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Motion monitors the video signal from one or more cameras (video4linux interface) and is able to detect if a significant part of the picture has changed. Features: interval snapshots, live streaming webcam, mpeg generation, database interface, OSD etc.

Project Members:

• Jeroen B. Vreeken (admin)
• Joseph Heenan (admin)
• Kenneth Lavrsen (admin)
• MrDave (admin)

[Tom]

I am running Motion 4.1 and am curious why the timelapse capabilty does not allow for an mp4 choice.

timelapse_codec

Type: Discrete Strings
Range / Valid values: mpg, mpeg4
Default: mpg

Notice that the
ffmpeg_video_codec

Type: Discrete Strings
Range / Valid values: mpeg4, msmpeg4, swf, flv, ffv1, mov, ogg, mp4, mkv, hevc
Default: mpeg4

does allow mp4.

[Mike Phillips]

I find pushing videos via on_movie_end to gmail successful, but difficult to view, there's no embedded avi viewer. So I have 2 questions:

1) Is there a gmail friendly video encoding I can use
2) After switching to on_picture_save mode, I get WAY too many images mailed and I can't figure how to make it stop spamming / thrashing notifications. Is there a quiet period or something that can limit the number of notifications.

[DIO_SVK]

Hi, Is there a way with Motion to count all occurrences detected in pre-made video?

I have 30min video that is mostly black and only one orange led is blinking in 10sec pattern with 2 sec pause trying to tell me the issue with hardware (blinking service code).

I know that motion is able to trigger action based on motion detection, but is able to like show me number of how many blinks was issued durring 10sec session? Thanks for any reply

[J.Prinzler]

Hello !

I use motion (motion Version 3.2.12) for a long time under Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS.
At the moment I control with it three cameras.

Now I would like to deactivate one or two cameras every now and then.

Then I remove the corresponding configuration from the system and restart Motion.

That's not very practical.

Is not there a way to temporarily disable the camera via a variable within the configuration file?

For example, Motion could check if a specific file exists and then ignore the camera.

Something like this:

thread1.conf

online_file /path/to/special/file/cam1.online

Would it be possible to install such a feature?

That would be absolutely great.

Thank you an have a nice day.

Jaro

[Frank Brown]

Hello. I'm using motion 4.2.2 on Kubuntu 19.04. I am currently monitoring 4 cameras. For the camera in front of my house, I record all events occuring within view, which includes cars and people going down the street resulting in a large number of video files. I want to continue recording all the activity. I use the "area_detect" to narrow down an area of interest immeadiately around the house and "on_area_detect" key to run a script which plays and alert sound in the house, and also sends an email alert which is received on my phone. While I can successfully attach a movie file using %f from the "on_movie_end" key, this does not work from the "on_area_detect" key. Is there a way that I can accomplish this?

[Jim Henson]

I'm running Motion 4.0.1 on a RPi and generally have it running very well, with a couple of years of experience using Motion on RPi.

Now trying to use tracking (pan/tilt) track_type 1, and have a serial terminal hooked to the uart and see serial output from the Pi. I have tested the serial link with other programs and it is working.

When I start Motion (with appropriate motion.conf settings) I see on the serial link what must be Motion tracking trying to initialize the motor controller:
[1:ml1] [NTC] [TRK] stepper_center: Try to open serial device /dev/ttyS0
[1:ml1] [NTC] [TRK] stepper_center: Opened serial device /dev/ttyS0 and initialize, fd 9

What I can't find is the protocol that Motion uses to talk to the stepper motor controller.

I have scrubbed the Motion Tracking Project pages and can't find the interface specification anywhere. I've also analyzed theTracking Projec C code for the 8051 and can't decode it to an interface spec.

Is the Motion Tracking Type 1 serial interface protocol defined anywhere?

Thanks much!

[TMP-StephenH]

Using Motion 4.3.0 on Fedora 31.
I have a question about masking. The instructions I found seem to indicate that there is only one mask file which is placed in motion.conf. However, I have 4 cameras and one mask file would work for one camera, but not the other three. Can a mask file be placed in the camera1, camera2, etc. .conf file instead?

[Henry B. Tindall, Jr.]

Yes, of course ! For example:
(22:06:43) root@pbx:motion# grep mask *.conf
camera1.conf:mask_file /usr/local/etc/motion/mask1.pgm
camera2.conf:mask_file /usr/local/etc/motion/mask2.pgm
camera3.conf:mask_file /usr/local/etc/motion/mask3.pgm
camera4.conf:mask_file /usr/local/etc/motion/mask4.pgm
camera5.conf:mask_file /usr/local/etc/motion/mask5.pgm
(22:06:47) root@pbx:motion# tail -n 6 motion.conf
camera /usr/local/etc/motion/camera1.conf
camera /usr/local/etc/motion/camera2.conf
camera /usr/local/etc/motion/camera3.conf
camera /usr/local/etc/motion/camera4.conf
camera /usr/local/etc/motion/camera5.conf
camera /usr/local/etc/motion/camera6.conf

[Frank Brown]

Hello
Using motion 4.2.2 on ubuntu 20.04. Using the conversion modifier %f to attach the current file to an e-mail. I just made a change to create both a picture file and movie file for a given camera event. From an "on_area_detect" I want to send the photo via email. There seems to be 2 problems with this. First it seems Motion uses %f for for both the picture file and movie file, so which name is going to be returned. Both files are created with the same name, but with different extensions, (mp4, or jpg). Second issue is that neither file is attached at the time that "on_area_detect" is processed. This seems odd given that the photo would allways be created for every event, but "on_area_detect" will only occasionally be triggered. Is there a way to specificly specify the file to attach?