Remember the upstairs camera that did not provide a good image after dark? My initial suspicion was that the IR emitters had failed, but that turned out not to be the case. The IR emitters were working fine, the problem is that the camera did not respond to IR lighting. The net effect is the same, an almost completely dark image that is useless for detecting motion. I swapped in another camera, and the upstairs video after dark is now good and the camera is behaving properly. One problem resolved. The old camera goes back for a warranty replacement.
I installed an outdoor camera to monitor the driveway and the area in front of the garage door. I think some supplemental IR lighting will be needed to have this camera work as well as I’d like, so I’ve ordered an IR floodlight and a power supply for it. On my next trip up to the cabin I’ll play around with the IR floodlight and placement to see if I can improve the video image from the outdoor camera. I’m hopeful that this supplemental lighting will also help with the yet-to-be installed camera on the west side of the cabin.
As expected, l ran into a little problem with the outdoor camera. At dusk, the camera switches from daylight mode to IR, and in that transition period almost all of the pixels in the image change. This large change triggers an alarm event. Again, when the camera switches from IR mode to daylight, the changeover triggers yet another alarm event.
I didn’t want to reduce the sensitivity of the active zone, as that could prevent valid motion from triggering an alarm. To resolve this, I created a small “preclusive” zone within the active motion detection zone. It’s located up on the side of the building, where motion is unlikely. The function of this zone is to prevent an alarm event when this zone changes. Since preclusive zones are processed before active zones, this will stop alarm events during changes to and from IR and daylight modes.
I’ll continue to monitor the system and be sure that this zone is having the desired effect. Since I can’t control the sunlight, I’ll just have to be patient and let nature proceed in it’s own way and on it’s own schedule while I test this change.
When I get the replacement camera back, I’ll get it installed and then my system will be complete. So far, it’s working very well. Not bad for someone who had zero experience with video security prior to this project. I’ve learned a lot along the way and hopefully my experiences will help you.