ZoneMinder Forums

Followup to topic:

http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewto ... f64e12dc1a

This newer camera looks like a superior camera to the 747W, with NAS download capability.
Anyone tried it? Any tips or comments regarding it and ZM (and anyone tried GPIO on it)?

Bought this camera a few weeks ago from geeks.com (at the time geeks.com was also selling the camera on E-Bay for the same price but with free shipping).

I have not messed with Zoneminder in while so I've been going through a bit of a (re)learning curve. I can tell you that, now that I've got Zoneminder compiled and working, I will now determine what settings work best with this camera. I will be looking particularly into the mpeg4 and rtsp capabilities that this camera has over the 747.

Sorry I don't have anything useful to post just yet, but I will let you know as soon as I do.

I did a little tinkering this morning and here are my notes...

Using the information in the forum thread mentioned previously, I was able to get the Airlink 777W to work with the following settings:

Remote Protocol: HTTP
Remote Method: Simple
Remote Host Name: {username}:{password}@{camera ip}
Remote Host Port: 80
Remote Host Path: /cgi/mjpg/mjpg.cgi
Remote Image colors: 24 bit
Capture Width: 640
Capture Height: 480

IMPORTANT: make sure the remote host path is "/cgi/mjpg/mjpg.cgi" and NOT "/cgi/mjpg/mjpeg.cgi" ....i.e. no "e".

ZoneMinder is telling me that I am getting 20 fps with this setting, which happens to be the same frame rate I get when viewing directly from a browser (so I guess we can call this a complete success).

Note that a Remote Host Path of "/cgi/jpg/imge.cgi" will also work, but you will get a low frame rate.

I tried using the RTSP protocol using port 554 but was unsuccessful. At this point I'm not sure I need this anyway.

I was able to get PTZ control working as well by following instructions in this thread:
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewto ... sc&start=0


Still on my To Do list: investigate recording audio using the information in this forum.

Alright, last post and then I will shut up...

I forgot to mention that the above settings were done using firmware 1.0.0-25. I think it matters so if you are having troubles then first verify you've got the latest firmware for the camera.

I have followed all the directions here (copying SkyIPCam7xx.pm into /usr/share/perl5/ZoneMinder/Control/, where all other control files are, with the same permissions the rest have, plus all the settings recommended in http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewto ... sc&start=0), but unfortunately I have had no luck with the PTZ controls for the 777W. I keep getting the message although I am certain zoneminder is getting the right user, password, IP address and port number (80, actually) for the camera.

I am running ZM 1.23.3 right now (because of the stills in the montage view), but I wasn't able to get ptz to work on 1.24.1 either. Cam FW is 1.0.0-25.

I wonder if I am missing something important...

By the way, I keep getting errors like but I think they are unrelated, since I get them from another camera (no-ptz, but which uses the mjpeg address /cgi/mjpg/mjpg.cgi) also.

Hi, are you using the camera's admin account to send the PTZ commands?

I don't think that was stated in the thread previously mentioned, but I believe you do need admin privileges to control the camera.

knnniggett wrote:Hi, are you using the camera's admin account to send the PTZ commands?

I don't think that was stated in the thread previously mentioned, but I believe you do need admin privileges to control the camera.

Hi,

Thanks for your answer.
I was not using the admin user for the PTZ commands, although I once tested with that too, without any positive results. I will try again, maybe something else was wrong when I did it earlier.

I wonder why it should be that way, though, since I can control the camera movements as a regular user through its own web interface.

Thanks again.

Thanks very much! Giving the admin user&passwd made the error:
zmcontrol[9220]: ERR [Error check failed: '401 Unauthorized']
disappear, and the PTZ controls work.

There were huge delays of random length between the command and the camera movement at the beginning though. I thought they could be related to the crashes that I was seeing before (errors of the type zmc_m2[29716]: ERR [Got signal (Segmentation fault), crashing]) and I went back to read jpg stills instead of the mjpg stream, and everything worked like a charm, the PTZ controls work from ZM as fast as the do from the camera's own web interface.
I wonder if the crashes are due to the fact that my PC is a bit old, possibly not powerful enough to stand the load of reading the mjpg streams, or it is just some kind of incompatibility between the cam stream an ZM.

The other thing that still puzzles me is the need for specifying the "admin" user for the PTZ controls to work, since it is not necessary from the cam's own web interface.

Anyways, thanks everybody for all the wonderful info, tips and help that can be found here!

I noticed a lag of PTZ commands on my Airlink 747W when I was using mjpeg stream and lowered the frame rate through Zoneminder. The lag went away if I didn't lower the frame rate through zoneminder and set the frame rate on the camera itself.

timcraig wrote:I noticed a lag of PTZ commands on my Airlink 747W when I was using mjpeg stream and lowered the frame rate through Zoneminder. The lag went away if I didn't lower the frame rate through zoneminder and set the frame rate on the camera itself.

Thanks a lot, that's probably it. I am giving it a try right now and things seem to work fine, no camera crashes or lags in PTZ motion so far. I am trying it with another camera too (linksys) and it seems to be fine, I guess the problem/solution is not camera-specific.