Yawcam

I've just started using Yawcam to trigger on motion from a RasPi webcam feed in a bird nesting box.
Nothing nesting in there yet but a lot of interest with blue-tits hopping in and out to check it out.

I'm still tweaking the motion settings but what I'm finding is that with the move - stop - move habits of birds I'm getting several files created instead of one longer file which I'd like. What I'd like to see in Yawcam is a parameter to allow saving to file to continue for a set time after movement stops and continuation of saving if motion restarts in that time to compensate for this sort of movement.
(Or is it already in there and I've missed it?

Yawcam is a great program and I really hope it is still being supported.

Sorry, this is not possible in the current version.
I'm working on a new version of Yawcam that is more focused on motion detection and surveillance. This version will allow you to set how much video, before and after an event occurs, that will be saved. It will also allow you to configure events that are close in time to be merged as one event.
I'm afraid I still have a lot of work to do before the new version can be released.
/malun

Thanks for the reply and thanks for an excellent piece of software, Malun.

I've now got my birdbox cam and Yawcam set up to work pretty well. It's detecting bird entry to the box (up to 100% trigger during the day due to lighting changes) and sensitive enough to detect bird movement in the box. It's all a matter of tweaking

I do get a lot of short videos due to lighting changes but I'm running a scheduled batch file every 10 minutes to delete files under 6MB which these generally are. I tried running the batch file from Yawcam but the deletion truncates the file being recorded. Strange that an open file is being clipped but that's a Windows thing, not a Yawcam thing.

BTW, is it possible to change the names of the files being recorded? The option is there for some other functions but not for motion capture.

AndyGadget wrote: ↑Thu Mar 24, 2022 4:37 pm BTW, is it possible to change the names of the files being recorded? The option is there for some other functions but not for motion capture.

I've just seen the reply to my other post asking that - I'd forgotten I'd posted that

Nice to hear! Everybody likes a nice birdbox camera, right?
I have made tests with the new version of Yawcam to detect birds. But it turned out somewhat unreliable.
I guess the result would be even worse from inside a birdbox.

Anyhow, here's a preview from one time where the bird was detected fine: /malun

Here's a link to Google drive where my files are uploading to : https://tinyurl.com/2p8cfbh7
I'm running a batch file every 10 minutes to delete the short ones caused by lighting changes.

Serious nest building going on at the moment by the blue-tits - Usually the female does all the work here.
I may live-stream it later on if we start getting eggs and chicks.

BTW, The 'Greyworld' setting for colour compensation is ideal for this application.
Any other setting shows the strong pink cast due to the IR lighting but Greyworld shows true colours when there is enough daylight coming through the entry hole to turn the IR off but will convert to greyscale when the IR is on, so the pink cast doesn't show.

Another feature request, although I think this one is not possible :- Colour compensation for IR lighting.
I can see this would be complicated by the mix of natural / IR lighting varying over time.

So, thinking out loud, how about day / night setting for colour compensation? This would have application in general surveillance too :- colour during the day and greyscale at night.

Nice birdbox camera! It's looking good!
I downloaded and ran some "bird recognition" on one of your files, but the result is still too unreliable.

Is Greyworld a setting for the raspberry pi camera?

Your right, color compensation for IR lightning would be hard or impossible. There are some machine learning models that can colorize black and white images, however they can only guess what the color would be. The model knows that grass is green and the sky is blue and so on and makes a guess from that. But the real or correct color will never be used.

/malun

Thanks Malun - The birds are blue-tits. I don't know where abouts you are in the world but these are tiny little things and pretty common in the UK.

Yes, Greyworld is a white balance option on the excellent MotionEyeOS image I'm running on the Pi, although I'm not sure how it handles standard lighting. I didn't discover that mode until the camera was installed and the birds were nesting. I've got another Pi camera module on the way so I'll have a proper play when it arrives to find out how the greyscale / colour merging operates.

BTW, you don't know of any free or very low cost services with a generous streaming allowance do you? I'm looking to live-stream the webcam later but it looks like all the freebies which used to exist have either disappeared or gone commercial and are asking silly prices.

Blue-tits are pretty common here in Sweden too.

I guess Hetzner has a reasonable prize for unlimited traffic.
https://www.hetzner.com/webhosting

However if you are using Yawcam in the standard way, the data will stream from the computer where you run Yawcam. This means that your Internet Service Provider will do the streaming of data and not the website host.

/malun