Well, I’m trying it out on one of our very few FC19 boxes. It installed… now, what’s this, I *have* to install and run mssql? And apache? This is a significantly larger footprint than motion.
And now, while googling, because I was to tell it where I want it to store video, I see a thread noting that it stores it all as *jpegs*, not mpx, or avi, or…. Is this the case?
mark
From: “m.roth@5-cent.us”
Mark:
the security camera I’m using for fun at home streams everything as TS
(mpeg4 transport stream) at a configurable 10-30fps. it only saves segments with motion in them, including user configurable seconds before/after any motion event.
doing that with JPG’s would be brutal.
There is one “zoneminder” package 1.24.4 in nux-desktop repository, 1.25
in puias-unsupported and
“mythzoneminder” 0.26 in rpmfusion-free-updates and in atrpms-stable
Should be relatively easy to make their virtual machine run under virtualbox or kvm if you don’t have something running ESXi (and the necessary windows console client) already.
Virtual Machine might need access to PCI/PCIe for CCTV card. So it would need IOMMU MB for host. I tested zoneminder with USB camera, works nice. I was just testing it though.
You could spend your budget on IP cameras and not need to worry about hardware connections or where the server sits. If your old system works with IP cameras you could probably use the same approach – run it under an OS that works in a VM somewhere and treat it like an appliance.
What *is* mythzoneminder? I thought it had something to do with MythTV.
mark
The management software for the Ubiquiti AirCams save(s|d) to JPG files on the controller/management host. Last I tinkered with them (it’s been months) that’s the case.
The caution with IP cameras and zoneminder together is the significant increase in CPU load due to zm’s transcoding, with MJPEG cameras in particular. I’m running a zm here with a few older IP cams on VMware ESX and had to drop the framerate each time I added a camera due to the CPU load. And the load of just storing the individual JPEG files is pretty significant if you record.
I only have experience with my simple Foscam (generic) cameras. They have fast streaming video, but the ZoneMinder hits the camera at an interval defined in its configuration. You can set it to do many FPS, or just a few– depending on what you think you need. SO even if your camera does a hundred FPS, ZoneMinder has the ability to deal with it– if you adjust the configurable ZoneMinder FPS accordingly.
Sorry, it seams just to be interface to connect to zoneminder. I thought it was more like variant of zoneminder.
Name : mythzoneminder Arch : x86_64
Version : 0.24.1
Release : 3.el6
Size : 145 k Repo : centdos Summary : A module for MythTV for camera security and surveillance URL : http://www.mythtv.org/
License : GPLv2+ and LGPLv2+ and LGPLv2 and (GPLv2 or QPL) and
(GPLv2+ or LGPLv2+)
Description : MythZoneMinder is a plugin to interface to some of the features of
: ZoneMinder. You can use it to view a status window similar to the
: console window in ZM. Also there are screens to view live camera shots
: and replay recorded events.
One more thing about zoneminder: after installing it on an FC19 system, I
don’t see anything that I could immediately identify as a driver. *HOW*
does it get the video? In motion, the very lightweight package, it’s using V4L2, and the drivers, gspca*, are part of the kernel these days. If ZoneMindar is using the same drivers, then I’d expect that it would occasionally, after an update, wind up with the same problems motion does.
Btw, I’m now also looking at lower-end video capture cards, like the Hauppage Impactvdb, model 188 (four bnc inputs). For that, what I haven’t found out yet, is whether it provides the cameras one at a time, to be switched among, or if all four can stream at the same time, which is what we *must* have.
One more note: framerate is completely a trivial priority – we normally run < 5/sec, since we're interested in who's come into a locked room, and where they went. We can also get a check of whose key card let them in, so that helps with the identification, as does knowing everyone who might come in (beyond the fire marshal, or building engineering....)
mark
In the zoneminder web console, click the ‘Add New Monitor’ button. In the ‘Monitor’ dialog, and the ‘General’ tab, click the pulldown by
‘Source Type’ and select ‘local.’ In the ‘Source’ tab, enter the video device path and select the ‘Capture Method’ (V4L1 and V4L2 are both supported). You need to set up the V4Lv1 or v2 system properly and see which device is which card, etc. For each capture chip you’ll need to set the Device Channel and format, and the other details. There are no
‘drivers’ per se except what V4L exposes.
You need a capture chip per simultaneous channel. Most of the low-end
‘4 input’ cards have one chip and a 4 to 1 mux.
Linux Media Labs has a four-chip card at a pretty good price point, and they specifically support zoneminder. See: http://www.linuxmedialabs.com/product_details.php?prodid50 for the specific card, which is $165, and a lot less than the previous 4 channel LMLBT44 card was (we have three of the LMLBT44’s, and paid ~$400 each for them ten years ago, but they’re half that price now. Oh, and they all three still work fine.).
That’s why I suggested IP cameras earlier, as there is no driver. Or, figuratively speaking, the IP stack is the driver. Anything can break after an update, but basic networking functionality is one of those things I don’t expect to break.
Also, why are you doing updates anyway? If you had an appliance, as you wanted, would you be doing updates on that? Probably not, if it’s working. So why worry about updates? Put ZM on a dedicated server or VM, get it working the way you want, then leave it alone. Weld the case shut and disable remote logins and now you literally have an appliance.
My personal experience with lower-end hardware is that it’s the stuff most likely to break during updates. It’s cheap so the release process is sloppy and documentation lagging/poor/inaccurate/non-existent, so you end up with situations where the drivers are chasing infinite subtle revisions, and/or reverse engineered, and/or some other kind of kludgery.
If you pay a premium, you can buy stuff that has official Linux support from the manufacturer. I was looking at Sensoray products for my home, but they are out of my price range. Probably beyond your budget as well (based on what you’ve suggested), but it appears that Linux is an explicit target for their products, not an afterthought or the dreaded unsupported/use-at-your-own-risk.
But again, IP cameras remove all this complexity
Lamar Owen wrote:
Ok, so it *is* the same device driver… the ones I worry about.
On the other hand, if we get *new*, higher quality cameras, it’ll be different drivers to worry about.
time, to be
Bing! THANK YOU!!! That *is* in our price range, and is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been trying to find, *and* I see it support both ZM *and*
Motion.
17 thoughts on - Zoneminder
——– Original Message ——
tdukes@palmettoshopper.com wrote:
Well, I’m trying it out on one of our very few FC19 boxes. It installed… now, what’s this, I *have* to install and run mssql? And apache? This is a significantly larger footprint than motion.
And now, while googling, because I was to tell it where I want it to store video, I see a thread noting that it stores it all as *jpegs*, not mpx, or avi, or…. Is this the case?
mark
From: “m.roth@5-cent.us”
Mark:
the security camera I’m using for fun at home streams everything as TS
(mpeg4 transport stream) at a configurable 10-30fps. it only saves segments with motion in them, including user configurable seconds before/after any motion event.
doing that with JPG’s would be brutal.
There is one “zoneminder” package 1.24.4 in nux-desktop repository, 1.25
in puias-unsupported and
“mythzoneminder” 0.26 in rpmfusion-free-updates and in atrpms-stable
Should be relatively easy to make their virtual machine run under virtualbox or kvm if you don’t have something running ESXi (and the necessary windows console client) already.
Virtual Machine might need access to PCI/PCIe for CCTV card. So it would need IOMMU MB for host. I tested zoneminder with USB camera, works nice. I was just testing it though.
You could spend your budget on IP cameras and not need to worry about hardware connections or where the server sits. If your old system works with IP cameras you could probably use the same approach – run it under an OS that works in a VM somewhere and treat it like an appliance.
What *is* mythzoneminder? I thought it had something to do with MythTV.
mark
The management software for the Ubiquiti AirCams save(s|d) to JPG files on the controller/management host. Last I tinkered with them (it’s been months) that’s the case.
The caution with IP cameras and zoneminder together is the significant increase in CPU load due to zm’s transcoding, with MJPEG cameras in particular. I’m running a zm here with a few older IP cams on VMware ESX and had to drop the framerate each time I added a camera due to the CPU load. And the load of just storing the individual JPEG files is pretty significant if you record.
I only have experience with my simple Foscam (generic) cameras. They have fast streaming video, but the ZoneMinder hits the camera at an interval defined in its configuration. You can set it to do many FPS, or just a few– depending on what you think you need. SO even if your camera does a hundred FPS, ZoneMinder has the ability to deal with it– if you adjust the configurable ZoneMinder FPS accordingly.
Sorry, it seams just to be interface to connect to zoneminder. I thought it was more like variant of zoneminder.
Name : mythzoneminder Arch : x86_64
Version : 0.24.1
Release : 3.el6
Size : 145 k Repo : centdos Summary : A module for MythTV for camera security and surveillance URL : http://www.mythtv.org/
License : GPLv2+ and LGPLv2+ and LGPLv2 and (GPLv2 or QPL) and
(GPLv2+ or LGPLv2+)
Description : MythZoneMinder is a plugin to interface to some of the features of
: ZoneMinder. You can use it to view a status window similar to the
: console window in ZM. Also there are screens to view live camera shots
: and replay recorded events.
One more thing about zoneminder: after installing it on an FC19 system, I
don’t see anything that I could immediately identify as a driver. *HOW*
does it get the video? In motion, the very lightweight package, it’s using V4L2, and the drivers, gspca*, are part of the kernel these days. If ZoneMindar is using the same drivers, then I’d expect that it would occasionally, after an update, wind up with the same problems motion does.
Btw, I’m now also looking at lower-end video capture cards, like the Hauppage Impactvdb, model 188 (four bnc inputs). For that, what I haven’t found out yet, is whether it provides the cameras one at a time, to be switched among, or if all four can stream at the same time, which is what we *must* have.
One more note: framerate is completely a trivial priority – we normally run < 5/sec, since we're interested in who's come into a locked room, and where they went. We can also get a check of whose key card let them in, so that helps with the identification, as does knowing everyone who might come in (beyond the fire marshal, or building engineering....) mark
In the zoneminder web console, click the ‘Add New Monitor’ button. In the ‘Monitor’ dialog, and the ‘General’ tab, click the pulldown by
‘Source Type’ and select ‘local.’ In the ‘Source’ tab, enter the video device path and select the ‘Capture Method’ (V4L1 and V4L2 are both supported). You need to set up the V4Lv1 or v2 system properly and see which device is which card, etc. For each capture chip you’ll need to set the Device Channel and format, and the other details. There are no
‘drivers’ per se except what V4L exposes.
You need a capture chip per simultaneous channel. Most of the low-end
‘4 input’ cards have one chip and a 4 to 1 mux.
Linux Media Labs has a four-chip card at a pretty good price point, and they specifically support zoneminder. See:
http://www.linuxmedialabs.com/product_details.php?prodid50 for the specific card, which is $165, and a lot less than the previous 4 channel LMLBT44 card was (we have three of the LMLBT44’s, and paid ~$400 each for them ten years ago, but they’re half that price now. Oh, and they all three still work fine.).
That’s why I suggested IP cameras earlier, as there is no driver. Or, figuratively speaking, the IP stack is the driver. Anything can break after an update, but basic networking functionality is one of those things I don’t expect to break.
Also, why are you doing updates anyway? If you had an appliance, as you wanted, would you be doing updates on that? Probably not, if it’s working. So why worry about updates? Put ZM on a dedicated server or VM, get it working the way you want, then leave it alone. Weld the case shut and disable remote logins and now you literally have an appliance.
My personal experience with lower-end hardware is that it’s the stuff most likely to break during updates. It’s cheap so the release process is sloppy and documentation lagging/poor/inaccurate/non-existent, so you end up with situations where the drivers are chasing infinite subtle revisions, and/or reverse engineered, and/or some other kind of kludgery.
If you pay a premium, you can buy stuff that has official Linux support from the manufacturer. I was looking at Sensoray products for my home, but they are out of my price range. Probably beyond your budget as well (based on what you’ve suggested), but it appears that Linux is an explicit target for their products, not an afterthought or the dreaded unsupported/use-at-your-own-risk.
But again, IP cameras remove all this complexity
Lamar Owen wrote:
Ok, so it *is* the same device driver… the ones I worry about.
On the other hand, if we get *new*, higher quality cameras, it’ll be different drivers to worry about.
time, to be
Bing! THANK YOU!!! That *is* in our price range, and is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been trying to find, *and* I see it support both ZM *and*
Motion.
mark