Windows GUI to edit the motion config files

An effort to see how many parameters can graphically fit in a 640 x 480 screen before becoming to overbearing

Attached Files

The Zip file contains the main program, a config file

• MotionConfigToy.zip

Installation

You will need....... - Windows with (latest) DOT NET Framework - Motion running somewhere. This was tested using Motion Snapshot Release 3.2.1_snap15

Once you have extracted all the files from the .zip edit the MotionConfigToy.exe.config file. The settings of interest

Host change to reflect the IP address of the host motion is running on. This is without doubt another machine as motion does not run on a windows platform

ControlPort Change to reflect the port number that motion is listening on for the http control (NOT THE WEBCAMS) (Look in your motion.conf file for the default setting which may be turned off)

AuthenticationName is the username portion of control_authentication. Leave blank if not using authentication

AuthenticationPassword is the password portion of control_authentication. Leave blank if not using authentication

HTTPTimeout If during your use you get A LOT of errors complaining that motion may not be running (not at startup) try increasing this value in increments of 50 for example

Once you have made your changes save the file and launch the MotionConfigToy.exe program

Users Guide

Upon correct startup you will be presented with the GUI.

Select Menu Option Camera You will see a list of devices each representing a camera. Select Thread1 (should be your first camera)

After a while you should see the configuration popup and eventually the stream from the camera.

Most settings can be played with and the settings that effect the webcam image will usually change the image in realtime allowing you to fine tune the motion settings

You will see a number changing at the bottom of the window this represents the size of each webcam image in bytes and can be useful when tuning your webcam quality setting.

You can save your camera configuration by selecting File Save

Changing the cameras resolution (width x height)

You can change the camera resolution by selecting Resolution then selecting from one of the defaults.

For the change to take effect you will need to restart motion.

NOTE

If your camera does not support that resolution you may crash motion. In which case you will need to reconfigure motion the old fashioned way to get it started again

To create the PGM file

left click on the image and draw. To remove right click on the drawn areas.

Once you have your mask click MASK | SAVE

Choose a name for your mask file

Once saved you will have to move it to motion and set the config by hand

Observations

- Not all of the knobs have sensible Min and Max values assigned to them

control_html_output should be set to on in motion config file otherwise this program will not function as expected

• May not correctly support frame sizes other than 320 x 240

• Load Mask does not work

Comments and Bug Reports

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Without having tested the actual software I must say that the concept and user interface you have created looks very intuitive and attractive.

-- KennethLavrsen - 04 May 2005

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Nice tool , Could you release the source code too ? On this way many people will be able to contribute to this front-end.

-- AngelCarpintero - 05 May 2005

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It doesn't work for me. I downloaded the net framework (actually the vesion 2) and this software locks up. Do you intend to release the source code? Thanks.

-- SergioAguiar - 03 Feb 2008

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