[Config Support]: How to remove events for car parked in driveway with motion

[rayzorben]

Describe the problem you are having

I have cars parked in the driveway, and when it is raining or snowing it keeps retriggering the event over and over. As you can see in the image below.

I have it partitioned off so the street and the driveway are 2 different zones. Ideally i'd only want an event if a car moves from street to driveway. I've tried some of the suggestions in the documentation but didn't have any luck.

Version

0.13.2-6476f8a

Frigate config file

driveway:
    record:
      events:
        required_zones:
          - front_street
          - driveway_area

    snapshots:
      required_zones:
        - front_street
        - driveway_area

    motion:
      mask:
        - 0,0,704,0,704,166,0,184

    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://admin:@192.168.1.21:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=1
          roles:
            - detect
            - rtmp
        - path: rtsp://admin:@192.168.1.21:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0
          roles:
            - record

    zones:
      front_street:
        coordinates: 0,250,704,239,704,170,0,181
        objects:
          - person
          - car
          - dog
          
      driveway_area:
        coordinates: 704,480,0,480,0,236,704,233        
        objects:
          - person
          - car
          - dog

Relevant log output

None

Frigate stats

No response

Operating system

Proxmox

Install method

Docker Compose

Coral version

USB

Any other information that may be helpful

No response

[NickM-27]

https://docs.frigate.video/guides/parked_cars

Should use an entrance zone for cars.

[rayzorben]

Thanks, are yo saying I should have 3 zones? Street, Beginning of Driveway and Parking Area?

I think maybe my problem is that I have street and parking area and I took it to mean 'this will only trigger if the cars was in the street' which I have tried but it wasn't working.

[rayzorben]

or do I just remove driveway_area from my required_zones?

[NickM-27]

well assuming you want to have events when a person or dog is detected in your driveway you definitely want it to be required. Most likely you will want to just remove car from the driveway_area

[rayzorben]

If I remove car from driveway_area then I will get events of cars being in the street (which I want) and of course that will also record cars going into driveway_area (and you are right that I want dogs and person as well in driveway_area). But I use HA notifications to send notifications to my phone when a car is in driveway_area and I don't want them if a car is in the street. So if I remove it from driveway_area there would be no way to get notifications of cars entering my driveway not just driving by.

[NickM-27]

then you'd need 3 zones

[rayzorben]

So after some trial I thought it was working, but it still is not. It looks like I get the notification when the car enters the driveway entrance, but because the box doesn't leave the entrance it stays there. First my zones (on a side note during the zone creator I wish I could see the other zones so I can make this tighter).

As you can see it is ongoing. I thought the bottom center was used, and the bottom center is outside of driveway entrance so the event should no longer be ongoing?

[NickM-27]

It is ongoing because the car is still detected. That has nothing to do with the zone

[rayzorben]

so if the entrance zone isnt big enough to hold the whole car it just wont work?

[rayzorben]

I think you know what I am looking for and the issue cannot be solved by just adding zones?

The problem statement seems pretty simple. If a car is parked in my driveway I couldn't care less about it. I do not want events for it. If a car MOVES in my driveway then I want an event.

I really think you should consider adding 'if car moves from ZoneA to ZoneB'. Blue Iris has it, and it is meant to solve exactly this problem.

[NickM-27]

this really doesn't have anything to do with zones. Frigate currently shows events as tracked objects. Frigate knows the car that is in the driveway is the same car that entered the zone you said you care about so it is showing that.

We are aware that most people don't care about this and they only want to know when there is activity which is how the new UI will visualize these events. For now you should follow Blake's suggestion

[blakeblackshear]

You should configure an object mask to block detections of cars in your parking zone as mentioned in the docs here: https://docs.frigate.video/guides/parked_cars/#2-use-an-object-mask-to-prevent-detections-in-the-parking-zone

I believe this in combination with your zones should do what you want.

[NickM-27]

So now I am confused, you said above that it is not 14 hours of recording, but now you are saying it is?

no, the 14 hours is not recorded. Is like ~3 hours or so based on the max number of segments.

I do not want events or recordings AT ALL if a car is parked (stationary) in my driveway. I want an event if it is ENTERING or leaving my driveway.

then you should set your retain mode in your config to active_objects for events

[rayzorben]

then you should set your retain mode in your config to active_objects for events

This is the first time I am hearing about this, I am going to look at it, but 'retain' to me means 'only keep video where objects were active', and not anything to do with when/how events are raised which is why I probably didn't focus on it. Are you saying that it does more than that?

[NickM-27]

no, it only affects when things are recorded. As I said the UI is being rewritten and that will cover your qualms with how and when events are shown

(and you can use an object mask for now as Blake suggested)

[rayzorben]

Is 14 available for testing? Would love to give early feedback.

[NickM-27]

No it's not currently ready for general user testing

[rayzorben]

So now I am confused, you said above that it is not 14 hours of recording, but now you are saying it is?

no, the 14 hours is not recorded. Is like ~3 hours or so based on the max number of segments.

I do not want events or recordings AT ALL if a car is parked (stationary) in my driveway. I want an event if it is ENTERING or leaving my driveway.

then you should set your retain mode in your config to active_objects for events

no, it only affects when things are recorded. As I said the UI is being rewritten and that will cover your qualms with how and when events are shown

(and you can use an object mask for now as Blake suggested)

[blakeblackshear]

The challenge here is that we are trying to have two separate conversations at the same time.

The first is how do I get the desired behavior with the current version of Frigate?

The second is a question about how Frigate could be changed to handle this situation better.

For the first question, the guide I linked to is designed for your use case specifically. I still think it's the answer for your situation.

On the second question, we are well aware that there are shortcomings. It's why the first statement in that guide is that it's an area for improvement. We very much want the out of the box behavior to be better for cars parked in driveways.

[rayzorben]

Thanks Blake, I am waiting for the cars to return, but I have setup the object filter as requested. Let's see how it works. Looking forward to the improvements in 14.