Today's epsiode of help-a-newb.

Telemann · Post by **Telemann** » Fri Apr 27, 2007 9:38 pm

Thanks in advance for any helpful hints on this. I love the whole concept of ZoneMinder and am excited about getting it working.

After a few hours of muddling I got ZoneMinder installed. I'm hoping someone else can save me a few more hours and illuminate why I can't see through my camera yet...

Have:
Headless Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) Box
Quickcam 4000
ZoneMinder, which I installed via the tar ball (with no ffmpeg).

Info for you:
Screenshot of the ZM console. : http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/console.jpg
lsusb command : http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/lsusb.jpg
"zmu -d /dev/video0 -q -v" command : http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/zmu.jpg

So my understanding is that i'm supposed to be able to click on the words "quickCam4k" in the console and see a stream from that camera. The problem is it isn't even a link. What gives? (Feel free to request any info and I'll post it here.)

This is a command line only box so I haven't been able to install and GUI applications to see if the webcam is working or not...Is there an easy way to grab a frame from /dev/video0?

Thanks for reading!

Post by **cordel** » Sat Apr 28, 2007 2:09 am

Becuase the device is shown in red, means that ZM was not able to capture from the device. For the reason you need to look in to the logs ans such as described in the sticky note on top of this topic

abroz · Post by **abroz** » Sat Apr 28, 2007 6:05 am

I'm definitly not expert, but you can try one of the following:
- try playing with resolution - make it low as you can (for ex. 160x120)
- try changing color type (grayscale, RBG,...) but only after you lower the resolution

Also, what would be helpfull is for you to post pic of your devide setting from ZoneMinder...

And yes - you have to start ZoneMinder first - do this before everything else! If it is not running you will definitly so NO camera output and device will be shown red.

Regards,
Aj

Post by **cordel** » Sat Apr 28, 2007 6:32 am

Opp's I missed the Stopped in the console.

Telemann · Post by **Telemann** » Sat Apr 28, 2007 4:46 pm

Thanks for all of your replies

I have more info for you. The logs don't reveal any errors after staring zm. Interestingly enough, many of the processes crash after i stop it again...

Here is a screenshot of my ssh terminal showing the logs.
http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/console2.jpg

The web console says "stopped" no matter what I do. I can click on "stopped" and try to "apply" a different state in the popup window and it seems to ignore me even while the zm processes are running as in the next screenshot...
http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/processes.jpg

Here are screenshots of the monitor I've set up from the web console.
http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/ ... uffers.jpg
http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/ ... eneral.jpg
http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/camTabMisc.jpg
http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/camTabSource.jpg
http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/ ... estamp.jpg
(note: i've tried the top 3 "device formats" in the source tab: PAL NTSC and SECAM.)

I'm not sure what a "devide setting" is. If you would be so kind as to direct me towards it I'll take a screenshot

Sorry i didn't quite follow the sticky, I'm trying

Thank you very much for you patience.

abroz · Post by **abroz** » Sat Apr 28, 2007 7:15 pm

Ok - what should be done next is find out why is your ZM not starting or exits.

WebCam problem shouldn't be the one to blame for this. I tried disabeling all my camers in ZM, and ZM still runs without a problem.

From what I can see in your zmdc.log - the process keeps running without problem unitll you stop it.

Can you try configuring source as following:
Device Format: Change to PAL
Palette - keep YUV420P
Width: 320
Height: 240

In general setting - lower MAXIMUM and ALARM FPS to 10.

And then try "restart" or Start of ZM.

I had this WebCam eariler but it faild after a month or two with ZM.

Telemann · Post by **Telemann** » Sat Apr 28, 2007 7:32 pm

As requested:

New settings in the monitor:
http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/ ... neral1.jpg
http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/ ... ource1.jpg

And, after those settings were set, we check the logs and find it's still crashing...
http://www.gummicorp.com/zoneMinderPix/logs.jpg

The web console still won't let go of "stopped" when try to apply a change (while the processes are running).

Telemann · Post by **Telemann** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 6:10 pm

I reinstalled from scratch (from the tarball) with ffmpeg and added a few more perl libraries that the ./configure script said could be needed.

Still the same issue. I can't get rid of "stopped".

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 7:40 pm

have you thought of the live cd, as ubuntu escpecially fiesty is problematic

Post by **cordel** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 7:43 pm

What user do you have zm running as (ZM should be running same user/group as apache)?
Do you have SELinux kernel, and if so is it disabled?

Telemann · Post by **Telemann** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:01 pm

That was it.

I had it installed as the wrong user/group. Changing the user/group in the ./configure group allows me to view through the camera.

The processes still crash when i do a ./zmpkg.pl stop though

Next up:
Get my motion detection on

Thanks for all your help!

Telemann · Post by **Telemann** » Tue May 01, 2007 6:16 pm

Thanks everyone for your help

I will do my best to rtfm, but i've hit a bit of a stumper here.

I did:
I set up monitors, I defined zones. I configured some background-running filters. All of that seems to be working beautifully.

My Problem:
Notification emails are sent once an alarm event is over with rather than the very moment it starts.

Background:
My place of business has been hit by a burglar twice in the middle of the night. What I would like is to have an SMS message wake me up the moment the dude walks in the door. He seems to be a "professional burglar" in that he is in and out in 60 sec flat. I plan on calling 911 the instant i can verify i'm actually being burgled via the camera, but the guys chances of getting away are much better if i don't get notified until he has already left.

It seems like zm was designed for this kind of thing. Am I missing something obvious somewhere? (a setting perhaps?).

I can write my own cron-jobbed-script to detect new rows in the sql tables, but that seems silly when zm is so powerful. I'm guessing I'm just missing the obvious somehow?

Thanks again!

Post by **cordel** » Tue May 01, 2007 6:27 pm

This is the way it functions as ZM will send the highest scored frame with the email. The event has to compleate in order to know what frame has the highest score.

I know that I had seen someone here work on a script to get event status from shared memory that might work for you. You could then have it send an alert as soon as an event starts.

Telemann · Post by **Telemann** » Tue May 01, 2007 6:30 pm

Ah ok. I was hoping there was a setting somewhere.

It would be very easy for me to write a script to do it. I was just making sure there wasn't a built-in way to do it first.

Post by **cordel** » Tue May 01, 2007 6:33 pm

I found it for you, in the last place I looked of coarse.
http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... n_alarm.3F

ZoneMinder Forums

Today's epsiode of help-a-newb.

Today's epsiode of help-a-newb.

More info

Here you go

Still chugging along.

Bingo

configuration time