Axis 200+ camera and Zoneminder

[dantux]

Good day | evening everyone,

After spending many many hours online and on the zoneminder interface, trying to get this camera to show, I decided to come here and ask; maybe one of you have done it and would save me lots of hours.

I bought (I wish I didn't) two Axis 200+ cameras on eBay. Good deal and I was happy I could get them that cheap. Before I did that, I read on Zoneminder website that all Axis cameras work (most). I got them and I was a bit disapointed to see how old the technology is with these. The firmware is since 1998 since the dial-up modems days. I guess at that time, these where high tech. Anyway... I got to configure them to show in my browser. The quality of the image is OK and the "server push" feature shows a good enough stream of jpeg showing. I can't get it to show in Zoneminder, regardless of what I tried.
Not even a static image. If I type in the browser the ip camera then | fullsize.jpg (replace pipe with forward slash) I get a static picture which would refresh with the browser refresh. Any ideas, anyone, on how can I get zoneminder to read the "server push" from the camera?

Here is the address to the website of this camera (forum doens't let me put in links)
|axis dot c o m | techsup | cam_servers | cam_200 | index dot h t m

Any ideas are much appreciated.

[Flasheart]

I don't have any 200's, but generally Axis are very good - and if you think their UI sucks, you should try some of the others!

Anyway, use the presets if you're just starting out. Add monitor, top-right hand of that window, select Axis from the presets there. Start small and if it craps out when you go bigger, see the faq about shared memory.

[dantux]

Hi Flasheart,

Thanks for your reply!
If you have never seen Axis 200+, it's hard to understand how this works. I think these were ones of the first network cameras they made. You set up the IP using ARP protocol. Interesting. It has like 2MB of ram. To generate a fullsize picture (aprox. 350x250 pixels), it takes 0.5 seconds and to generate a big one (700px), it takes 8 seconds. No, it doesn't do video streaming, only static pictures. It does have a "server push" option that keeps sending statics and resambles video. The quality of the picture is not too bad; it's Axis, after all.
Is zoneminder able to do http requests to a specific url (like this: h t t p : / / <ip_address>/image.jpg)? Because this camera only creates a new picture when a client requests it. One can create a javascript to continuosly request a new picture and it would eventually look like a low-rate video, but can Zoneminder do that?

I spent a lot of time on this and I ended up using a 'trick'. I created a bash script on my server that uses wget to download a new image in an infinite loop. Then I copy that picture to a different file (in the same loop). After that, I set up Zoneminder's source type as "image" and point it to the local file which is constantly updated by my script. It works OK for now. It's way better than throw the camera away.

Thank you again for your reply. If you have any ideas on how I could make this better, please share.

Marian.

[Flasheart]

Hi, interesting. Sounds like a bit of a veteran.

And yes - zm will fetch a static jpg. Use "remote" with the hostname of ip.address an a path of /image.jpg - you may need to set a low framerate ( 0.5 for 1 frame every 2 seconds) to prevent overwhelming the poor thing and there may be a need to increase the timeout if it's that slow.

ZM will then present it as a video stream.

[dantux]

Hmm...how didn't I try that
I'll give it a go and let you guys know how it went.

[dantux]

Hmm...how didn't I try that
I'll give it a go and let you guys know how it went.

Yeah.... it works like a charm (given the limitations). Thanks a lot!

Can we update the wiki page for the Axis cameras, to include instructions for Axis 200+ ?
This will help others like me who spent hours troubleshooting.

Thank you again!

[francisuk22]

Ok i did a google search for one to try and help out, it looks the same for axis 240 but gives a quad screen (up to 4 cams) aswell so the axis 200+ camera would work as this one has 1 video input.

See URL for Axis 240

Remote Host Path
/cgi-bin/fullsize.srvpushb

Capture Width (pixels)
352
Capture Height (pixels)
288

Dos it work better?

[dantux]

Thanks francisuk22,

I gave it a try, but I wasn't hoping to work better than the url with /fullsize.jpg
The url you provided, it works in the browser, but for some reason, doesn't work in Zoneminder. The setting with the /fullsize.jpg works as good as the serverpush url shown in the browser. No difference. I guess Zoneminder is doing a great job with the first option.
I'm happy for now; given the speed this device is able to do, the image is quite good. But... for the next camera, I will invest a bit more and buy a new one

Thanks everyone!