Camera video settings - setup day or night? Based on time?

[RichTJ99 0]

Hi,

 

I noticed that my daytime cameras look pretty lousy at night. If I edit the video settings within Geovision (brightness, contrast, etc), I can make it look great at night, but it then looks crappy during the day.

 

Is there some way to schedule settings based on time of day?

 

Say camera 1 from 7am to 5pm contrast = 100, brightness = 120, from 5:01pm to 6:59am camera one has contrast of 20, brightness 55

 

Something like that?

 

Thanks,

Rich

[bigspud 0]

i would like to see this feature added also.

[coryatintegrated 0]

No, GV doesn't have an option like that. I would say invest in some good quality cameras that will adjust to any lighting situation.

[bigspud 0]

have not seen a camera yet that does this.

ir led cameras attract insect which trigger motion detection.

[RichTJ99 0]

My issue is that my Sons room during the day is very easy to view, add some lights & I need to turn the contrast down to get a good picture. Once its night time, if I turn the brightness way up, I can see with just the aid of his nightlight.

 

The camera is a Speco PIR camera (he is 2 years old) & its pretty decent. I wouldnt want to shoot IR lighting at his bed all night to see better, the camera does a decent job if I adjust the Geo settings.

[rory 0]

i spoke about this a couple years ago on this forum .. would be a nice feature but they dont seem to have it yet

[RichTJ99 0]

Rory,

 

Aside from a second camera setup for night, is there any sort of workaround?

 

Thanks,

Rich

[rory 0]

now that you mention it .. one might be able to run a separate script or program and put that on a schedule using windows scheduling. . the script could just change the day time values to night time values .. or change it back .. depending on the time of day. OR, could create a daytime INI and then a nighttime INI and back them up and replace them each time, so as not to get any corruption with the INI.

 

BUT if there is power failure when the INi is being updated or replace could blank it out or cause it be deleted without being replaced. So one could run another call to that script/program on window startup and check the time and verify the right file or settings exist. If that INI file is corrupt Geo wont start or will start with diff values or may crash, which is why that needs to be addressed.

[RichTJ99 0]

Hmmm,

 

Where are the INI settings? Can the INI file be changed on the fly with the Geovision software running, or does it need to be shutdown, ini changed, geo restarted?

 

I changed camera 1, shut off geo & did a search based on time of last change & I cant seem to find where the camera settings are located.

 

I am using 8.3.2 btw.

 

Thanks,

Rich

[rory 0]

I dont have one here to check but it should be the GeoMulti.ini file in the Windows directory. Yes Geo needs to be restarted for the changes to take effect.

[rory 0]

this is from 7.xx but its not that diff now ..

brightness etc should be in there like this:

 

[Camera 1]

Naming=Camera 1

UDPBrightness=128

UDPContrast=128

UDPSaturation=128

UDPHue=128

InitOff=1

[RichTJ99 0]

Rory,

 

I did find it right where you said in the windows directory.

 

So how would that work? Set your daytime settings to perfection, then copy GeoMulti.ini to "c:\day", then set your night time settings & copy Geomulti.ini to "c:\night". Now day settings are in 'day' folder, night settings are in 'night' folder.

 

Then write a batch script to run killing Geo processes (is there some automated way to 'force' a shutdown for geo)?

 

I see (though I bet there could be more)

 

geokill.bat

 

taskkill /f /im GV1470.exe
taskkill /f /im dmhealthsvr.exe
taskkill /f /im dmmailserver.exe
taskkill /f /im dmwebcam.exe

 

There are probably a few more possible processes. I dont know the effect on the database with a kill command.

 

Then make a day script

 

day.bat (note /h is probably not needed)

xcopy  c:\day c:\windows /y /h

 

Now make a night script

 

night.bat

xcopy  c:\night c:\windows /y /h

 

Now, I guess all thats needed is to setup the windows scheduling:

 

7:00am run killgeo.bat

7:01am run day.bat

7:02am run C:\GV1480\DM500Startup.exe

 

Then at 5:00pm (its dark here now)

 

5:00pm run killgeo.bat

5:01pm run night.bat

5:02pm run C:\GV1480\DM500Startup.exe

 

The only downside is that it takes 3 minutes for the setup to reboot. THough I think that should work 100%

 

Anyone still reading, I would suggest using wait.exe (http://www.afreego.com/Categories/Utilities/Automation/006450.php)

 

I put wait.exe in /windows (some antivirus dont like it though so you need to exclude it) for some other automated things I do with //netshare (for my shared drives & my backup) I am an exe fan plus it makes it harder to edit.

 

In this case, I would convert, day.bat, night.bat, killgeo.bat into day.exe, night.exe, killgeo.exe and place them into the /windows folder .

 

Then I would make one last bat script called waitdaygeo.bat with the following:

 

@echo off
wait 5
Start C:\windows\killgeo.exe
wait 5
Start C:\windows\day.exe
wait 5
Start C:\GV1480\DM500Startup.exe 

 

Again, I would covert it to the waitdaygeo.exe (so it cant be changed easily).

 

Then I would do the following for a night version:

 

@echo off
wait 5
Start C:\windows\killgeo.exe
wait 5
Start C:\windows\night.exe
wait 5
Start C:\GV1480\DM500Startup.exe 

 

Again, I would covert it to the waitnightgeo.exe (so it cant be changed easily).

 

 

Then I would schedule:

 

7am - run waitdaygeo.exe (this will do the whole job in 15 seconds)

5pm - run waitnightgeo.exe (this will do the whole job in 15 seconds)

 

This second step is probably overkill but it might look a little more polished.

 

NOTE: When working with .bat files, I tend to use this site:

http://www.f2ko.de/ob2e/ob2e.htmlto convert it to an .exe so people dont mess with the settings.

 

BTW, here is my camera code. If you see anything wierd setting, please let me know.

 

[Camera 1]
Start_VLOST_IO_Mod=0
Start_VLOST_IO_Pin=0
InitOff_Analog=0
Naming=Lexie
Sensitivity_highRes=5
ECPBrightness=123
ECPContrast=78
ECPSaturation=220
ECPHue=130
InitOff=0
bGeoObj=0
LogEntry=0
RecMode=0
RecQuality=5
bHalfRec=0
Sensitivity=9
MotionGroup=0
MotionGroup_Ext=0
bLowPass=0
nLowPass=0
bASAP=1
bASAP_NM=1
DN_bWeekend=0
DN_bDay1_Weekend=1
DN_bDay7_Weekend=1
DN_Mode_Weekend=0
FrameRate=10
FrameRate_NM=10
bRecOn=1
bRegister=1
bAlarmOn=0
AlarmEntry=0
AlarmUser=
bCenterOn=0
bPagerOn=0
iPagerNotice=1
DelayAlertSec=20
DelayOutputSec=20
bDelayAlert=0
bDelayOutput=0
CenterMode=0
bIOOn=0
iModual=0
iOutput=0
bRecAdv=0
Codec=4

[rory 0]

There is another option .. its at the end of this post.

 

Meanwhile .. about your solution.

Terminating Geo is like pulling the plug. Cant say how taskkill works, but seems with the /f tag that is forcing the app to be terminated.

 

Best method would be to get the handles of the buttons - Login, Stop Monitoring and Restart. Then use those to restart it <- need to login as a user with rights to stop monitoring and exit - a program could set that account up automatically, probably. Would need an Exe for that though. Might be able to accomplish that with VBscript also, using Sendkeys, but an Exe using API for the window and button handles is always better for that type of thing.

 

Or, set the system to reboot at the certain time everyday.

 

Are you seeing any database/files rebuild on geo restart?

If not then it should be okay.

 

Additionally you might want to look at this INI app .. lets you change INI values. Basically its easy to do in EXEs using API or even our own simple code ... this program just does it for you is all and takes command switches. http://www.ericphelps.com/setini - so instead of changing the file maybe just change the values. Just another idea.

 

Ofcourse could just do a single EXE that takes command switches and does everything for you.

 

The other option is to run the ActiveX control inside an exe or script .. and send commands to it ... yes I can actually use Winsock in a VBscript and capture the events, so it can be done with the GeoActiveX also, but exe is better. In the latest Geo activeX you can change the camera settings. Just have 2 settings in that, using command switches (can be passed to scripts or exe's), one for day and one for night, then just call that on a schedule using the particular switch depending on what time it is.

[RichTJ99 0]

Rory,

 

How do you run the activex in a script or exe? Do you have an example of what your saying or how to do that? It sounds like that could be done on the fly which is preferable to shutting down Geo & rebooting.

 

Any shot of you playing around to see how to make it work ?

 

My force command is missing something & the whole program restarts without quiting. (webcam & other apps restart but the Geo software stays on).

 

I think your right in that the force command cant be good for anything.

 

Thanks,

Rich

[rory 0]

ok checking it out ..

[rory 0]

try this file .. example cmd file included with the command switches.

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=67629739681247247382

it saves a log file in the app path (100kb max size).

log file will show details of errors.

 

has a 60 second time out and exit fail safe incase the 8.3 activeX events dont work, they are a little sketchy at times. basically it just connects, checks the cam attributes and applies new ones if you have privilege (or just applies the existing server ones if you dont supply any), then disconnects and exits. other events also disconnect or exit the app like cant connect or login fail.

 

i couldnt get it to work on an 8.12 dvr using the 8.3 activeX but it should work on 8.3 servers once you have privilege (i have none to test), it would say no privilege in the log file otherwise.

 

SetCamAttr.exe /ip:[] /user:[] /pass:[] /cmd:[4550] /data:[5550] /cam:[0-31] /b:[0-255] /c:[0-255] /s:[0-255] /h:[0-255]

 

see the read me for more details.

run the included ActiveX install file first if you dont have 8.32 yet.

 

Let me know if it works.

 

Rory

[RichTJ99 0]

Rory,

 

Thanks for looking into this! I will give it a shot when I am home from work. Does this need to be installed on the geovision PC itself?

 

Does this just affect the geomulti.ini or can this potentially affect other geo/system files?

 

I am just wondering if i should ghost the system before starting.

 

Thanks I really appreciate your helping!

Rich

[rory 0]

I havent tested it to the point that it actually changes the camera settings .. as you need privilege on an 8.3 DVR . .. but you could actually run it remotely also. Ive never tried to run the activeX on the DVR so cant say if there are any issues with doing that, shouldnt be though. There is a part of the SDK that gives one more local access to the DVR functions etc, but thats out of what I do nor do I have the updated SDK. It doesnt edit the geo multi file, it uses the activeX control's AdjustCamAttribute method.