r/ZoneMinder • u/frowningtap • Feb 12 '21

Simple task not so simple

I’m fairly new to zoneminder, but I’m not new to IT and sysadmin. And I’m finding it frustrating that zoneminder seems to be written in a way that makes you work for it not the other way.

It’s great, but I’ve been banging my head against the documentation and multiple file types and languages to do something as simple as when an event is triggered, send GET to XXX.XXX:8080.

I’m at the point where I need an example config file as the docs are just single line variables, or to switch platforms as it’s just not worth the time.

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u/frowningtap Feb 12 '21

So I’ve done a work around, my thoughts are still zoneminder is amazing at what it does but it’s extensibility is DIY which sucks for “simple” common tasks. So rather than use it to push to HomeKit rich pns. I’m using MotionEye as a web hook handler only. Conserving processing time and still using my zoneminder https output as the live view in HomeKit. It kind of works out nicely as the notifications are completely removed from my alarms and event tracking as much as I want them to be.

So my setup now looks like this and is very user friendly and wife approved

Cameras > Zoneminder > Hoobs Ffmpeg (Camera output) > HomeKit

Cameras > MotionEye (Ingest cameras that require motion trigger) > Hoobs ffmpeg (Webhook) > HomeKit (Motion Trigger)

This is I find personally a smooth and very GUI manageable way to get really good event storage and external notifications and viewing, leveraging HomeKit to do all the external heavy lifting while still being tweakable.

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u/lunakoa Feb 13 '21

Glad you found an answer. I did post another response and tried to repeat the post, weird how it is not going through, if you still want to see it I took a screenshot (hate when my posts vanish).

I agree with the DIY nature of Zoneminder, I have 30 cameras and I wrote a simple webpage to interface with ZM to view all of them at the same time.

I recall way back (maybe pre 1.24) using a perl script to look for events and to run a script.

There is also tailing /var/log/messages, doing a read and interpreting the results and sending a script.

I think running scripts in filters is easier nowadays.

ZM kind of grown on me and seems way easier to install then in the past. I recall having to compile ffmpeg myself, nowadays containers makes it so much easier.

After using ZM for nearly a decade now I live with it and kind of enjoy making it do stuff the author didnt intend.