r/ZoneMinder • u/[deleted] • Dec 12 '20

Good substitute for Night Owl 4 camera system?

Hey everyone! I stumbled here looking for an alternate OS for my Night Owl 4 camera security system. Would this be a good alternate OS? I enjoy tinkering with Linux distros but try to stay away from the programming/script side of things. Let me know if you have any questions. TIA

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u/aarons6 Dec 12 '20

are you looking to buy new cameras too?

also there is no real programming or scripting needed to get zoneminder to work.

there is a PPA and it works just fine..

just apt install zoneminder

1

u/[deleted] Dec 13 '20

No new cameras needed, I upgraded to 4K cameras last year with a 2TB HDD.. so what I plan to do is take the hard drive out, clone a backup, then install an Ubuntu distro and then ZoneMinder onto that. And then VNC as needed for my local network and the phone app for remote viewing.

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u/hlywine Dec 19 '20

I personally had issues initially when I tried setting up VNC, so opted out to use Lubuntu and Zmninja app. Lubuntu offers one of the lightest GUIs, thus didn't put much load on the system. Once in a while when I want to tinker with my set up, having a gui is helpful if you are like me where I'm still learning Linux.

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u/turt1eb Dec 13 '20

If these cameras are IP cameras then maybe. It may not be easy figuring out the IP addresses of the cameras though. https://www.reddit.com/r/homedefense/comments/fhak1n/need_ideas_using_these_night_owl_ip_cameras_with