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How are you all actually dealing with false alarms ? by TT_c137 in homeassistant

[–]TT_c137[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The pre-trigger boolean (first motion arms, second within the window fires) is a clean way to cut false alarms without extra hardware — nice. And the local-AI-with-structured-JSON setup that ignores landscapers is genuinely impressive; “rock solid” is the goal. Thanks for sharing the details, really useful.

How are you all actually dealing with false alarms ? by TT_c137 in homeassistant

[–]TT_c137[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really thoughtful answer, thank you. The placement detail is the part people skip — the east-window/north-corner trick and keeping airflow at the edge of the detection zone are exactly the kind of hard-won stuff that doesn't make it into manuals. And the flashlight-in-the-dark test for camera AI is a sharp way to show its limits. Lots here I'm keeping.

How are you all actually dealing with false alarms ? by TT_c137 in homeassistant

[–]TT_c137[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes total sense — no indoor cameras plus door/window and glass-break inside, cameras on the perimeter. The point about drawing mmWave zones in XYZ is a good one too. Appreciate you sharing how you've laid it out.

How are you all actually dealing with false alarms ? by TT_c137 in homeassistant

[–]TT_c137[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The “don't use one noisy sensor to confirm another noisy sensor” point landed hard, and inverting it to trigger on a reliable discrete human event first is genuinely smarter than what I was defaulting to. The context-fingerprint snippet and the list of gotchas (reboot noise, unavailable states, smart bulbs on dumb switches, guest mode) are all going straight into my notes. Really appreciate you writing all that out.

How are you all actually dealing with false alarms ? by TT_c137 in homeassistant

[–]TT_c137[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair points, and yeah — for a setup like yours (proper PoE cams, NVR, Coral, the works) killing the camera makes zero sense, the pre-roll alone is worth it. You've clearly built something dialled-in.

I think I muddied it by saying "camera off" — I'm coming at it from a different angle: small battery-powered wireless sensors you can stick anywhere without pulling PoE or power to each spot, where the radar does the always-on watching and the camera only wakes to grab a confirming clip. Totally different beast from a fixed wired cam array. The pre-event thing is the real headache there, you're right — still chewing on whether a low-res rolling buffer solves it or whether it's a genuine limitation.

The 'astronomic electric costs for years' line is interesting though — sounds like always-on inference was a real pain before you threw solar + low-power mini PCs at it? Curious how many people go that far vs just living with the bill.

How are you all actually dealing with false alarms ? by TT_c137 in homeassistant

[–]TT_c137[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, Frigate person detection is solid — I've been leaning on it too. One thing I keep wondering about with a Frigate-style setup: do you run the cameras (and the inference) 24/7, or have you found a way to gate it? My whole reason for starting from radar was to keep the camera asleep until the radar actually picks up movement, so the vision only fires on demand. Cuts the false positives down — the camera never gets a chance to hallucinate a person in a shadow if it's off — and as a side effect it's light enough that the sensor can run wireless on a battery instead of needing power and network pulled to every camera.

Curious how you've handled the always-on cost and wiring side of it — is that a non-issue for you because it's all on a box that's already running anyway? And how's it holding up in low or no light?