[Config Support]: Tuning Motion Detection During the Night

[RN-Say]

Describe the problem you are having

The docs contain the following statement:

However, if the preferred day settings do not work well at night it is recommended to use HomeAssistant or some other solution to automate changing the settings. That way completely separate sets of motion settings can be used for optimal day and night motion detection.

Can somebody explain how to use HomeAssistant to change the settings? My specific goal is to use home assistant to toggle person detection off on our indoor cameras when the family is home, while leaving cat detection running.

Version

0.14.0-da913d8

Frigate config file

## Away mode 
   objects:
      track:
        - person
        - cat

## Home mode
   objects:
      track:
        - cat

Relevant Frigate log output

none

Relevant go2rtc log output

none

Frigate stats

No response

Operating system

HassOS

Install method

HassOS Addon

Object Detector

Coral

Screenshots of the Frigate UI's System metrics pages

No response

Any other information that may be helpful

No response

[NickM-27]

You use the home assistant integration, which has many switches for control https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate-hass-integration

[RN-Say]

Have a look on the github page for the toggle_block script, there is an example automation. But, yes Frigate needs to be restarted after the script runs. That's why I recommend to push the options available in the Home Assistant integration as far as possible before using toggle_block since that doesn't require a restart. On the plus side, my frigate restarts very quickly.

[n3qik]

Thanks.

[Caddyman68]

I have tried the integration to set different values for threshold and contour area. It seems to work - the integration log shows they changed to the new values - but when I go to the addon and check under motion tuner it sets them to whatever is on the slider there (which doesn't correspond to what I set in the integration) without hitting save. I just wasted hours going back and forth with ChatGPT and I'm frustrated. Is the integration actually setting the values? I know on a restart of Frigate it will probably set the values to whatever is in the yaml file. I am trying to prevent dust particles from triggering motion at night in infrared and still get normal triggers when it's daytime and normal lighting. I bet the answer is simple, even if it's not what I want. ChatGPT doesn't do simple

[NickM-27]

Yes, the integration sends an MQTT message which changes the values used in frigate until frigate is restarted or the values are changed elsewhere

[Caddyman68]

Thanks Nick - that was lightning quick. So by me going to the motion tuner or restarting Frigate addon it changes the settings I made in the integration. But the settings I make in the integration are the actual ones the running instance of Frigate is using (ie Frigate yaml starts threshold at 50, I change that to 30 in integration, motion threshold remains at 30 until something else changes it). My confusion was the log showing the changed values (including the 30 I set), but I inadvertently changed those just by looking at the tuner settings and then (again) by restarting the addon. Thanks for the reply

[RN-Say]

After using the above file swapping solution for a few days I decided that it wasn't a good long term solution and that it wasn't scalable. I figured I would soon have 5 similar frigate.yaml files to maintain and I didn't like not being able to use the built-in configuration editor. So I came up with a script that will toggle sections of frigate.yaml on and off by commenting and uncommenting tagged blocks, which works orders of magnitude better. All of the configuration stays in one place and just gets activated when needed from an automation. Here is an example of what that looks like:

When Home	When Away
objects: track: - cat #<away> # - person # - umbrella #</away> #<home> - cell phone - wine glass #</home> filters: #<away> # person: # max_ratio: 1 # min_area: 100000 #</away>	objects: track: - cat #<away> - person - umbrella #</away> #<home> # - cell phone # - wine glass #</home> filters: #<away> person: max_ratio: 1 min_area: 100000 #</away>

I think this works well for anything that can't be managed with the Home Assistant integration. The added benefit is that it can be used on any other files in the file system that use # for comments just by adding the required tags. I put the script and the instructions for using it up on github.

https://github.com/RN-Say/toggle_block