Linksys wvc54gc

[mikev63]

Is the Linksys wvc54gc camera supported? If not, will this camera be supported in a future version. I seen alot of these questions but no clear answer.

Mike

[pathway]

I just looked at the linksys page about that camera...

It's a Mpeg4 camera, which is not supported by ZonemMnder currently.

There has been a large amount of discussion about MPEG support. It defiantly has been a requested feature. There are complications with MPEG4 vs Jpeg, though... In particular, MPEG4 images won't stand up in a court of law. But, MPEG4 does get you higher frame rates for less bandwidth and storage.

Also, it has been my experience that many of these cheaper cameras are ActiveX only... which means that only Internet Explorer could pull data from the camera. I don't know if this camera is one of those, but I would avoid them if you are looking for cross platform or even cross program compatibility.

--Pathway

[robi]

The stupid thing is that they white on the box: "motion jpeg camera". And when you open it, you see that it's only ActiveX. Of course the ActiveX may actually grab mjpegs from the camera, but you still can't directly access them. Really confusing...

[mikerr]

Actually, you can stream motion jpeg from it by the following url:
(change ip number to what you are using)

http://192.168.2.100/img/mjpeg.cgi

http://192.168.2.100/img/video.asf

..you may have to switch it to mjpeg first:

http://192.168.2.100/adm/file.cgi?h_vid ... &todo=save

(to switch back to the defualt mpeg4)

http://192.168.2.100/adm/file.cgi?h_vid ... &todo=save

[mikev63]

I have tried that...But this camera still does not work with ZoneMinder.

[AdamWhite4]

Here is a way I have figured out to get the Linksys cam to work (and other ASF or incompatible stream cams or video sources). I get about 0.9 FPS via this method on a 1.5 GHz box.

Code: Select all

<?PHP
## Written by AdamWhite4 for the ZoneMinder forum folks

## This is a simple script to make the Linksys WVC54G Cam worth
## something, without resorting to cron silliness.
##
## It might also work with other ASF cam feeds, YMMV.
##
## It will capture a single JPEG image from the ASF stream
## and then direct it to the output buffer as if it were
## just another JPEG fetch from a camera with that capability.
##
## It requires mplayer to be installed, configured with the
## jpeg vo option (default on Ubuntu) and have mplayer in the
## path.  Also, the directory that is running the PHP script
## must be writable by the UID executing PHP, or you'll need
## to make sure the file gets written/read somewhere else.

## Exec the mplayer
## -- To see debug output:
## ---- change 'exec(' to 'system('
## ---- remove '-really-quiet'
exec("mplayer -really-quiet -vf scale -nosound -nolirc -nojoystick -prefer-ipv4 -nocache -user yourusernamehere -passwd yourpasswordhere -frames 1 -vo jpeg http://change.to.your.camIP/img/video.asf");

## This is the name of the file generated by the above command,
## including path
$captureFileName = './00000001.jpg';

## Now we'll open the file for reading, in binary mode
$fileHandle = fopen($captureFileName, 'rb');

## Now we'll send the appropriate HTTP headers indicating this
## is a jpeg stream
header("Content-Type: image/jpeg");
header("Content-Length: " . filesize($captureFileName));

## Lastly, we'll use the fpassthru function to dump the contents
## of the file to the output buffer and exit
fpassthru($fileHandle);
exit;

?>

I'm pretty tickled with the results. You could lower the CPU load by reducing fps in ZoneMinder, or by introducing a delay into the script, but I'm not seeing much load as it is.

I'm brand new to ZoneMinder, but I'll continue to post my stuff if it is helping. I'll try to figure out how to work the hardware wiki stuff later, or someone else may feel free to add this hardware/script to the support matrix, as I tend to forget to follow up on things like that.

Adam

[henke]

Hi,

Anyone used this for mpeg4?

[blight]

This script works a charm for capturing the images from the WVC54GC camera.
My problem is the following:
I can see the monitor in zoneminder by pointing to a file. it works brilliantly. My problem is the motion detection seems to pick up events all the time.
If I view the event in stills, some of the stills are black. I'm sure this has something to do with zoneminder trying to pick up the image as the php script is in the process of replacing it.
Zoneminder then sees a difference and triggers an event which defeats the whole object of having zoneminder.
I have just written the script into a loop. Is this some other way this should be done? Should a wait be put on it or something? Would this even make a difference or would this always happen?

Thanks for the help

Regards
Brendon

[nextime]

Another way to get mpeg4 camera like the linksys one work with a better FPS that the php script with mplayer:

http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10766

[uncleant]

So where does one put the above mentioned script? I've tried the above link and have had no luck at all getting the WVC54GC working. Thanks