Zoneminder and Low Power Computers

[Laffer]

Hello Guys,

Zoneminder is really great, but for Videosurveillance which runs 24/7 it is absolutely significant on which "System" you are running it. If I install it on a x86 PC, the consumption will be a minimum of 30W on a notebook, more than 100W on a Desktop/Server PC.

So I started to look for alternative Solutions. I started with ZONEMINDER from UBUNTU 12.04LTS Distrubition on a ARM HF Kernel with my CUBIEBOARD 1. It has a ARM Cortex A7 Allwinner A10 1 GHz CPU with 1 GB of RAM. The Zoneminder Version from Ubuntu is 1.25.0.

Basic Experience: Good. But the CPU is on limit with 1 IP Cam in Modect Mode. In Monitor Mode it is around 40% CPU with a WansView NCB543W and /videostream.cgi and REMOTE Setting. Adding a RTSP stream via ffmpeg overloads the system.

So I have ordered an ODROID-U3 which arrived a few days ago. The ODROID stays with less than 10W, has a Quadcore ARM Cortex A9 Samsung Exynos 4412 Prime CPU with 1,7 GHz and 2 GB RAM. It is about 8x the Performance of the Cubieboard. It runs a Lubuntu 13.10 and I tried the Zoneminder 1.25.0 version. I get it up running, but up to now no picture from the Camera. I am still trying to track down the issues.

The main topic which remains: There are no new builds for ZoneMinder (1.26.5 or 1.27.0) for the ARM HF Platform, but this should be the Platform to go for the future. I hope some of you could create a repository with new ARM HF Versions? Compiling it from scratch has so many dependencies, for myself it is a nightmare.

H.264 En- / Decode must be HW supported via ARM Neon or GPU support (Mali etc.), ffmpeg?

[a_aguas]

Use with RaspberryPi (1 camera max)

4W

[Laffer]

Hi. I am quite happy. Now everything works with Zoneminder 1.25.0 (mod_cgi was not enabled before)...

Good results. 2 WansView Cameras: NCB 543W and NCL615W in Modect produce less then 10% overall load.

I will add 2 more cameras with RTSP streaming....

[Laffer]

A technical question: How does the Source "ffmpeg" work? does it use some ffmpeg libraries? Can I exchange them via ffmpeg libraries with NEON or Mali HW support?

[MeadowCourt]

I am currently using an Odroid XU4:
- OS is http://www.armbian.com/odroid-xu4/
- 5 x Dahua 4300S PoE cameras, 720 x 576 resolution, 24 bit color

CPU Load runs around 2.85 on average.

[knight-of-ni]

The main topic which remains: There are no new builds for ZoneMinder (1.26.5 or 1.27.0) for the ARM HF Platform

I don't know what drew you to this conclusion, but packages for the latest version of ZoneMinder on armhf architecture have been available for some time now for multiple Debian based distros and Fedora.

I don't run ZoneMinder on Debian, but it sounds like you are running a spin of Ubuntu, which means iconnor's ppa is probably what you want to go with.
https://launchpad.net/~iconnor/+archive ... zoneminder

I believe they will install on lubuntu.

If you want to use a Redhat distro, the newest ZoneMinder packages have been available on armhf since Fedora 21.

[jsc]

I am currently using an Odroid XU4:
- OS is http://www.armbian.com/odroid-xu4/
- 5 x Dahua 4300S PoE cameras, 720 x 576 resolution, 24 bit color

CPU Load runs around 2.85 on average.

Are you simply straight recording or are you running anything extra (i.e.: motion detection, scripted actions based on detection, etc...)?
Scott

[MeadowCourt]

I am currently using an Odroid XU4:
- OS is http://www.armbian.com/odroid-xu4/
- 5 x Dahua 4300S PoE cameras, 720 x 576 resolution, 24 bit color

CPU Load runs around 2.85 on average.

Are you simply straight recording or are you running anything extra (i.e.: motion detection, scripted actions based on detection, etc...)?
Scott

Sorry for my slow response.... Yes running motion detection and recording those motions to a QNAP server.

I have been having a lot of issues of late though, system locks up with nothing in the logs. I do note this page though http://zoneminder.blogspot.com.au/p/zon ... d-xu4.html, which is very different to how I put together my XU4.... so I may just reflash the MMC using those instructions

[knight-of-ni]

I have been having a lot of issues of late though, system locks up with nothing in the logs. I do note this page though http://zoneminder.blogspot.com.au/p/zon ... d-xu4.html, which is very different to how I put together my XU4.... so I may just reflash the MMC using those instructions

Hey, that's my blog.
It's interesting to see at least someone is reading it.

After writing that blog I learned a couple more things I have not documented:

- The Odroid would consistently lock up on me after ~5 days of operation. At first I thought I may have done something wrong when I upgraded the heatsink (see blog for photos). Perhaps I was too liberal with the heatsink grease. It took a long time to find the real cause, but for me it turned out to be a swap issue. I just happened to be looking at the log at the exact moment I duplicated the lock up, when I saw "Out of memory, reaper reaping processes..." ...and of course the process the reaper decided to kill was the process controlling the login prompt! Argh! Typically I set the swap to something very small when I'm running on an sd card, but it turns out that caused the issue. If I set the swap file to 1GB then the thing never locked up again.

- Not sure when the Odroid-HC1 was released, but it turns out that is even better than the xu4 for the purpose of zoneminder: https://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-hc1-0003a

The aluminum case itself is the heatsink, and it has an integrated sata port for a 2.5" ssd. We've arrived at the Holy Grail for ZoneMinder micro servers! If you prefer to use a 3.5" drive then you can buy the larger Odroid-HC2

[MeadowCourt]

Hey, that's my blog.

<snip>

Indeed! I had been hunting around for potential problems why the XU4 would be locking up and you are not the only one to point to a problem with the size of the swap.

I tried booting again last night and it just won't start at all now, probably corrupted the SD card, I have an MMC I should be using, but have had trouble in the past using linux to write the image and found later that Windows (of all things) could write the image properly.

Back to drawing board when I get some time to investigate.

BTW has anyone looked at one of the TV boxes based on the S905 for zoneminder? It's capable of h265, which would be brilliant for compressing video streams. I make a unique post for that question.....

Cheers
John

[MeadowCourt]

I have been having a lot of issues of late though, system locks up with nothing in the logs. I do note this page though http://zoneminder.blogspot.com.au/p/zon ... d-xu4.html, which is very different to how I put together my XU4.... so I may just reflash the MMC using those instructions

Hey, that's my blog.
<snip>

Tried following the blog build notes, but, I tried to use the stretch image... not such a good idea. The build script does not support stretch, so when I fudged it, I also found there are missing dependencies during the build.

I'll drop back to jessie and test the outcome on a Cubox i-4 Pro.

Cheers

[knight-of-ni]

If by build script you mean the zoneminder do_debian script, it should build just fine on Stretch.

I have upgraded my Armbian installation to Stretch, and have successfully built zoneminder. Going through my command history, it looks like I did this:

Code: Select all

./do_debian_package.sh --snapshot=NOW --branch=master --type=local

There shouldn't be any missing dependencies. Note that we did recently make a lot of changes to the master branch, and some new dependencies cropped up. I believe the dependencies were updated correctly in debian packaging scripts to account for this.

Also note the syntax of the do_debian script may have changed since I wrote that bloh. Hmmmm.... maybe I better look into that.

[knight-of-ni]

Just to be sure nothing broke, I tried the build again. Looks like the do_debian script works:

Code: Select all

$ ls zoneminder*
zoneminder_1.31.44~20180510115320.orig.tar.gz
zoneminder_1.31.44~20180510115320-stretch_armhf.build
zoneminder_1.31.44~20180510115320-stretch_armhf.buildinfo
zoneminder_1.31.44~20180510115320-stretch_armhf.changes
zoneminder_1.31.44~20180510115320-stretch_armhf.deb
zoneminder-dbg_1.31.44~20180510115320-stretch_armhf.deb
zoneminder-doc_1.31.44~20180510115320-stretch_all.deb