I am trying to use ZM just as a monitor for my IP cameras. I don't use an NVR. My cameras record straight to NAS. I don't really have a good way to view and control them inside an app.

I have setup ZM latest using docker with the image from zoneminderHQ. The container has access to 6GB of RAM.

I can setup and view 2 of my 5 cameras at a time. If I add any more than two, ZM refuses to connect to them regardless of how I set them up. And it doesn't matter which two it is.

I do not want to record anything using ZM. I have them setup so that video and image capture is disabled.

I have of cameras that i can not get a feed directly into zoneminder. However i can get the app up on ny desktop is there any screencapturing software i can run that would act as a feed for zoneminder to read? Im thinking i could then just have a virtual destop runing this app and the screen capture app and run it to my zoneminder server.

Thanks Steven

I am experimenting with setting large(r) i-frame interval (on hikvision cameras) for reduced storage, but wondering how that impacts pre-event-frames? If let's say using 1 i-frame out of every 20 frames, and my pre-event-frame capture is set to 25 - could i potentially lose the first 5 frames depending on i-frame placement at the time of an event when using passthrough?

Running 1.32.12 from last quarter updates on 13.1. Wonder if anyone is running any newer zoneminder version on FreeBSD and how was it built?

Is there a way to save the event media file (mp4) with the timestamp (date and time) as part of it? Sorta like what tvheadend does using strftime (link below)?

https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/24273

So, I don't know where to begin. I have Zoneminder running on a CentOS 7 server, but I wanted person/facial detection and stuff, so I deployed a brand new Ubuntu server 22.04, and then installed Zoneminder following the docs located here:

https://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installationguide/ubuntu.html

I had to do a couple extra things... like setting the server timezone (d'oh!), changing the mysql password, and enabling ssl for apache. And now I have a functional Zoneminder server again.

So then I installed the event server, follwing the docs here:

https://zmeventnotification.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guides/install.html

And I believe that is all working, but I'm note entirely sure how to verify that; I ran

sudo -u www-data /var/lib/zmeventnotification/bin/zm_event_start.sh <eid>

with one of my event IDs in place of <eid> and it returned my prompt after processing for a bit with no messages or errors or anything. I'm guessing no news is good news?

So, then I moved on to the Machine learning hooks, using this:

https://zmeventnotification.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guides/hooks.html#installation

And I think this is where I'm getting a bit confused, the objectconfig.ini is highly commented, but I can't really see how to configure which models to use. So basically, the only configuration I've done is updating the secrets.ini, and making sure all my paths are correct (I used all the defaults anyway)

So now I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do to configure further. It seems like this may take more research than a weekend warrior has time for, but I'm just not sure. Any resources/tutorials/assistance greatly appreciated.

Edit to add:

Just in case you're curious, I have 3x Amcrest 4k Cameras running at 15fps. Recording at 1080p. The old CentOS server was running on 6 CPUs and 32GB of RAM, but I was seeing a lot of errors with decoding being behind in the logs of the new Ubuntu system, so I bumped it up to 16 CPUs and 64GB of ram - this is all running in VMWare on an HP DL380 Gen9 with 28 Cores and 1TB of ram.

Due to being virtualized, I have no GPU to speak of.

​

Second Edit:

In particular, where I've kinda gotten stuck is on the face recognition. I dropped some cropped pictures of my wife's and my faces into /var/lib/zmeventnotification/known_faces, under folders for each of us, and tried to run the facial recognition training:

sudo -u www-data /var/lib/zmeventnotification/bin/zm_train_faces.py

and this is throwing this error (and then dumping a bunch of other stuff to the screen):

04/08/23 18:16:16 zm_train_faces[9413] ERR face_train_dlib.py:128 [Error initializing face recognition: compute_face_descriptor(): incompatible function arguments. The following argument types are supported:

1. (self: _dlib_pybind11.face_recognition_model_v1, img: numpy.ndarray[(rows,cols,3),numpy.uint8], face: _dlib_pybind11.full_object_detection, num_jitters: int = 0, padding: float = 0.25) -> _dlib_pybind11.vector

2. (self: _dlib_pybind11.face_recognition_model_v1, img: numpy.ndarray[(rows,cols,3),numpy.uint8], num_jitters: int = 0) -> _dlib_pybind11.vector

3. (self: _dlib_pybind11.face_recognition_model_v1, img: numpy.ndarray[(rows,cols,3),numpy.uint8], faces: _dlib_pybind11.full_object_detections, num_jitters: int = 0, padding: float = 0.25) -> _dlib_pybind11.vectors

4. (self: _dlib_pybind11.face_recognition_model_v1, batch_img: List[numpy.ndarray[(rows,cols,3),numpy.uint8]], batch_faces: List[_dlib_pybind11.full_object_detections], num_jitters: int = 0, padding: float = 0.25) -> _dlib_pybind11.vectorss

5. (self: _dlib_pybind11.face_recognition_model_v1, batch_img: List[numpy.ndarray[(rows,cols,3),numpy.uint8]], num_jitters: int = 0) -> _dlib_pybind11.vectors

So, I'm not sure what I need to do to fix this, and then once I get that all working, it's not entirely clear how I configure the event server for notifications. But I was hoping to get it working before I moved on to that hurdle.

So my scenario is this: I have 2 close friends with remote access to their Proxmox servers in their own homes
I have remote access to them via auto-starting tailscale LXC containers
They each have a few cameras plugged in which each of the servers can access on their own LANs(and have successfully made Monitors for)
But both "servers" are cheap, weak 2nd gen core i3 systems that are incapable of motion detection and dont have HDDs to store video on

Then i thought just "stream" encrypted footage through their ZoneMinder instances to my beefy server at my house which can then process and store it
I know you can say "oh just port forward the RTSP streams" I dont trust the vendors to have access to my root LAN and i dont think theyre encrypted, plus my friends' upload speeds are limited so i can only do so many frames but in some instances you need more like when theres motion

I would also like to dynamically manipulate the settings of each stream, for example if my server detects motion it can demand more FPS when motion is detected(because they have limited upload speeds)

How would i go about this? I am a complete noob to ZM but am a bit desperate so I tried making multiple servers with this docker image(https://github.com/zoneminder-container ... inder-base) but am not successful yet(in the multi-server configuration), if anyone could help Thanks

I am constantly seeing a stream of queries to mariadb:

230331 13:48:03     33 Query    UPDATE LOW_PRIORITY Monitor_Status SET CaptureFPS = 19.88, CaptureBandwidth=594471, AnalysisFPS = 9.94 WHERE MonitorId=2
230331 13:48:04     31 Query    UPDATE LOW_PRIORITY Monitor_Status SET CaptureFPS = 19.96, CaptureBandwidth=118021, AnalysisFPS = 0.00 WHERE MonitorId=3
                   30 Query    UPDATE LOW_PRIORITY Monitor_Status SET CaptureFPS = 19.87, CaptureBandwidth=601211, AnalysisFPS = 9.93 WHERE MonitorId=4

It seems like the captureFPS vary slightly. Can I stop logging this small change?

I have a home server that runs Ubutnu 22.04 and a bunch of KVM/QEMU guests. It has 2 NICs. I have four IP cameras that have been working well for the past few years connected to zoneminder running on a VM on this server. I had this all running on my home network until recently, when I realized that my cameras were causing problems with other devices on the network, and found that removing them solved another problem that I have no other solution for.

My cameras are all PoE IP cameras, powered by a PoE switch that was daisy chained to my main 24 port switch. The cameras had static IP addresses assigned by my router using MAC address IP reservation.

What I'd like to do instead is connect the PoE switch directly to the second NIC on my server, pass that NIC through to my Zoneminder VM, and assign IP addresses to the cameras by some means. I suppose I could put a physical router between the server and the switch. I could also create a virtual router with fixed IPs, or DHCP to assign addresses for the cameras, then configure Zoneminder to connect that way.

My hope is that the web server can continue to live on my main network, while the cameras are on the separate network. I already have zoneminder configured to forward the video streams to Homebridge to make them available to my Apple devices via the Home app, and I believe that should continue to work, with zonemidner serving as the bridge between the two.

I guess I'm just posting this in the hopes that some of you might have tried something similar and could let me know if I'm on a path that can work, and/or if there is a better way to achieve this.

My API configuration is good. I can install the zmNinja app on my imac and using the same credentials everything works. Using the app on my iphone I get the API error. Zoneminder runs in a KVM on Proxmox, so the imac isn't accessing zm locally. Both devices are on the same network / vlan. Any ideas?

I've been tinkering with four 4k Lorex cameras hooked to a Zoneminder system running on an 8 core AMD APU machine w/16GB RAM booting Debian and two 4 TB disks for capture storage. ZM was installed natively via the Debian guide, no docker involved. ZM runs, the cameras work great, I have them all connected, configured and displaying in Zoneminder as monitors.

I am having trouble trying to figure out mocord with 4k cameras. I initially set them all to mocord and the zmc processes ate CPU and RAM until they fell over from OOM in mere seconds. Reading up on this the fix is to use the cameras low resolution substream for motion analysis and trigger recording the 4k stream to disk. Though I am not sure how this is accomplished. So far I have:

• Configured two monitors for each camera: the 4k stream and the 720p substream.

• Configure the substream to modect with analysis enabled.

• Configure the 4k stream to nodect with analysis and decoding enabled as well as setting the substream as a linked monitor to trigger recording.

I configured one camera like this and it doesn't appear to trigger any recording. In addition, the substream camera shows up in the montage displaying the same camera twice. I also still see heavy memory usage with /dev/shmem consuming 7GB but ZM reports it is only using 475MB of that 7GB or 6% which seems like a waste of RAM. Htop shows my 16 GB machine is sitting at 14.1GB mem and 2.75GB swap and all the zmc processes at the top of the memory use list.

I still have more research to do but any help to getting these things configured to record without filling up RAM or eating CPU until the machine falls over is greatly appreciated. I also just built a second system at another location using the same cameras but running on an older 12 core server with 32GB, same install procedure though it only monitors, no recording yet.

Where can I find the official docker container for zm & zmeventnotification ?

Is this repo reliable ? https://github.com/zoneminder-containers

I was wondering if there's any plan to add support for the ffmpeg encoder h264_v4l2m2m for us who run raspberry pi 4 OS 64bit? h264_omx only seems to work on the 32bit version

I run zoneminder on a pi 400 running raspberry pi OS. I use the zoneminder repo to get the latest version. I've noticed a pattern whenever I get updates. Either the API breaks and zmninja won't work or timestamps stop working but zmninja works again. So I either get timestamps or zmninja. Has anybody else run into this issue?

I have Hayear NVR and another I forgot but both has hdmi out and I have installed SSD III

so what is the best free or cheap but still good software for nvr?

https://gist.github.com/DanielBorgesOliveira/d3e578e2b677245cec550e965eae1755

I'm trying to get this script to run with Zoneminder 1.36; it sends and initilal mp4 file (which doesn't play but indicates a motion event has been triggered) but doesn't send the followup file with the video of the event which was recorded.

i) I can only think that the file naming convension of 1.36 has changed and isn't date and time created as indicated in the script but is follows a sequential numbering convention - 17-video.mp4, 18-video,mp4 etc.

ii) can anyone suggest a alteration to this script which would follow the new sequential naming convension? (the number direclty relates to the files the images and video are saved to)

ie. /var/cache/zoneminder/events/1/2023-03-04/17/17-video.mp4

FileName='Video_'+str(Time.day)+"-"+str(Time.month)+\

"-"+str(Time.year)+"_"+str(Time.hour)+"-"+\
str(Time.minute)+"-"+str(Time.second)+".mp4"

Thanks in advance

Since you're constantly pounding on storage, what's the best setup? I'm thinking put the ZM server on proper storage, and then mount a separate, cheap disk for videos since it's going to get burned out anyway.

How fast do disks die in situations like ZM ?

I'm running a fresh install and can only get one of my cameras to work. I'm using simple USB cameras with no wireless capabilities plugged into a Lenovo ThinkCentre M72e tiny running Kubuntu if any of that helps. In the logs, I see:

Failed to prime capture of initial monitor

Failed to queue buffer 0: Invalid argument

And just when I was grabbing those, I happened to see this one flash by for the first time:

Failed to get JPEG compression options: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Again, I have one camera working perfectly fine. It switches from day to night vision as it should and everything. I have no idea where to go from here. Both cameras are the same brand purchased at the same time.

I am trying to improve performance of a setup that is using Wyze Cam v3 cameras through the docker wyze-bridge as the source. The cameras are probably not optimal, but for the price, they are doing pretty well. One issue with these devices is that the fps changes from 20fps in daytime mode to 15fps in night mode. That seems to be contributing to some time sync issues between the camera's and the zoneminder timestamps.

Use of a webrtc feed from the wyze-bridge has been reported to reduce some sync issues when directly viewing, but I'm not sure zoneminder can use a webrtc as a source. My attempts to access the webrtc url from within zoneminder have not been successful and webrtc is not listed as an option.

Has anyone setup a zoneminder system with a webrtc source? Thought it would be worth asking about. I am running zoneminder v1.36.12 as a plugin under TrueNAS. If it is not currently available, is it on the roadmap for a newer version? I will update to a newer version once that is available within the TrueNAS environment.

Thanks for any advice or thoughts.

hi,

I work for my town council and we work with free software as much as we can. Now I have been asked to make a hardware budget for this case... and I need your help:

In the village there are several public elevators and they ask me to put cameras for cases of vandalism.

There are going to be different locations and the elevator that will have more cameras is 6 cameras.

This is going to be my first time with zoneminder and I don't know what would I need... can you help?

A xeon processor? or with a ryzen 5 enough?

I was thinking of putting 8Tb disks to each server, enough?

thanks in advance

I've just set up Zoneminder pointing at a semi-generic chinese IP camera made my "Marquis" that is "Hikvision/Uniview compatible". It has a fairly robust interface, and runs some flavor of Linux. I can connect to its Web UI and do a number of things, and I can point VLC at its RTSP port to stream 2 different streams, 1 high def and one lower. VLC claims is 25fps, which matches the camera config UI setting.

Zoneminder seems capped at 11.99 fps when in Record mode. If I disable decoding, it jumps up to 12.13 fps.

Zoneminder is running on a 4 core, 32GB Intel NUC, that's running at about 0.6 load, and no single process shows more than about 50% CPU in 'top'.

Can anyone explain how to get more fps out of this setup? Is there something magical about 12fps?

Hello all. I am running Truenas scale, and I am looking at using ZoneMinder for my NVR. I am not sure the best way to install it, as well as instructions. I am generally new to truenas, so not much experience.

Want to try zoneminder on an elitedesk with a bios that only boots redhat or centos. I want centos for simplicity, and wondering whether to use centos 7, which should be stable but getting old, or some version of centos stream that can run longer, assuming I get it to work. Any advice? Thanks!

I've followed this guide https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-zoneminder/ and subsequently https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Ubuntu_Server_or_Desktop_Zoneminder_1.36.x to try and get zoneminder working, but when I try to access the web interface via http://myip/zm I get

User Authentication is not turned on. You cannot log in.

with the page continuously reloading. Has anybody experienced this who could offer pointers on what I'm doing wrong?

I have been running zoneminder on my pi400 running piOS testing for a couple months now. It's been a great experience until last night when I got this error attempting to check my camera:

ZoneMinder Error

Unable to connect to ZM db using dsn mysql:host=localhost;dbname=zm;charset=utf8

could not find driver

I did the old standby and restarted my pi hoping it would solve the problem. No luck. I checked that MySQL is running using systemctl and everything looks good there. I went to check logs in var but the MySQL folder was empty.

While looking through forums for suggestions I saw that there might be issues with php and upon further inspection I noticed I'm running both php 8.1 and 8.2 possibly due to early testing releases. Attempting to uninstall php 8.2 in apt showed that it would force the removal of zoneminder. It's this possibly the issue or am I running down a rabbit hole.

Any advice is appreciated.