zmtrigger.pl / showtext confusion

Post by **kylejohnson** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 1:19 pm

I am having an issue with zmtrigger.pl and am not sure if it is by design, if I am doing something wrong, or what! To sum everything up, instead of generating a new event, ZM is updating the 'showtext' field when the action of the trigger is 'on'

I have one monitor that I am triggering via tcp like 5|on+6|1|Lane 2 Violation|Xmph - Lane 2|Xmph - Lane 2. This works.
But then say I send another trigger - 5|on+6|1|Lane 1 Violation|Xmph - Lane 1|Xmph - Lane 1 - before the first trigger ends, ZoneMinder simply updates the showtext field, instead of generating a second alarm.

From my understanding of the description zmtrigger.pl in the wiki, this seems to be broken, as my second command is not 'show', but another 'on'.

'showtext' is up to 32 characters of text that can be displayed in the timestamp that is added to images. The â€˜showâ€™ action is designed to update this text without affecting alarms but the text is updated, if present, for any of the actions. This is designed to allow external input to appear on the images captured, for instance temperature or personnel identity etc.

So any help would be appreciated,
Thanks!

Normando · Post by **Normando** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 11:14 pm

I think it work correct. If you send another "on" command before the last extingued, you will extend the "on" state, and so, you will get the same "event".

I think you must "off" the previous state in between the two commands or before each "on" command. So

5|on+6|1|Lane 2 Violation|Xmph - Lane 2|Xmph - Lane 2

5|off||||

5|on+6|1|Lane 1 Violation|Xmph - Lane 1|Xmph - Lane 1

I don't know if field separators (|) are mandatory when used with "off" action.

Try and post the results.

Regards

Post by **kylejohnson** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:25 pm

Smart man. I will let you know!

Post by **kylejohnson** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 1:50 pm

Having a few problems with sending 'off' before my next 'on' statement:

1) For my application, I need to generate a completely separate alarm for each trigger that I send. If my first trigger should be 10 seconds, but I send the 'off' before my second trigger, the first trigger will obviously be cut short.
2) While subsequent alarms are now being generated, I have still noticed that the showtext is being updated in the those events. For example, if I send three eight second triggers separated by two seconds.
2.1) Event 1 showtext is correct, but the duration is cut short.
2.2) Event 2 showtext is from Event 1, updates to Event 2, then cuts off short.
2.3) Event 3 showtext is from Event 1, updates to Event 2, updates to Event 3, and then finishes recording for the appropriate duration.

Normando · Post by **Normando** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 2:54 pm

So I think I'm not understand correctly your requirement.

Confirm if you need:

Generate X events from the same monitor, with a predefined (via command line) duration, and some events are overlap?

mmmm....I think it is not posible with the current ZM design. Because each monitor can generate one event at the same time.

May be a dirty workaround is using the alarm level or text field to define the source of the event, and then make a custom filter (with filter window) to generate a video from each level or text embedded into de monitor.

You can run a filter at the background, and automatically generate a video from those events that match your criteria.

In this case you need only to update the alarm level or text via zmtrigger.pl and send the "off" command when you want to stop de capture.

Try to play with filters. Filters are a great feature, and you can separate events based on it's texts, alarm leves, etc.