ZoneMinder Forums

Hi!

I've been try to make this *** thing work for two months now (sorry for using inappropriate language but I just can't take it anymore). I've got a Logitech Webcam for Notebooks Deluxe.

I've installed Zoneminder 1.23.2 (I don't want to upgrade to the 23.3. until I get this version to work) using a debian package. It installed like a snap. Webpage opened at once. But every time I click on the camera, I get neither a feed (black screen) nor still images (see a broken link).
Specifying the camera source worked from the start, the camera link is orange. What was quite strange, is that when I set the camera to record events, it actually did capture jpegs and saved it into events.

I've read here on the forum, that logitech webcams use different drivers. So I've tried installing mjpeg-streamer. The streamer WORKS!!! On the streamer's port every single link except for javascript (cambozola.jar) shows appropriate feed. Yet zoneminder doesn't display any image. The camera link is also orange.

So may be someone could help me?!!!!
If you'd like any extra data, just ask...
Please!!!!.........

P.S. Oh actually, just changed mjpg-streamer from 15 to 6 fps and cambozola.jar works as well on the streamer page.

I have almost the same setup and encountered similar problems. Here's how I finally got it working. Hope it works for you as well.

First, get and install the latest SVN snaphot of mjpg-streamer. I recently fixed a problem in it where it was sending bogus headers in snapshots. Browsers could generally deal with it, but ZM would complain.

Set up a "remote" camera with:
Source=Remote
Remote Host Name: localhost
Remote Host Port: 8080
Remote Host Path: /?action=snapshot

Set other parameters such as capture width/height, fps, etc to match the settings for mjpg-streamer. Don't set fps too high for starters, try about 4 or 5 and then adjust up or down after you get that working.

Note: you could set it up for /?action=stream, but I would suggest applying the fixes to zm_buffer.cpp/h that I posted to the User Contribution forum a couple of days ago if you do that. Otherwise you can occasionally get corrupted images which cause the feed to come and go.

Start the new version of mjpg-streamer. Make sure /?action=snapshot works with a browser before proceeding. Reload a few times to make sure the image is updating (i.e. mjpg-streamer is working)

Shutdown and then start ZoneMinder to make sure all of the daemon processes are restarted.

The main drawback I found using snapshot mode is that the system log may get a message from mjpg-streamer for every image, which gets to be a lot at 5fps. I finally switched to streaming mode once I fixed the bugs in zm_buffer.cpp/h.

I remembered one other step that I did when working on this problem. I don't know if it is actually required or not, since I was changing multiple variables around the same time.

I changed my V4L Linux kernel options so that:

% cd /usr/src/linux
% grep VIDEO_V4L .config

# CONFIG_VIDEO_V4L1 is not set
CONFIG_VIDEO_V4L1_COMPAT=y
CONFIG_VIDEO_V4L2=y

Previously, I think I had CONFIG_VIDEO_V4L1 also set. As I said, I don't know if this made any difference, but things started working much better shortly after I made this change as well as the mjpg-streamer fix.