Settings
The settings screens are activated by pressing the gear icon at the top right corner of the website, or by pressing the gear icon attached to each camera.
The Global Settings screen includes the following options:
- Debug Mode - Enables side-by-side view of the motion capture view.
- Motion Overlay - Displays orange motion events on top of the camera video.
- Brightness Threshold - (decimal, default 0.25) - A decimal from 0-1 representing the percentage of brightness required to trigger a motion event. While debug mode is enabled this will display as a bight green area. Black is represented as 0, bright green is represented as 1, varying shades of green are between 0 and 1.
- Pixel Score Threshold - (integer, default 40) - The number of pixels above the brightness threshold required to trigger a motion event. A low number will trigger more events for less motion, while a larger number will require more motion to trigger an event.
- Min Recording Seconds - (seconds, default 15) - The minimum number of seconds to record.
- Max Recording Seconds - (seconds, default 30) - The maximum number of seconds to record. A new motion event will only start a new recording once the previous recording has finished. Two motion events within the time limit will not trigger another recording until the first recording has finished.
- Motion Detection Interval - (milliseconds, default 500) - This is the number of milliseconds between frames that will be compared for motion. A larger number may allow fast moving figures to go past the camera without being recorded, while a number smaller than 500 will require more processing resources from your computer and could block the video from rendering. The speed of the computer will influence this number, as faster CPUs (single threaded performance) can handle smaller numbers, while slower computers will require the default or higher. This number also affects the brightness threshold as there will be less motion between pixels when the number is smaller, so the smaller this number is then the smaller the brightness threshold or pixel score threshold must be.
-
Recording Path - (default ./recordings) - An absolute or relative path to a folder on the server. This path can be a folder within the project directory (relative, using
./some-path, such as./recordings), or an absolute path to a folder in a different directory, such as/home/user/Security Cameras, or to another mounted drive, such as/mnt/[some-uuid]/Security Cameras. Since this path comes from the server and not the user's computer, it cannot be provided with a file browser window, so please copy and paste the path or manually type it in. If the path cannot be found then the system will default to./recordings.
Some Camera Settings can override the global settings. The reason for this is because some cameras have more motion than others on a regular basis, so we may want to avoid excess recordings from these cameras by providing different thresholds. The camera settings also include FFMPEG options that extend the default FFMPEG options used by the system.
- Camera Name - A unique name for the camera.
-
Camera Stream URL - Because the system connects to camera streams, this is either a URL that FFMPEG or VLC can stream from (HTTP, RTSP, TCP, UDP, etc.), or a path to a camera located on the server, such as
/dev/video0for a webcam. For URLs that require authentication, please provide the username and password in the URL (example:rtsp://admin:password@192.168.1.3), or provide additional options to FFMPEG using the custom FFMPEG options. - Brightness Threshold - (decimal, default 0.25) - A decimal from 0-1 representing the percentage of brightness required to trigger a motion event. While debug mode is enabled this will display as a bight green area. Black is represented as 0, bright green is represented as 1, varying shades of green are between 0 and 1.
The following options are the same as the ones provided by the Global Settings screen. They will override the Global options for the camera selected.
- Pixel Score Threshold - (integer, default 40) - The number of pixels above the brightness threshold required to trigger a motion event. A low number will trigger more events for less motion, while a larger number will require more motion to trigger an event.
- Min Recording Seconds - (seconds, default 15) - The minimum number of seconds to record.
- Max Recording Seconds - (seconds, default 30) - The maximum number of seconds to record. A new motion event will only start a new recording once the previous recording has finished. Two motion events within the time limit will not trigger another recording until the first recording has finished.
- Motion Detection Interval - (milliseconds, default 500) - This is the number of milliseconds between frames that will be compared for motion. A larger number may allow fast moving figures to go past the camera without being recorded, while a number smaller than 500 will require more processing resources from your computer and could block the video from rendering. The speed of the computer will influence this number, as faster CPUs (single threaded performance) can handle smaller numbers, while slower computers will require the default or higher. This number also affects the brightness threshold as there will be less motion between pixels when the number is smaller, so the smaller this number is then the smaller the brightness threshold or pixel score threshold must be.
This last setting will affect how the source video is processed by FFMPEG, or it will affect how it's re-streamed by the system.
- Custom FFMPEG Options - A space-separated list of options that should be provided to FFMPEG to assist in parsing the camera data or improving the video quality. When the service starts the camera you will be able to see the full FFMPEG command used and test with a few different configurations. FFMPEG is quite complex, but some options can be found in the documentation. More advanced options can be discovered in various forums and tutorials. We make no guarantee that a custom option will work with the nMotion.
You may also delete a camera within the Camera Settings screen. When the Delete Camera button is pressed, a confirmation screen will display to make sure you would like to perform the action. Make sure you read the confirmation before deleting cameras to avoid accidental deletions.
Saving settings will automatically restart the various servers and reload the webpage.