About the pain of using a PTZ outdoors

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I just introduced a simple and cheap PTZ camera to my setup in order to test everything and see how it works out for me. I'm kind of unverwhelmed because I seem to have missed some conceptual stuff. That being said: This is no rant or critizism by any mean.

Now let me share my experiences so far:

1. No zones or masks
   As far as I understand using a PTZ with zones or masks is a no-go because Frigate assumes a static image.
2. No Frigate-level autotracking means your lost
   Because you'll rely on the camera's autotracking. Cheap cams seem to have lower-quality of autotracking and less options for finetuning.
3. False-positives with or without stationary objects
   Imagine a driveway with cars passing by, having stranger's cars parked at the street and/or your cars parked in front of a garage. Even with finetuning for your stationary cars, there's no way of preventing false-positives, when using alarms and/or detections.

Screenshot for better explaination:

To summarize what I'd do next time:

1. Use PTZ only if you don't need to rely on zones or masks
2. Buy a PTZ that allows Frigate to use autotracking
3. Use stationary cameras only (at least where zones or masks are needed) or place them in place with limited visibility

But may be I am wrong and I missed something really important? How are your dealing with PTZ? Any tips or advice?

[hawkeye217]

No, you haven't missed anything important. Each of the things you've mentioned are inherent issues for any object detection setup with a PTZ.

1. There is no standardized ONVIF way for cameras to report their "preset" position, so it's impossible to set up zones or masks based on a camera preset.
2. Many camera manufacturers don't include support for ONVIF relative movement in their camera firmware. This is what Frigate's autotracking uses.
3. Users typically implement static "spotter" cameras and then trigger a PTZ to move to a specific area based on what the spotter camera sees. That's our recommended implementation.

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Thanks for your answer on this topic, really appreciate it! Spotter cameras? Never heard of that, but indeed a very interesting approach. Are there any docs/guides available for such setups?

[hawkeye217]

The Frigate docs don't have any particular guides, but you may find more general setup advice on spotter cameras on the ipcamtalk forums.

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Thanks! I also found your previous Home Assistant solution here. Will leave the link for anyone else interested in this topic: #10547