Watch how long a pet spends on the sofa

The detectors CV-Scope uses know cats, dogs and horses as well as people and vehicles. This guide uses that to measure how long a cat or a dog spends on the sofa. People in the room are then not tracked at all.

It uses the same zone technique as guide 03. Read that guide first if you have not added a webcam before.

Step 1. Point a camera at the sofa

1. Place the webcam so that it sees the whole seat of the sofa, from slightly above if you can. A pet curled up on a cushion is easier to recognise from above than from the side.
2. Add the webcam on the Cameras page as in guide 03. Name it Sofa cam.
3. Check the live picture on the right. Light matters: a dark room at night makes a dark cat hard to see.

Step 2. Create the experiment

1. Open Experiments and click New experiment.
2. Set Name to Sofa watch and pick the camera Sofa cam.
3. Under Objects to track, untick Person and tick Cat, or Dog, or both.
4. Click Create experiment. The experiment page opens.

Step 3. Draw the sofa zone

1. Click Scene builder at the top of the experiment page. The experiment is selected in the top bar, so new shapes track the same animals.
2. Press Z. Click the corners of the seat, following the cushions. Add a little room in front of the seat, because a pet’s box ends where its paws or belly are. Double-click the last corner to finish.
3. In the inspector, set these fields:
   • Name: Sofa.
   • Object to track: the animals you chose.
   • Ignore visits shorter than: 10 seconds. A cat that only walks across the sofa is then not counted.
4. Click Save in the top bar, or press Ctrl+S.

Step 4. Settings for a slow scene

A resting pet hardly moves, so a few frames per second are enough.

1. Click Edit experiment in the top bar.
2. Tick Advanced settings and set these values:
   • Processing FPS: 2. This keeps the computer quiet during a long recording.
   • Frames to keep searching for a lost object: 60. At 2 frames per second that is 30 seconds. A sleeping cat that the detector misses for a while then keeps its visit.
3. Click Save.

Step 5. Record and read the result

1. Click Start. After a few seconds of start-up, the camera view on the experiment page shows the run’s picture. Check once that a box appears around the pet. If none appears, see the tips below.
2. Let it run for as long as you like, then click Stop on the experiment page or on the Live page.
3. Open the run’s Results. The Zones (occupancy and dwell) panel shows these values:

For several recordings, pick the experiment on the Analysis page. Its Zones panel adds up all runs.

If the pet is not found

• Too dark. Turn on a lamp, or record during the day.
• Curled up or under a blanket. A detector needs to see some of the shape of the animal. A pet hidden under a blanket is not found.
• Too small in the picture. Move the camera closer. A higher Requested resolution on the camera helps only together with a higher Inference resolution (px), for example 1280, set in the camera’s Advanced settings or the experiment’s.
• Found only now and then. In the experiment’s Advanced settings, lower Detection confidence to start or continue a track from 0.5 to about 0.3, lower Confidence threshold from 0.25 to 0.15, and raise Frames to keep searching for a lost object.

Next

Guide 07 counts several kinds of objects at once.