I am looking to detect motion from a long distance. Will this software do that, or does it require the camera to have some sort of sensor? I understand that motion detection is either software based or sensor trigger based. A sensor requires motion to be very close to the camera, whereas software is looking at the image and detecting changes in the image to see ‘motion’ If this does allow me to detect motion from long range, what would be the best standalone camera to use with the system and does the camera have to be connected to a computer, or can I configure it and let it sit and record local?
You can probably use a standalone high quality IP camera. That is not necessary to connect to a computer. They can usually do motion detection. How good they are I don´t know. Netcam Studio use software for detection and there are a couple of algorithms that is of interest; frame difference and blob detection. Since it is long range you probably need a camera with a high resolution. The target you want to detect must cover a reasonable amount of pixels for the calculation. A camera with an optical zoom might be a good solution. Also on long range the contrast between target and background can get low so you need to take that into account also. If you are in a warmer climate air turbulence might be a problem on long range where you get false detections.
-Henrik