Using a passive infrared sensor to check for motion outdoors

[jameswilson]

you will need an external sensor if using it outside, id suggest an opal elite as that gives programming and clean switch outputs, or a voltek pir and pulse count module.

Those cheaper units are for inside use.

James

[jameswilson]

you will but the camera wouldnt see the light come on unless it was visible, and you set a zone in this area.

[dvarapala]

How about using a PIR floodlight? They also have the advantage that they might make someone think twice before doing anything dubious.

Do you think I will be able to get an accurate motion signature from the floodlights even during daytime?

FWIW, I have a PIR motion detector floodlight that is tied in with my ZM system. The light is a Leviton unit with X-10 capability; it sends out a specific X-10 command when it detects motion. Using a HEYU script I trigger the ZM camera that overlooks the area to make sure it records whatever triggered the motion sensor. It works well, however the floodlight has a photocell and only sends the X-10 commands when it's dark enough for the flood lights to come on.

If you want 24 hour per day triggering you'll probably have to go with a standalone PIR unit.

[td]

How are you guys detecting motion outdoors?

I've been playing around with various settings for detecting cars and people in a courtyard, but I have not had much success at filtering out false positives. The difficulty comes with sudden changes in lighting levels, e.g. clouds passing over the sun.
...
What should I be looking for in one of these? Obviously it needs to be waterproof if mounted outdoors, but how does range/sensitivity relate to price?

I've used such a thing for nearly 3 years now and am very satisfied.
I use the FS20 radio system (vendors in Germany are ELV and Conrad, maybe it is available under a different brand in your country) with outdoor PIRs. Central processing unit for the PIRs and some more radio based actors and sensors is the open source tool FHEM (http://www.fhem.de). With FHEM and the ZM function of "triggers" a logical connection can be made very easily.

td

[wkulecz]

It works well, however the floodlight has a photocell and only sends the X-10 commands when it's dark enough

Any reason you can't put opaque tape over the photocell so it works 24/7?

I've used X10 stuff for years, but its not reliable enough for anything important and the key event you want to record could come and go in the X10-heyu latency interval.

[Carrier82]

Don't know if this has already been discussed, but I have a Vivotek IP6122 camera which I'm planning to attach to a PIR sensor. I made this simple script for querying the camera for input status and if input is high, launch recording (response is either H or L, fifth character of cgi response). I'm planning to make similar script for Axis 2400 as well. If there are better methods to do this, I'm all ears

#!/bin/bash
# alarm test script for Vivotek IP6122
url="192.168.1.10/cgi-bin/getdi.cgi?"
monitor_id="1"

while :
do
response=$(curl --connect-timeout 5 $url | cut -c 5)
if [ $response = "H" ]
then
echo "$monitor_id|on+10|255" >/dev/tcp/localhost/6802
fi
done