Foscam G2 IP Cameras

[EveningDarkstar]

Hi - This is my first posting to this forum and also I am new to the world of ZoneMinder, so please don't consider me knowledgeable by any means! I have received a gift of some Foscam G2 IP cameras to use for security around my home. Since I am Windoz phobic I am looking for a Linux solution to running and playing with these cameras, but unfortunately Foscam seems to be Linux illiterate and likes to play in the world of Windows and Macs. So I stumbled on to ZoneMinder and have managed to install it, (along with Apache2 and MySQL) on an OpenSuSE Leap 15.1 system. It seems to be a happy camper and is playing fine, afaik the version of ZoneMinder I am using is 1.32.3-9.1.

That said, I can't find any instructions for setting up these cameras in ZoneMinder. Can anyone guide me into the light and help me set up ZoneMinder or am I SOL? Much appreciate and many thanks in advance if some kind gurus will spare a few moments getting me going down the right path!

Marc...

[pms]

Did you check this list with ZoneMinder configurations for Foscam camera's?
If your camera is not mentioned, you still could try a model look-a-like.

https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Foscam

[EveningDarkstar]

Thanks PMS for replying, yes I did check the list of FOSCAM cameras and no these cameras are not listed. My guess is that they are a relatively new model so no one has figured out how to use them with zoneminder. I do not know how to find another comparable model either.

That said, I have made some progress with these G2 cameras. I have discovered what the URL is for connecting to the video data stream from these cameras and managed to get the VLC media player to display the video from the cameras. FWIW the URL is rtsp://10.10.10.10:88/videoMain on my network. I believe these cameras are producing an ffmpeg video format since I had to also install a codec decoder for H265 encoding as well.

But even armed with this knowledge, still no joy making ZoneMinder show me video from these cameras, so still puzzling it out..

Marc...

[EveningDarkstar]

Uh I should have said that the URL for the camera's datastream is actually rtsp://userid:password@10.10.10.10:88/videoMain which is what I used when I filled in the source path field for the camera in ZoneMinder. But like I said, still no joy getting it working.

Marc...

[EveningDarkstar]

I think I have some additional information that may be relevant but I am just guessing. I took a look at the log files that ZoneMinder is producing and I saw a few ominous errors/warnings -

apache-error.log is repeatedly producing this error message -

[Tue Sep 10 19:35:33.393760 2019] [cgi:error] [pid 24340] [client ::1:38924] AH0121
5: Unable to connect to zmc process. Please ensure that it is running.: /usr/lib/z
oneminder/cgi-bin/nph-zms, referer: http://localhost/zm/index.php?view=watch&mid=2

zmc_m2.log is repeatedly producing these error message, makes me think I am missing a codec library?

09/11/19 12:33:15.559169 zmc_m2[5994].INF-zmc.cpp/223 [Starting Capture version 1.3
2.3]
09/11/19 12:33:15.585705 zmc_m2[5994].INF-zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp/163 [Priming capture
from rtsp://:username:passworddeleted@10.10.10.10:88/videoMain]
09/11/19 12:33:15.664291 zmc_m2[5994].INF-zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp/378 [Stream open rts
p://username:passworddeleted@10.10.10.10:88/videoMain, parsing streams...]
09/11/19 12:33:20.830011 zmc_m2[5994].ERR-zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp/511 [Can't find code
c for video stream from rtsp://username:passworddeleted@10.10.10.10:88/videoMain]
09/11/19 12:33:20.853997 zmc_m2[5994].ERR-zmc.cpp/253 [Failed to prime capture of i
nitial monitor]
09/11/19 12:33:24.430486 zmc_m2[5994].INF-zm_signal.cpp/40 [Got signal 15 (Terminat
ed), exiting]

zmdc.log is repeatedly producing what appears to be a warning?

09/11/2019 12:57:06.561823 zmdc[11307].WAR [ZMServer:406] [Can't find process with
command of 'zmc -m 2']

zmwatch.log is repeatedly producing these error messages -

09/11/2019 12:53:44.006408 zmwatch[11413].INF [main:107] [Restarting capture daemon
for Foscam G2 Gate, no image since startup. Startup time was 1568231615 - now 1568
231624 > 5]
09/11/2019 12:55:55.538365 zmwatch[11413].ERR [ZoneMinder::Memory::Mapped:86] [Memo
ry map file '/dev/shm/zm.mmap.2' does not exist. zmc might not be running.]

So it appears to be a lot of things are pointing at a process called zmc. What is this and is it relevant or the symptom of some other problem?

Just trying to figure out what is going wrong, but like I said, I am not an expert on ZoneMinder so just guessing... Marc...

[EveningDarkstar]

Well thanks for listening to me mostly talking to myself! LOL Anywise I found the problem and solved it and my fancy new Foscam G2 camera is one with ZoneMinder and working happily. Turns out is was a mismatch in libraries between what I had gotten from the Packman repositories and the OpenSuSE repositories. Once I switched all the ffmpeg support libraries to the Packman repo versions everything started working as expected. Moral I guess is make sure and check to see if all your libraries are consistent somehow...

Marc, going ever onwards, now to get the feel of using ZoneMinder, probably be back with more questions soon...

[mikb]

Though you appear sorted, to answer your question "What is zmc?" -- it's the bit of Zoneminder that connects to a camera, and handles all the RTSP/HTTP or other (/dev/video local devices) acquisition of pictures. (c = capture).

zma then analyses those pictures and decides what's worth keeping. You should have a zmc process for each camera, and a zma for any camera where motion detection is in use.

Your litany of errors comes back to the zmc_m2 log which says "I connected to the camera, it talked to me, don't know how to handle that video encoding, I gave up". Or rather: "I came, I couldn't see, I conked out".

Everything else cascades from that: "Where's zmc gone? No pictures! Start it up again!" and "I tried to kill zmc off, it wasn't there!" etc.

ZM is very chatty about what it thinks is going on, which is fortunate when it all goes a little bit wrong.