Unable to get live feed from camera

[deckrd]

Hi everyone

First off I'll say I'm new to ZoneMinder. This is my first installation. I'm running it off of a Raspberry Pi 3B+ that I am also running Home Assistant on. My end goal is to integrate ZoneMinder into Home Assistant and show the live feed there. But I'm thinking step 1 is actually getting a live feed on ZoneMinder, which I'm not.

I'm running version 1.32.3 and I installed it using this linkhttps://raspberrytips.com/install-zonem ... spberry_Pi. I know this is not an official installation guide, but I am new to Linux and there was no Raspbian installation guide. I know Raspbian is a form of Debian but I didn't know which and ultimately went for a guide that was at least aimed at my OS.

I've gotten so far that ZoneMinder is running and I can access the GUI and now I'm trying to add my camera.
I've looked up many guides and many forum posts of people having the same issue. With that as a guideline I've been able to stream my camera through VLC from this source path: rtsp://admin:admin1234@192.168.1.108:554. VLC shows my resolution as 1280x720 and this is also what is in ZoneMinder.
I feel like I have tried every possible combination of source settings under the sun but the red dot has never changed to green and I've seen no actual data transfer. TCP/UDP/Ffmpeg/Libvlc/Remote, nothing has seemed to help.

I've also taken a look at the log every time I've changed the settings for the camera source and right now I am running this setup:



This is the data VLC gets me:


This is the log I get:

Code: Select all

2020-12-09 19:18:34.623120 zmwatch[1148].INF-zmwatch.pl [Restarting capture daemon for Monitor-2, no image since startup. Startup time was 1607537908 - now 1607537914 > 5]
2020-12-09 19:18:31.110050 zmdc[818].ERR-zmdc.pl ['zmc -m 2' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
2020-12-09 19:18:28.160700 zmc_m2[14397].INF-zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp/378 [Stream open rtsp://admin:admin1234@192.168.1.108:554, parsing streams...]
2020-12-09 19:18:28.036156 zmc_m2[14397].INF-zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp/163 [Priming capture from rtsp://admin:admin1234@192.168.1.108:554]
2020-12-09 19:18:28.027370 zmc_m2[14397].INF-zmc.cpp/223 [Starting Capture version 1.32.3]
2020-12-09 19:18:27.622210 zmdc[818].INF-zmdc.pl ['zmc -m 2' starting at 20/12/09 19:18:27, pid = 14397]
2020-12-09 19:18:27.620970 zmdc[14397].INF-zmdc.pl ['zmc -m 2' started at 20/12/09 19:18:27]
2020-12-09 19:18:27.593680 zmdc[818].INF-zmdc.pl [Starting pending process, zmc -m 2]
2020-12-09 19:18:22.578040 zmdc[818].ERR-zmdc.pl ['zmc -m 2' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
2020-12-09 19:18:19.666187 zmc_m2[13793].INF-zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp/378 [Stream open rtsp://admin:admin1234@192.168.1.108:554, parsing streams...]
2020-12-09 19:18:19.558447 zmc_m2[13793].INF-zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp/163 [Priming capture from rtsp://admin:admin1234@192.168.1.108:554]
2020-12-09 19:18:19.550009 zmc_m2[13793].INF-zmc.cpp/223 [Starting Capture version 1.32.3]
2020-12-09 19:18:19.136880 zmdc[13793].INF-zmdc.pl ['zmc -m 2' started at 20/12/09 19:18:19]
2020-12-09 19:18:19.136850 zmdc[818].INF-zmdc.pl ['zmc -m 2' starting at 20/12/09 19:18:19, pid = 13793]
2020-12-09 19:18:19.116740 zmdc[818].INF-zmdc.pl [Starting pending process, zmc -m 2]
2020-12-09 19:18:18.104670 zmdc[818].ERR-zmdc.pl ['zmc -m 2' exited abnormally, exit status 255]
2020-12-09 19:18:15.148038 zmc_m2[13466].INF-zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp/378 [Stream open rtsp://admin:admin1234@192.168.1.108:554, parsing streams...]
2020-12-09 19:18:15.012629 zmc_m2[13466].INF-zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp/163 [Priming capture from rtsp://admin:admin1234@192.168.1.108:554]
2020-12-09 19:18:15.004587 zmc_m2[13466].INF-zmc.cpp/223 [Starting Capture version 1.32.3]

At least to me it LOOKS like the stream is doing something right. It's opening the stream and it's parsing but then

Code: Select all

'zmc -m 2' exited abnormally, exit status 255

which I don't know what means and Googling it has served me nothing.

Are any of you able to help me out?

EDIT:
Oh, I'll add just in case this helps my case. The camera is a Dahua IPC-HDW2531R-ZS.

[deckrd]

Okay, so I'm getting some other errors.



I'm thinking the error has something to do with PATH_ZMS and/or apache2 not running. Terminal says apache IS running, so I'm not sure what else to check for. BUT I've found posts like this viewtopic.php?t=26361 that list a problem with paths (like him, there is no "Paths" in my Options. BUT I am not smart enough about Linux or ZoneMinder to understand what those guys are giving as solutions. Anyone able to help me?

[deckrd]

Okay, so I continued to work on this. I've read so many forum posts by now...

At first I thought it was the source settings in the GUI, so I tried everything.
Then after some digging and reading the errors in the log I thought the problem was in my config. Especially since I don't have the "Paths" setting under Options. I thought something was up with the paths, especially since I got errors about paths. I then thought maybe CGI wasn't running or Apache wasn't running... Or I installed it wrong...

And then I found this forum viewtopic.php?f=38&t=27723 where at the bottom the guy comes back and says he wasn't having the problem he thought at all, he just had to change the source from Ffmpeg to Libvlc. And I thought "there is no way in hell that that's my issue. I've tried that countless times." But I went ahead and tried anyway and lo and behold now I have a feed.

I have no idea what fixed it. I copied the paths from 01-systems-paths.conf into my zm.conf under the conf.d directory in a last ditch attempt because the errors kept screaming about PATHS. And I wasn't sure where it was reading the paths FROM, especially since the third guy on this link viewtopic.php?t=26361 said something about that file...

So yeah. I don't know. I tried so many things either nothing worked and it was just the change from FFmpeg to Liblvc (which I don't understand because I tried it before), or some of those many things I tried worked...

But if it works, it works, I guess. I just hope I can get it started back up once the RPi inevitably reboots at some point.

[burger]

Zoneminder install instructions / notes for RPI are at
https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Single_Board_Computers

For the 3B there is a premade image you can write to sd.

See also the debian guides.
https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Debian

Should probably follow latter or use img.