive situations.

There are several examples for setting what to do if motion or motion tracking is detected.

1 - Take a single image,

motionVideoOn = False
motionQuickTLOn = False

2 - Take a series of quick timelapse images for a specific time period eg 60 seconds and interval between images eg 5 seconds see example settings below

motionVideoOn = False
motionQuickTLOn = True  
motionQuickTLTimer = 60     
motionQuickTLInterval =  5   

3 - Take a Video for a specified time period eg 10 seconds per example below

motionVideoOn = True      
motionVideoTimer = 10  

4 - You can also specify what to do if there is No motion for a specified period of time eg take a picture anyway if there has been no motion for an hour or specified number of seconds. zero will disable this feature.

motionForce = 3600

Sometimes I set my camera with a motionForce = 300 so it forces an image every 5 minutes that can act as an easy way to get regular updates but will take an image immediately if motion tracking is activated, at which time the 300 motionForce seconds wait will restart.

You can also specify if you want to automatically turn off camera settings during daylight or night time. The default is to turn both these off. Setting them both to True will take no images

noNightShots = False     
noDayShots = False

There are many other combinations possible. Sometimes I will set both timelapse and motion on

These variable settings can be found in the config.py file.

If these examples do not cover your requirement please explain the situation or outcome you would like.

Additional information is available in wiki page https://github.com/pageauc/pi-timolo/wiki/Variable-Tuning

Thanks Claude ....

[Ebihen]

Thanks for your quick response!

I’ve been tuning with the variables in config.py , but haven’t been able to get the system behaviour I had in mind. What I would like to achieve is that I get a picture every 10 minutes of my workshop every time I do some work there, but no pictures taken if nothing moves there (which would be the case if time lapse would be turned on). The workaround I used until now to get the system behaviour is set the variable for white balance measuring to 300 seconds, but then a picture is taken 300 seconds after motion is detected. The variable that would be helpful for my situation would be one that times out motion detection for a period of time after motion is detected. Please let me know if I need to be more precise in my description ;-) Best,

Aarnoud

[pageauc]

You should be able to achieve what you want by using

Motion Quick Time Lapse Mode

When motion is triggered take a series of time lapse images for a specific time period with a specified interval between images. See example settings below. You will get 6 images after motion, spaced 10 minutes apart. You can use either motion or motion tracking to activate this series. I recommend motion tracking so only triggered by a moving object for a certain pixel distance. This will avoid triggering by lighting changes like turning lights on and off or shadows from sunlight through a window Etc.

motionTrackOn = True        # Turn on Motion Tracking
motionTrackQuickPic = False    # Turn off quick picture from video stream
motionVideoOn = False            # Take images not video
motionQuickTLOn = True          # Turn on motion timelapse sequence mode
motionQuickTLTimer = 3600       # On motion do timelapse sequence for 60 minutes
motionQuickTLInterval =  600      # Take image every 10 minutes until timer runs out
timelapseOn = False    # Turn off normal time lapse mode so only motion mode used.
motionForce = 0    # Do not force motion image if no motion for a period of time

I think this should accomplish what you are trying to do. When motion detect or motion tracking is triggered it will take an image every 10 minutes for 1 hour then resume monitoring for motion again.

Let me know if this is what you were looking for

Claude ...

[pageauc]

Please Note I found a bug in motionForce that did not disable this feature if value set to zero. I have fixed this in pi-timolo.py release 7.9 that can be downloaded from GitHub. or use the command below to update version

cd ~/pi-timolo   
wget -O pi-timolo.py https://raw.github.com/pageauc/pi-timolo/master/source/pi-timolo.py

This should fix this bug for the configuration above Claude ...

[Ebihen]

Hi Claude,

I tried the settings you suggested with the motionQuickTLOn variable and it seems to work fine! Thanks! I set both motionQuickTLTimer and motionQuickTLInterval to the same value of 600, and I have indeed got a picture for every 10 minutes I was in my workshop. The only thing I found was when I afterwards checked the pictures; I use the file naming option with the time stamp (motionNumOn=False) but the time stamp in the file name doesn’t always correspond to the time the file was created. The file creation times for my test pictures show a pattern that could be expected: a picture taken at a certain time and 10 minutes later another one. I’ve three sets of two pictures taken with this logic. The time stamp in the file names however show another pattern; the time stamp in the name of the first picture of a set of 2 corresponds to its file creation time, the second picture however has a creation time of 10 minutes later, but a time stamp of 5 seconds later. Best,

Aarnoud

[pageauc]

Did you download the 7.9 release of pi-timolo that fixes the motionForce=0 problem. Now it will disable motionForce correctly when it is set to zero

Claude ...

On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 6:13 PM, Ebihen notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi Claude,

I tried the settings you suggested with the motionQuickTLOn variable and it seems to work fine! Thanks! I set both motionQuickTLTimer and motionQuickTLInterval to the same value of 600, and I have indeed got a picture for every 10 minutes I was in my workshop. The only thing I found was when I afterwards checked the pictures; I use the file naming option with the time stamp (motionNumOn=False) but the time stamp in the file name doesn’t always correspond to the time the file was created. The file creation times for my test pictures show a pattern that could be expected: a picture taken at a certain time and 10 minutes later another one. I’ve three sets of two pictures taken with this logic. The time stamp in the file names however show another pattern; the time stamp in the name of the first picture of a set of 2 corresponds to its file creation time, the second picture however has a creation time of 10 minutes later, but a time stamp of 5 seconds later. Best,

Aarnoud

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[Ebihen]

I just installed it. More testing tomorrow. Would your bug fix have anything to do with the time stamp-issue? At the time I tested it, I had the motionForce variable not set to 0.

[pageauc]

Probably. forceMotion was designed to take an image if no motion was detected for a specified period of time. Default is 3600 or one hour. By setting the value to zero it should disable this feature but the bug would force a motion image continuously which is not what you wanted. The new release fixes that problem so setting the value to zero disables the force motion option.

I would set the motionQuickTLTimer for a longer time period like 3600 or 1800 seconds. That way when you are in your shop working it will take a 30 or 60 minute sequence with 10 minutes between images. Once you leave, then the time sequence will continue for a while until timer runs out and only start again if there is another motion triggered. Depending on the point in the sequence you will end up with a variable number of images at the end of the sequence where you are no longer in the shop.

Claude ...

On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 7:06 PM, Ebihen notifications@github.com wrote:

I just installed it. More testing tomorrow. Would your bug fix have anything to do with the time stamp-issue? At the time I tested it, I had the motionForce variable not set to 0.

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[Ebihen]

I set the motionForce variable to 0 now, and that worked fine for me. For the time being I'm going to stick to a shorter motionQuickTLTimer period of 1190 and a motionQuickTLInterval of 600. With that I should get a picture every 10 minutes I work there, and no more pictures once I leave. I'll change both variables to the setting you recommended once I'll be spending longer periods of time in the workshop. The current building phase requires me to do 30 minute jobs and then leave for a few hours to let the epoxy dry....

[pageauc]

Sounds Great. I suspected you were working on a shop project. It is a good application since recording time lapse is hands free. Thanks for your interest and a great idea that I never would have thought of until you asked for help.

I am now thinking of adding various scenario descriptions and configuration settings in the project GitHub Wiki

Claude ...

On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 6:35 PM, Ebihen notifications@github.com wrote:

I set the motionForce variable to 0 now, and that worked fine for me. For the time being I'm going to stick to a shorter motionQuickTLTimer period of 1190 and a motionQuickTLInterval of 600. With that I should get a picture every 10 minutes I work there, and no more pictures once I leave. I'll change both variables to the setting you recommended once I'll be spending longer periods of time in the workshop. The current building phase requires me to do 30 minute jobs and then leave for a few hours to let the epoxy dry....

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[Ebihen]

Hi Claude,

I'm satisfied with the pictures and time lapses your script is producing, but still I observed an anomaly. The filenames the script is producing do not correspond to the file creation times my NAS records. So, for your info, if you want to look into it, here is an example from yesterdays list with file names and creation times:

mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-161931 - 16:29 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-162933 - 16:39 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-164058 - 16:41 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-164100 - 16:51 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-165101 - 17:01 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-170119 - 17:01 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-170120 - 17:11 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-171121 - 17:21 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-172824 - 17:28 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-172825 - 17:38 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-173826 - 17:48

I'm running the script with the setting I mentioned above: Quicktimelapse with a timer of 1190 and an interval of 600.

[pageauc]

Yes the file time will be different than the date shown on the image. The filename is set just before the image is taken. The camera then needs time to warm up and take image plus post processing time for overlaying data onto the image file and time to save image on disk. The only way to get around this would be to post process the image file to change the creation date but this would slow things down during faster image sequences.

Also if you get two sequences in a row the second sequence may be triggered by motion at any time and thus will result in a longer or shorter interval time than the normal sequence interval time between images.

Let me know if this answers your question..

On Sun, Oct 15, 2017 at 4:22 AM, Ebihen notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi Claude,

I'm satisfied with the pictures and time lapses your script is producing, but still I observed an anomaly. The filenames the script is producing do not correspond to the file creation times my NAS records. So, for your info, if you want to look into it, here is an example from yesterdays list with file names and creation times:

mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-161931 - 16:29 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-162933 - 16:39 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-164058 - 16:41 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-164100 - 16:51 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-165101 - 17:01 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-170119 - 17:01 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-170120 - 17:11 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-171121 - 17:21 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-172824 - 17:28 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-172825 - 17:38 mo-Ebihencam1-20171014-173826 - 17:48

I'm running the script with the setting I mentioned above: Quicktimelapse with a timer of 1190 and an interval of 600.

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