Motion detection

Motion is the first and cheapest layer of detection. It watches for change in the frame and, when it sees movement, wakes the heavier AI. On its own it can also trigger recordings and notifications.

Choosing a motion engine

camera.ui offers several motion plugins, so you can match CPU use to your hardware. Enable one for a camera in its settings under the Plugins tab (see Set up sensors):

• Rust Motion. Fast and efficient; a good default for most setups.
• OpenCV. Several algorithms with fine-grained tuning.
• OpenCL. GPU-accelerated, for very low CPU use.
• WASM Motion. Cross-platform WebAssembly.
• Pam Diff (deprecated). Lightweight pixel-difference.
• SMTP. For cameras that send motion alerts by email instead of analysing the video.

Tuning sensitivity

Each engine exposes its own settings (such as area, threshold, and blur) in its plugin settings, with a reset to defaults. Two settings live on the camera itself, in Settings → Detection:

• Motion resolution. Low is fastest, medium is balanced, high is most accurate.
• Motion timeout. How long motion stays "active" after movement stops (minimum 10 seconds).

If a camera is too sensitive (a busy road, a swaying tree), limit where motion counts with zones.

The cascade

When motion fires, it triggers the heavier detectors (object, face, and so on). You can also let other sensors start this cascade, for example a door contact sensor triggering object detection, under Sensor triggers in the camera's detection settings.