This file is: motion_conf_file.txt

First created: Sunday 15th May 2011, 16:36 PT, AD
Last updated:  Sunday 15th May 2011, 17:16 PT, AD



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The motion.conf file

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The motion.conf file is placed wherever your installation put it.

You can always locate it by the bash command:

recursively search for a file from root directory,
from a terminal window:

$ find / -name filename

e.g. find / -name motion.conf
results in:

/etc/motion/motion.conf
/home/anne/Desktop/motion.conf
/home/anne/.motion/motion.conf

on my server.

It's not a great idea to have multiple copies of the same file.

You need to find which file is actually read when motion starts up,
then just have that copy. Well documented of course.



NOTICE: when motion first is started up (15 May 2011), after a few lines it reports:
Thread 1 is from /home/anne/.motion/motion.conf

Therefore, the motion configuration file read is from
/home/anne/.motion/motion.conf

So if you update 
/home/anne/.motion/motion.conf
taking instructions from
http://www.annedawson.net/motion_manual.txt

you should be able to fine tune the camera according to your needs for video and photo capture of motion.

When I viewed the file on Sunday 15th May 2011, I noticed comments in the file I made on 16th April 2011,
so indeed, this is the correct file to update to change video and photo quality.

To date (Sunday 15th May 2011), I'm playing with those settings, 
so that when motion is detected by the camera attached to the server,
videos are longer duration and better picture quality than the default settings.
My Logitech Orbit camera is good enough for the job, 
and its driver was installed by default on Ubuntu Linux 10.04.

I will place a comment in 
/home/anne/.motion/motion.conf
for every line I change, so that in the event of a total screw up, I can revert back to the settings of 16th April 2011.


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Motion in a specified area can trigger a command.

http://www.lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/ConfigOptionAreaDetect

area_detect option of motion.conf

Detect motion center in predefined areas. A script (on_area_detected) is started immediately 
when motion center is detected in one of the given areas, 
but only once during an event even if there is motion in a different configured area.

Areas are numbered like that:

      1    2    3
      4    5    6
      7    8    9

One or more areas can be specified with this option.

Example: You want to monitor if the center of motion occurrs in the lower third of the image 
- that is area 7, 8 and 9. Simply set 'area_detect' to '789' and 'on_area_detect'
will be executed as soon as the center of motion was detected in area 7, 8 or 9. 
If you want to monitor area 2, 3, 5 and 6, set '2356'. 
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