Yawcam

Hi,

I've been running YAWCam for a week now and like it very much. Thank you for releasing it to the freeware community.

I am using my webcam as a security camera overlooking my back garden. During the day I have one set of settings for motion detection that work well. At night, if there is movement then a security light comes on and the web cam can film whatever is out there.

The problem is whenever it is dark and nothing is moving. In this case the motion detector preview screen is a mass of blue dots and I have to turn the Tolerance right up to prevent false recordings filling my hard drive. During the day this setting won't allow triggering on movement so I have to change the settings back.

Would it be possible to change YAWCan so that during very low light conditions the motion detector is disabled, but comes back on when a certain light threshold is reached?

Thank you

David

I think you can do this by/with :

• Software like Splitcam.
  In stead of connecting your webcam to yawcam dirrectly you use software that permits you to use the webcam in more then 1 application allone.
• Installing 2 instances of Yawcam and connect each instance to the software like Splitcam.
• Set the parameters for each instance.
  One for use at night, the second or use during the day.
• Start both instances of Yawcam.
  Use the sheduling on both instances.
  Th first one for detecting at night, the second one for detecting during the day.

I agree there are a few disadventages to this solution :

1. One more "free" application to install.
2. As long as one or both instances of Yawcam are running, your webcal isn't direcly accessible for other applications.
3. Different ports has to be configured for each instance of Yawcam
4. You have 2 different webaddresses to access the webcam stream and 2 different webaddresses to access the webcam Http.
   ex : My_IP:8888 and My_IP:8000 (stream)
   ex : My_IP:8081 and My_IP:8111 (Http)
   But this "Problem" you can overcome by adapting the HTML page located in the Yawcam installation directory.

Thanks prutserke. Interesting reference to Splitcam - I didn't know this kind of software existed. Might install this anyway.

However, what you said won't work because the daytime settings work fine at night as long as there is movement detected and the security light is on. It's when there's no movement and the security light is off that there is a problem.

Let's hope that this is considered to be a good enough request to be included in a forthcoming beta.

You could use the scheduler to turn the motion off at a certain time.

But I only want to turn the motion detector off when there is too little light (i.e. at night when the security light is off), not all night.

If you turn the exposure to a longer time than usual, such as 1/5 second and turn off the gain it vastly reduces the amount of noise. You can find these settings in:
Settings > Device > Device properties > Advanced (tab)
Evidence:

Adjusted -Barely any noise but hard to see


Not adjusted (Left on automatic) If you see this moving, all the dots are flickering a lot but easy to see

Cool - I'll have a look at this and post back later.

Well, I've played with the settings and they certainly do help. But I'm still having trouble finding finding a set of settings that pick of movement when there's light, but don't trigger on noise when it's dark. A minimum light threshold for the motion detector would still be nice.

Here's hoping...