[Question]: Generating dynamic mask using API and Node-Red?

[wgregorian]

What is your question:

Hi,

I use the Node-Red MQTT-in node to search for events; one of those happens to be that one parked car that, over time, becomes a stationary object in the events. I want to record all events, but I would like to mask the vehicle on the street that becomes stationary dynamically.

I want to prevent the repeated recording of the same object in the same box. The box coordinates always remain the same. I aim to write a flow that evaluates the event if it repeats N times, then sends an HTTP request to the Frigate API to mask the car object on subsequent detections/recordings until the object is gone, and that's to preserve disk space and improve the signal-to-noise factor.

Am I overthinking it, and is there a more elegant way to handle this?

[NickM-27]

what is your end goal exactly? You can already configure frigate to not record stationary objects. You can also already tell if an object is stationary by looking at the stationary field in the MQTT /events payload

[wgregorian]

If I mask, then I'm not capturing anything else. I want to capture that stationary object's first/last event; ignoring the rest as noise. I thought I would rely on the conditions, such as the box coordinates and the stationary Boolean, to create the mask for the object after the first event and remove it after the last using the API.

Or can I use node-red to tell Frigate, "Stop recording that thing that becomes stationary"?

The end goal is to avoid a scenario like this one:

[NickM-27]

We've made a lot of improvements to stationary tracking and stationary objects for the next version of frigate (0.14). Frigate doesn't support totally dynamic masks like that

[wgregorian]

Thank you. It's not like storage is expensive; I have plenty of it. I just thought I'd take a stab at it, but I can also live with this and wait for the next version. I appreciate your speedy response!