Re: [Motion-user] Motion Surveillance System

[Bruce W. B. <bru...@ve...>]

Steve,

 

I have no doubt many of my problems would be solved by using the latest and
greatest computer hardware. However I'm am sufficiently happy with seeing
what I can accomplish using a low cost platform.

 

Since I initially wrote my post where I described my setup, I've removed the
second camera and upped the frame rate to 30 fps. When motion is actually
detected it actually only records about 1/3 of that or about 10 fps. This is
sufficient for my crude but somewhat effective event analysis routines. On a
sunny windy day I get upwards of 600 false events a day. I'm generally
automatically deleting 90% of them at least. I am also automatically
detecting vehicles driving past at about a 85% success rate, 100% if it's a
cloudy day with no distinct shadows on the ground. I can detect which
direction vehicles are going and can tell when my neighbor across the street
leaves/arrives back home.

 

Using an analysis of the regions my centers of motions go through on a
cloudy day I'm also pretty good at detecting people coming to and from my
front door if it is real calm.  I assume no  vehicle is going to come from
the street to the steps and on to my walkway. So if I detect motion going
thru those regions I automatically classify it as a potential person. Crude
but effective!

 

Bruce W. Bodnyk

bru...@ve...

 

From: Steve Goldsmith [mailto:sg...@gm...] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 11:23 AM
To: Motion discussion list
Subject: Re: [Motion-user] Motion Surveillance System

 

Your project sounds interesting, but using Motion as a foundation has
several drawbacks one of which is performance. Having to decode and
re-encode each frame during recording really limits the effective FPS. Then
add to that that you are using a low horsepower device and it exacerbates
the issue. I can can do motion detection/recording in HD resolution at 10
FPS using only 20% of a dual core ARM operating at 1.0 GHz maximum. I only
have to decode frames that are run through motion detection (usually 3 or 4
FPS is ideal), so it will scale up to 20 or 30 FPS on low horse power
devices.

I've had good luck generating ignore masks from motion videos using a motion
histogram. Then you will not have to have several masks. Also, I can use
multiple ignore areas which are faster than using a bit mask.

 

People detection (pedestrian detection) is a tricky business and in the
right environment HOG based detection work pretty well. I'm working on
region of interest (ROI) detection which should eliminate the noise and
improve performance.


I explain the performance issues I experienced while deploying CVP here
https://github.com/sgjava/cvp/wiki/Architecture.
 

 

On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 10:05 AM, Bruce W. Bodnyk <bru...@ve...>
wrote:

Hi!

 

I attempted to post this previously but I has a number of screen shots as
attachments which made the email too large for the mailing list. I'm
re-posting this without the screen shots!

 

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I've been developing my own home surveillance system around Motion and am
posting this to demonstrate what I've done and hopefully see what others may
be doing. 

 

Requirements

 

The following are the "requirements" I set out to satisfy:

.         Capture "vehicle" and "person" Motion events. Detect when vehicles
pass by and when people come and go from my house.

.         Use out-of-the-box Motion functionality - I don't really want to
mess with the Motion code.

.         Scalable - Ability to have as many cameras as you want.

.          Web Interface - Use a web browser to access the Motion data and
eventually a smartphone app.

.         Automatic event characterization - On a bright windy day I can
easy get 500-600 events. I've got better things to do with my time than
manually go thru each one.

 

Hardware

 

Currently I'm using two Raspberry Pi computers; one which is running Motion
and a second on which the MySQL and Apache servers run on. On the Motion pi,
I have two Playstation Eye cameras hooked up thru a powered usb hub. Both
pis are using a hard wire Ethernet connection rather than wireless. I'm
using a networked drive mounted on each pi which is where the jpegs and
avi's are stored. With regards to the two cameras, I'm only detecting motion
on one, the other I'm just generating a timelapse mpeg. Both cameras are set
to 320x240 resolution and I am capturing at 10 fps.

 

Environment

 

Currently my one camera is pointing out my front window. I've defined three
regions of interest; the street in front of my house; the steps leading from
the street down to my walkway; and the walkway into my house. I have a
colored mask; green, yellow, red and black similar to the black&white mask
Motion uses which easily lets me know that region; 1(walkway),2(steps) or
3(street), the motion center for a frame is in.

 

Detection

 

I have Motion configured with a black&white mask although I do have three
different masks I use depending upon how windy it is outside. Currently I
automatically switch between masks, eventually I will also re-configure
Motion by adjusting the "threshold" and other settings depending upon how
windy it is.

 

Event Process

 

The following are the steps a motion event goes thru.   

 

1.       When motion is detected I generate both a avi (ffmpeg_cap_new on)
and jpegs (output_normal on). I also have Motion configured to submit an sql
query to add the event information to a "raw_events" table. i.e. " insert
into raw_events(camera, filename, frame, file_type, time_stamp,
event_time_stamp, event_class, event_type, changed_pixels, noise_level,
motion_width, motion_height, motion_x, motion_y, event_status ) values('%t',
'%f', '%q', '%n', '%Y-%m-%d %T', '%C', 'motion', 'unknown', '%D', '%N',
'%i', '%J', '%K', '%L', 'Raw') The motion files are stored in the following
path - /mnt/mybookworld/motion/raw/camera_1. Note that I've added several
additional columns to this sql table over what Motion originally had.

 

2.       Upon the completion of the avi, I have Motion call a Perl script.
The Perl script copies the avi event info to an 'events' table. I also
capture each frame info in a "frames" table where I record the associated
jpeg, motion center and motion size. The actual jpegs and avi are then
physically moved to a new location, i.e. /mnt/
mybookworld/motion/camera_1/xxxx where xxxx is the unique index of the event
record from mysql. This xxxx index is used in the "frames" table to
associate a frame mysql record to an event avi. The "raw_events" table is
then cleaned out. Upon completion of this step the event has a status of
"Raw". As part of this step, the "best" jpeg is selected to be associated
with the avi to be display on my web page.

 

3.       On my 2nd pi; the non-motion one, the events table is routinely
scanned for "Raw" events. When a Raw event is found, several things are
done; I add graphics to the "best" jpeg which is essentially the motion
centers connected with colored lines and each motion center is also
indicated with a different colored point. The colors relate to which motion
region the motion is in. I also calculate a few other things such as the
"percent_in_mask" which tells me what percent of motion centers are in each
region and "motion_center_area" where I calculate the areas the motion
centers are located in for each of the three regions. I also generate a
"motion_string" for each event that looks like; "33", "332211",
"332233223322", etc. Finally using the motion string and other information,
I attempt to determine whether the event is a "vehicle" or a "person". For
example, a "33" motion string is probably a vehicle while a "332211" motion
string might indicate a person coming to my front door.  After all this, the
event status is set to "New".

 

4.       Once an event is "New" it then shows up on my web page. At this
point I can accept the suggested event type or enter my own event type if I
don't agree with the suggested event type. Regardless, after setting the
event type, the event status is set to "Active". I can also delete the event
if need be. As part of step 3, possible event types are "Bogus" and
"Flapping". I can (or try to) automatically delete these types of events. At
this point if I delete an event, I remove it from the different sql tables
and remove the files from disk, but I also add a record to an
"auto_del_events" table to keep track of how many events I'm deleting. I use
this information to automatically change the black&white mask Motion uses.
On a calm day I use a mask with broad white areas. On a windy bright day I
switch to a mask with smaller white areas.

 

5.       Once an event is "Active" I can then archive it. The archival
process changes the event status to "Archive" and also physically moves the
jpeg and avi to a different disk location, i.e.
/mnt/mybookworld/motion/archive/camera_1/xxxx.

 

Current Development

 

Currently my automatic event characterization is fairly simple. On a calm
day I can detect vehicles driving past with almost 100% accuracy although
such an event could also be a person walking by or riding by on a bike. I
hope to eventually be able to tell this. Also, I have many vehicle events
that are really two; two cars passing in opposite directions which I also
hope to eventually determine. Likewise, on a very calm day I can
characterize persons coming and going. It's when the wind starts picking up
that things get confusing. Most of my current development activity is
centered around improving the characterization or event typing.

 

Future Development

.         Continual improvement of the web interface

.         Add event notification - Send an email / text message when a
person event occurs.

.         Develop a smartphone app.

 

Conclusion

 

The Motion program is pretty cool and works as advertised but by itself is
not terribly useful. The above is my attempt at making the Motion output
much more useful. I'm curious what others have done in the area of event
characterization.

 

Regards,

Bruce W. Bodnyk

bru...@ve...

 


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