Blue Iris

Hi,
I've been using BI for a little over a year now. I have it running on a W10 box w/ 3 cameras attached and it sends texts w/ images when the cameras are triggered.
It's all good, except I get false alerts at night when cars pass by because the headlights flashing across my driveway triggers the camera.
I live in a pretty quiet neighborhood, so I get only a few of these every day.

I also got false alerts on sunny, windy days when the shadows from the trees moved around.
I eliminated most of these by setting up zones and requiring the motion to cross the zones.

Nevertheless, I've been tweaking the alert config to see if I can eliminate or at least decrease the remaining false alerts from the headlights.

Issue 1
I configured the camera to store a "Hi-res JPEG" when the camera is triggered and I set up Post to save jpgs every 2 secs and I send MQTT messages with &ALERT_PATH "On alert" and "On reset".
This is where I noticed an odd behavior - the Hi-res jpg files gets stored when the camera is triggered, but then the filename is changed when the camera resets.
There is no mention of this behavior in the documentation, so I can't tell if its a bug or a feature.
Here's an example
MQTT onAlert message had this filename: Porch.20220109_132443.0.19-2.jpg
MQTT onReset message had this filename: Porch.20220109_132443.4997.19-2.59924.63518.jpg
I can actually see the filename change by leaving the folder open when the camera is triggered. I can se the filename change when the trigger resets.
So wondering if anyone can explain this behavior or if I should report it as a bug.

Issue 2
I modified the alert timer to wait until triggered at least 3x in 3 secs hoping this could eliminate the false alerts from the headlight flashes.
Here's where it really got odd.
The camera stopped saving the hi-res jpgs when it was triggered - but the post images were still saved.
The MQTT messages were sent onAlert and onReset but they included the filename of the last hiRes jpg - which is not associated with the current event.
Also the image text messages is also the old hiRes jpg
I was hoping to see hiRes jpgs from each trigger so I could tweak the 3x3secs.
This seems like a bug. Has anyone encountered this behavior?

I'm running BI 5.5.4.4 x64 (1/6/2022)

Can you post a capture of a few Headlight flashes?
When you get the false triggers from Headlights, how much of the camera is effected?

In 'Motion Sensor/Object Detection'...
- Set an amount for 'Object size exceeds' under 'Reset detector when', that is less than the headlight flash AND greater than a normal trigger. This can also eliminate lightning flashes.

Thanks for the interest in helping me.

I can't post a capture because the files are larger than 256kb, but suffice it to say the flashes range in size from ~1/20 to 1/6 of the image.
The small headlight flashes are as large as a person walking up the drive way and the larger ones are as large as a FedEx Truck in the driveway.

I've played with object size, but it doesn't appear to help because the flashes are at least as large as objects I do want to trigger - person, car....
I have the object size set very small because I want to trigger when a person walks up the driveway.

I have zones set up so cars driving by don't trigger so for example I trigger when I take the garbage out, but the garbage truck picking up trash can does not trigger.
Zones don't help with the headlight flashes because the trigger area frequently crosses the zones - which is exactly the type of thing I want to trigger.
That's why I was hopping x triggers in x seconds could help.

Let's clarify what you're trying to fix. Are you trying to reduce the number of camera triggers, or the number of alert messages you receive (at night)? They are different things, and approached differently.

Are you using DeepStack? Consider this...

Before DS, the game was fine tuning the motion detection settings to get notified of legit alerts. With DS, you can set your motion detector to be way more sensitive - you get a bunch of recordings of events, but DS prevents those events from producing an alert.

DS object detection manages whether or not a motion trigger produces the alert - a cop to determine if said motion satisfies the criteria to produce an alert action when the camera is triggered - a "go / no go" condition.

DS integration is designed to reduce false alert notifications via object recognition criteria. Here's how I think about it - I don't care how many recordings/clips are produced, but I want to be alerted when an object fulfilling the recognition criteria is detected. It doesn't matter to me that the camera triggers when the wind blows as long as I'm not alerted on every trigger. Clips and Archiving manages the clips for me, so I don't need to fine tune the camera to eliminate false alerts - DS does that part. Clips and archiving manages the disk space, so who cares about how many clips there are?

So expect recording to occur with motion triggers, and use DS to evaluate whether said motion qualifies as an event to take additional action.

If you're trying to reduce the number of triggers (recordings)... why?