Re: [Motion-user] Problem with (both camera's and motion's) auto-brightness adjustment

[Jay S. <js...@aq...>]

(There's a lot of detail here but I'm not providing much additional
information, so feel free to skim or skip. :-) )

Barry Martin <bar...@gm...> writes:
> Your ‘cheap’ SVPro cameras might not be too bad: I’m using an indoor 
> version and have a note it is similar to ELP, which is supposed to be 
> decent.

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with the picture quality!

> Have you tested your cameras are working properly – adjusting to 
> brightness – plugged in to a different computer? Assign the test 
> computer a different IP and view on your browser. (Test RPi on power 
> pack, use something like Cheese, view on your phone/tablet.)

I tested them (and Motion, in fact, but also with Cheese and briefly
with Zoom) on my desktop before connecting them to the RPi.  (I'm not
using them permanently connected to my desktop because I occasionally
have to move my desk and I don't have an easy way to run cables 
outside from there.

> As you indicated the problem occurred after a power failure, perhaps the 
> SD card is a little corrupted; have you tried swapping in your backup 
> card (and making another backup copy before playing too much)? Why it 
> would only corrupt the brightness section I have no idea – years ago I 
> had a communications software which would corrupt one of its files only 
> when I did a specific option. Ended up moving it to a different part of 
> the hard drive and it worked fine. (Renamed the file to hold the place, 
> reinstalled the one file that was being corrupted.)

I'm booted from a 1TB USB thumbdrive, since Motion is saving a *lot* of
video.  Hard to imagine filesystem corruption would affect the *camera's*
auto-brightness adjustment, but I'll try fscking the thumbdrive the next
time I have time to take the Pi down and fsck a (currently) ~460GB 
fileysystem.

> My guess is as it worked fine before the power outage and it would seem 
> a bit odd for both cameras to fail simultaneously, the repeater cables 
> to both fail simultaneously, then that leaves the Pi or its SD card. The 
> card seems the most logical candidate. Wall warts can fail over time 
> (see my thread “Gray glitching but only one of of two identical 
> cameras”: Mark’s reply to me on/about May 23^rd. – I’m thinking with 
> your numerous power failures maybe the power supply is now iffy. (I run 
> my most of my Pi’s on UPSs or the HAT UPS.)

There haven't been numerous failures, only the one.  (When I said
I'd unplugged things, I meant the USB cables to the cameras, among
other things to try plugging them into my desktop and make sure they
were working properly.  I saw the same behavior of automatic exposure
adjustment not working but manual adjustment succeeding on my desktop,
by the way.)  So the *cameras* have lost power on a fairly regular basis,
which I mentioned only in case there were settings that weren't preserved
across a power cycle.  (They don't have a power switch, so clearly you
just have to unplug them.)  I think all their settings are nonvolatile,
though.

I added the USB extension cables since this behavior showed up, so they
don't affect it, and I've also switched power supplies as part of moving
the RPi to a different corner in the basement.

I only *noticed* the problem after that power failure, but I don't know
how long before or after that it happened.  I think it's likelier that
a software upgrade (kernel, video or USB libraries, or Motion itself)
or me messing around with camera settings with v4l2-ctl caused the
problem and the power failure was coincidental.

> The RPi4 gpu_mem doesn’t work the same as previous versions: less is 
> better. I’m currently using 128 MB, which gives 896 for the CPU 
> (vcgencmd get_mem gpu, vcgencmd get_mem arm commands, respectively). 
> Assigning too much memory to graphics will ‘starve’ the processor.

I bumped mine up to 256MB, a comment in /boot/config.txt tells me that
was in response to actual problems with Motion and ffmpeg although I
don't remmber what they were.  (I'm not piping to ffmpeg for Motion's
normal output, although I had experimented with that at one point,
but I have some cron jobs that convert the timelapse mpegs to mp4 after
they're complete.)

> ...Thought of something: a command option in motion.conf will be 
> overwritten by the same command in your camera configurations. 
> auto_brightness in the camera’s configuration will be used, but only by 
> that specific camera. Default is 0 with a range of 0-3.

Yup, I currently just have auto_brightness 0 in motion.conf and nothing
in the camera?.conf files.

> There’s another one called vid_control_params which is generally left 
> blank. As we both have SVPro cameras I’m thinking you want (in 
> motion.conf) *auto_brightness 0* and *vid_control_params* commented out 
> or better yet deleted.

That's my current state.  (I *had* experimented with vid_control_params
a bit, which is part of why I wonder whether I've accidentally gotten
the cameras in some state I don't know how to get them out of.)

Thanks,

Jay