Zoneminder is failing me!

[revvy]

I don't really know how to put this into words, but after months of effort I still cannot get ZM to reliably record for me. I've tried the various motion-sensing options and nothing I pick seems to work properly.

The gist of the problem is that it simply fails to record events when it should. For example, when I came into work today it should have captured me walking in, however it has only captured one event for today rather than the 5+ it should have. I've also noticed that if I don't restart ZM once daily it simply stops recording events altogether.

So now I have a cron job that restarts ZM daily, but I'm STILL having issues where it simply doesn't record when it should.

The computer is kind of old (500mhz), but one camera is all I'm using and the pc does nothing else. I've even installed the MMX jpeg libs. What could be causing ZM to consistently fail? We're changing our insurance policy here at work soon, and we'll be REQUIRED to have a camera system, and at this point ZM just can't cut it.

[SyRenity]

Hi.

Try this thread for improved motion detection mechanism:
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewto ... highlight=

It should be much more accurate (though I didn't have the time to test it myself yet).

[revvy]

I don't think it's an accuracy issue though. It seems more like a memory leak. Like I mentioned, it wouldn't record events at all if I didn't restart ZM once a day. I'm thinking that maybe if I restart it 4-5 times a day then it will work better. I was hoping a developer could shed some light on this.

It doesn't seem right to me that the package should REQUIRE daily reboots to keep doing what it is supposed to do from the very start. And I haven't heard of others having these problems, so I'm thinking it is more related to the configuration.

[coke]

My 4 ip-cam setup on Ubuntu 7.10 with 1.23.3 doesn't require reboots.

[timcraig]

What do the log files tell you? Check the /var/log/syslog, /tmp/zmdc.log for any zoneminder error warning messages.

What is your memory usage, cpu usage and load like?

If there are not any error/warning messages in the logs and your system load isn't bad, then your issue is that your zones are not sensitive enough.

Test your system with a zone that has a threshold of 10, and min alarm,filter and blob areas of less than 1 percent. You'll should see events being recorded along with alot of false positives. Then start raising the threshold and min area settings slowing untill you get a good balances detection of valid events and false positives.

[kevin_robson]

Hi,
I've never had to reboot, and the default zone has always started recording events by default - turning the number of events down is always the tricky bit.

I think you have a problem with the install - check the logs as suggested above.

Did you amend the shared memory settings on install?

[theorganloft]

I don't really know how to put this into words, but after months of effort I still cannot get ZM to reliably record for me. I've tried the various motion-sensing options and nothing I pick seems to work properly.

The gist of the problem is that it simply fails to record events when it should. For example, when I came into work today it should have captured me walking in, however it has only captured one event for today rather than the 5+ it should have. I've also noticed that if I don't restart ZM once daily it simply stops recording events altogether.

So now I have a cron job that restarts ZM daily, but I'm STILL having issues where it simply doesn't record when it should.

The computer is kind of old (500mhz), but one camera is all I'm using and the pc does nothing else. I've even installed the MMX jpeg libs. What could be causing ZM to consistently fail? We're changing our insurance policy here at work soon, and we'll be REQUIRED to have a camera system, and at this point ZM just can't cut it.

You sound frustrated and I understand your plight. You did not give many details on your hardware and distribution setup but I must tell you that if you want performance, spend some time and money on it. For a one camera system, you can build a system that supports 4 cameras for less than $500 using modern computer components. Just because this is open source, you must consider that it needs resources. Use Ubuntu and apt-get to install zoneminder then follow the guidelines in the zoneminder wiki site.

I never use an old machine to build robust systems like zoneminder. Zone needs SQL, PHP, and other processor/memory resources to perform well.

Good Luck