I don't know what the setup is like in Frigate. My setup is a bit old now as I haven't really updated it, but BlueIris uses the lower res substreams for motion and object detection. I'm still using DeepStack for object detection, even though it's not supported now, but recording and clips uses the main stream. Using the substreams reduces the load on the CPU. This is the BlueIris guide for substreams, it might have some relevant info that could help: https://ipcamtalk.com/wiki/sub-stream-guide/

Yeah my camera isn't amazing at night either, but I don't need to to be. Usually if someone comes close to the door, they'll be identifiable anyway as the motion sensor lights will come on. It's an Amcrest one I bought years ago on amazon.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Huh, so frigate has the configuration set up to record from the main stream and detect on the substream (at least I think it does).

But using the TP-Link app I see everything much clearer.

I will go back and play again as I just set it up with the example configuration and didn't do much else. 4MP might be fine after all.

Yeah my camera isn't amazing at night either, but I don't need to to be. Usually if someone comes close to the door, they'll be identifiable anyway as the motion sensor lights will come on.

Reading on the Starlight ones is interesting. The companies selling them talk about recording in 0.001 lumens, how they were designed by the US military, etc. Then the people on the ipcamtalk forum say they aren't magic and to lower your expectations, they can do good still images but normally you're capturing moving things and low light will always be blurry for moving things due to the low shutter speed needed to capture enough light.

[–] eagleeyedtiger@lemmy.nz 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah definitely blurry with motion in full darkness with mine too, but we have a street lamp not far from our driveway that lights up a fair bit at night, so it's not that bad. From a security perspective it doesn't actually matter too much. I'm willing to bet if you handed crystal clear footage of someone breaking in to the police, they still wouldn't be able to do very much with it, unless the person is someone already known to them.

It occurs to me that you could also reverse the logic for your bins - instead of an expensive camera to cover both long and short distance, just get a cheap one pointed where they usually sit and have the logic be "Hey, the bins should be out, but they're sitting here". Maybe not as fun though?

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 hour ago

Given what I've found with the clarity on my cheap camera, I think a cheap one should cover it anyway. Like I said, I might just start with a Reolink doorbell camera (not too cheap 😅) and see what it covers. Just need to work out how to drill a hole through the wall and out the other side, getting it in the spot I want, and also having the inside look nice (some sort of face plate for the inside of the wall). The cladding is weatherboard so will also have to content with the funny angle 😆