ZoneMinder Forums

hi
can anyone offer some advice on a hardware spec for a zoneminder server.

i want to run with 4-8 IP cameras, all motion detection, to monitor access into a number of storerooms housing valuables. i need whatever framerate and resolution you guys suggest to be able to accurately recognise faces of people entering and exiting the storerooms.

what sort of grunt would i need?
cheers

well i have Ubuntu hardy on 1.6 duo and it runs 4 Ip cams at 10 fps and it has a little extra power 15% extra so may be another cam i run at 800x600 res and seems to be pretty good but you may need more or less detail more detail more grunt on pc and less well you get it also mine runs at 325mb ram being used while zm is running

try to get an axis brand cam to test with to see what res you need then by accordingly http://www.axis.com/products/cam_211m/index.htm can run at 1280x1024 that is huge and very detailed but if you dont need so much

http://www.axis.com/products/cam_206/index.htm
gets 640x480

you can also just record the camera feeds and not have zm do any detection but the you need more drives


Or if your gona go analog http://www.zoneminder.com/shop.html
analog cams also are not as as good a picture because of interlaceing on most cams also analog can run up 640x480 and on most cheap cards and cams run at 320x240

but anolog does in most cases need less grunt than IP and is cheaper but lacks alot of detail from the newer ip cams

thanks for your reply.

the axis cameras look to be out of my price range.

They might be worth it in the long run, depending on your other options. They are also capable of doing their own in-camera motion detection, have great picture quality, and my wired ones haven't dropped out once yet in the few months they've been running.

As for hardware, I have 6 Axis 207's currently set to record (planning to do the modetect in the camera, saves load), am logged into GDM, have a few MySQL Query Browser windows open because I'm messing around with another project, and I'm using no more than 40% of each of my 4 cores (core 2 quad 2.66) , and 732mb of my 3gigs of ram.