Setting up a fixed length video

[Bob Burton]

I am running motionEyeOS on a Pi Zero W (first generation) to monitor hedgehogs on our patio.  The hedgehogs are at our feeding station for several minutes but do not move much when feeding

Motion triggers work fine for both pictures and videos when the hedgehogs arrive due to their movement, but how do I set up motionEye to take a fixed length video, say 10 minutes, once triggered ?  At the moment their lack of movement whilst feeding causes the video to end prematurely

Any help would be appreciated

[StarbaseSSD]

There isn't a function in motionEye/motionEyeOS like that, although you could use a setting in Settings, Motion Detection, Captured After, and set it to the number of frames per second you are recording at times 600 for 10 minutes worth. So if you are capturing at 10 frames per second,, you set it to 6000. You'd have to increase the Motion Gap to something like 605 seconds ( or 600 + the average number of seconds they are moving in the video) and you'll get some large files. You'd have to play with the settings a lot, I'd think.

Even Motion ( the program motionEye uses to handle the heavy lifting) doesn't seem to have that option, just max time. Their documentation is here: https://motion-project.github.io/motion_config.html#OptDetail_Movies

 

[Bob Burton]

Thanks for the ideas

I had come to the conclusion that a combination of Frames After and Motion Gap may be the way to go so I will experiment

One fly in the ointment is that Frames After has a maximum value of 1000

Off to experiment now

[StarbaseSSD]

You could turn up the sensitivity (Settings, Motion Detection, lower the Frame Change Threshold to 0.1%, don't use Auto Threshold Tuning (IMO the algorithm used sucks swamp water), turn on Auto Noise Detection, turn on Despeckle Filter

[Bob Burton]

Thanks for the suggestions

By setting Max Move Length to 0 (unlimited), frame rate to 10, Motion Gap to 7000 and Captured After to 1000 I got video of just over an hour with gaps in the timeline caused by lack of activity

I can live with that but will experiment with the setting some more but I have  a handle on how it works now

Thanks for your help and extra suggestions