Greater Alert Zone Control

Tips, tricks and frequently asked questions
Post Reply
Teamtaylor84
Posts: 20
Joined: 17 May 2018, 19:50

Greater Alert Zone Control

Post by Teamtaylor84 »

Let me start by saying I have no experience in in software/app development, I write this solely from an everyday users perspective.

I find the alert zone set up frustrating. Due to the mounting position/angle of viewing picture, only being able to use square/rectangular boxes of limited size makes it impossible to get full coverage of my driveway without overrunning onto the public footpath/road. Leading to a situation where I either accept that I cannot have alerts for certain areas of my property or I receive frequent alerts for the people/cars walking and driving past my house.

In my opinion the ability to make custom alert zones would be an amazing feature and completely change how my camera works. Again I stress I have no clue about the technical possibilities of this, but I imagine it to work by "drawing" your own custom areas by dragging the outer lines of the zone similar to drawing a straight line on things like Microsoft paint. Alternatively, placing set marker points that then join together?

Anyway, someone far more intelligent than me could think of a better way, but ultimately anything that advances on the basic boxes we currently have would be a vast improvement in my opinion.
Una Real
Posts: 315
Joined: 04 Dec 2012, 23:16

Re: Greater Alert Zone Control

Post by Una Real »

You make a great point. Unfortunately, it's not a matter of drawing custom areas other than simple squares or rectangles. That would be simple to implement. The problem comes with the recognition algorithm. The current algorithm has serious problems with just simple square/rectangular areas. Imagine how infinitely more complicated custom areas would make things. The current algorithm simply isn't up to it. And don't hold your breath for Netatmo to improve it. I don't think it's within their capabilities.
gnaegi
Posts: 26
Joined: 21 Mar 2018, 10:40

Re: Greater Alert Zone Control

Post by gnaegi »

I agree that the dialog there is absolutely frustrating. It even has serious bugs. For example, when I load the dialog in the web client all the zones are red which means they are overlapping. I can not save them again, I have to make them "smaller". How was it possible to make them in the first place is what I am asking myself. I guess that there is some rounding error depending on the browser or window size of your browser.

I also have a Carary camera and there the method is inverse: instead of creating "hot-zones" one markes the areas that should be discarded. To me this is so much more intuitive! I want the cam to look at the entire image (because I placed the cam at this spot, isn't that obvious), but not this corner or that spot because there is something that moves all the time, has some fancy reflextion, is a street or whatever. A lot simpler!
kthemall
Posts: 82
Joined: 31 Oct 2016, 12:59

Re: Greater Alert Zone Control

Post by kthemall »

so why do other companies implement it if it is soooo difficult?

https://www.techstage.de/test/Ring-Floo ... .techstage
Una Real
Posts: 315
Joined: 04 Dec 2012, 23:16

Re: Greater Alert Zone Control

Post by Una Real »

kthemall wrote:so why do other companies implement it if it is soooo difficult?

https://www.techstage.de/test/Ring-Floo ... .techstage
Answer seems to be fairly simple; other companies aren't using Netatmo's recognition algorithm. And if you read the Amazon reviews for the Ring unit, it's not without its own recognition problems. It seems this whole camera/recognition technology still has a lot of room for improvement on the consumer product level - especially when used outdoors where the scenes can be infinitely more complicated (wind, precipitation, moving leaves, shadows, lots of different critters, etc.) than with indoor cams.
Post Reply

Return to “General questions”