email interval

[nunit]

According to the manual, the "interval" in the SMTP config screen specifies how long the system will wait between sending emails. I have motion detection enabled with anti-dither set to 20s and send email checked. The email interval is set to 300s, but I get emails about every 60s if motion continues for a while. I've tried increasing the email interval to 600s but it does not seem to reduce how many emails I get. The only thing that does reduce the number of emails is increasing the anti-dither, which makes sense, but that also means recordings are unnecessarily longer once motion has stopped. Shouldn't the system suppress additional notifications even if motion is still detected after the anti-dither period until the email interval has expired? Is this behavior a bug?

The bottom line is that I'd like only one email within a relatively long period (say, several minutes), but I'd like recordings to not go too long after motion has stopped. I have a couple of IP3M-954s with the latest 2.400.0000.15.R, build : 2016-06-15 firmware.

Thanks,
nunit

[Melvin]

Hello nunit ,

The anti dither value is how long the camera stays in triggered state once motion is detected. The interval is the gap between images. So if you have anti dither set to 60 and interval to 10, that means you will get one email every 10 seconds for 60 secs, that is 6 emails with each motion detection. So if you want less emails increase the anti dither value.

[nunit]

Melvin,

Thanks for the response. I understand your example where I might want more than one email per alarm, but I actually want fewer emails. Are you saying that if the interval is higher than the anti-dither, then I will still get one email per alarm? This certainly isn't what is implied from the manual:

Interval: This field allows the user to define, in seconds, how long the system should wait between sending emails. This prevents multiple emails from being sent out.

Also consider that the allowed range for anti-dither is 5-600s whereas the email interval is 0-3600s. With the current behavior, it seems pointless to set an interval larger than the anti-dither. This certainly seems like a bug to me.

[Melvin]

Hello nunit,

Yes that is correct. Sorry for the confusion. Yes the interval cannot be used as the anti dither value is less and it appears to be a bug.

[nunit]

Thanks for the confirmation Melvin. Can we submit a request to fix this apparent bug in a future firmware?

Also, I've seen a feature request posted by others to attach multiple snapshots to a single email. That would be incredibly helpful for my use case, so I'd like to echo that request!

[Melvin]

Hello nunit ,

Thank you for the feedback. I will pass this on to our R&D department.