Thanks for taking the time, guys...
mx3
2) use alot of squares - because detection routine uses average value of square so make square as small as possible
fudgey
Yep, you need a square size closer to your target object size.
This is what throws me off.
I take responsibility for grossly underestimating what a "large" value for interval is, but a great test was a NYC crosswalk - cars passing the detection area triggered regularly, but humans; on bikes, pushing buggies with sprogs, running to cheat the light, much less walking leisurely... NONE of these were captured, even with threshold ~2 points above self-triggering and an interval of 125ms! Moving it up to 250ms make it trigger more regularly on humans. Wow. I thought 25ms was high. But that was with lightning. 😛
Anyway, but this detection grid size...
OK, so hypothetically, if I'm looking to capture a tiny, fast-moving trigger such as distant (eg tiny LCD) movement, it would be
better to use a 128x96 grid with 50ms intervals than a single masked target box 1/25th of the screen with 1 cycle interval and pixel step 0... because what you're saying re: averaging, is that it really
isn't pixel step 0, just in what gets averaged together to become the comparison value takes into account all pixels? And with such a fast compare interval, it doesn't detect that anything moved because the pixels of the captured region, when averaged, seem exactly the same. Mathematically I understand, but it makes it damn frustrating when experimenting.
re: threshold, I always try to set it close to self-triggering.... I'd rather have a couple empty shots than all misses. For lightning it's a lot easier than say people walking past trees/flowers in shade...
re: the settings I thought would work, waving my hand triggers just fine, as does tossing quarters in front of it, because I guess the spinning and reflections and the geometric edges make for easier detection... not that it was fast enough to
catch said quarters flying in the air, but it did fire. Which is why I was so frustrated by why it would never trigger on a single aircraft.
I just tested it again, and it's not predictable in low contrast. Pointing it at the side of a brick highrise building in pre-dawn, it'll catch some white seagulls flying into the detection grid, but it won't catch any grey pigeons, even in groups of 5! If I increase the interval by 30ms to make the averaged difference higher, it's kind of pointless as the birds have already flown out-of-frame so it's irrelevant if it fires, and if I lower threshold by a couple points, the noise self-triggers. 'Course over the course of two hours the sun came up fully, and the same wall and same settings in bright sunlight triggers readily, including catching people walking past or opening windows. Morning neighbour. 🙁
Hmm, I have a feature request fudgey, if we can spare the bytes: Instead of just using a # for parameter set to use, can we get a text field in the stored settings, for descriptions? lightning day, lightning night, low contrast small, etc.
