ZoneMinder Forums

(originally posted in User Contributions, but I moved it here since this wasn't really a contribution...)

Hey folks,

I'm in the process of writing a native iPhone application for my zoneminder installation, and wanted to gauge the general want or need for such a thing. I know there's already a few applications on the store that "work" with zoneminder, but they require the user to put in special URLs and such to configure the applications. I also did a search on these forums, and saw a couple of threads talking about iphone applications, but none of them seemed to go anywhere or have a resolution such as "the app is ready, you can get it on the app store."

What I'm talking about is a true iphone application, not a special landing page for use with mobile Safari. I have a working app, but it's pretty specific to my setup, so I'll need some help with beta testing. There's also a very small additional PHP program that sits on your zoneminder server to pass the zoneminder configuration to the iphone application on startup to keep user configuration to an absolute minimum.

Is there interest in the zoneminder community for a native iphone application interface written especially for zoneminder? Would you be willing to pay for it? How much? $2.99? $4.99? $1.99?

I'm interested to hear your thoughts before moving forward with a serious development effort.

If it were very boss friendly, I'd pay $5 bucks * 3. Especially if it was network location aware, so if on local wifi, would use that to get to internal server address, otherwise would go with the external.

I use (well, I will again on thursday when I get a replacement) mine for camera placement often, generally handy when trying to focus/aim an ip camera while precariously balanced on a ladder. With my Axis cams, I just go straight to the camera. With my mpeg cameras, I have to use the ZM interface, which works for me, but I wouldn't want to explain it to a novice.

I'd certainly pay $4.99 (about £3.00 UK) for such an application.

It might be worth having both auto-configure (based on a PHP application running on the ZM server) and manual-configure for those who are not so PHP-savvy?

Having my ZM on my iPhone would be very handy!

Regards,

Ashley

The php code that would come with the iphone native zoneminder viewing app would require no configuration or modification. As it is currently, you would configure the iphone application with the URL of the auto-configure code on your server, and that's it. PHP-saviness would not be required

I've got my $5 ready for the app store, how's it coming?

I must have missed this post. An iPhone app would be awesome! Especially if it did both Live Streaming AND Events. As for cost? I'd pay anywhere from $0.99-$25 if depending on feature set, aesthetics ans ease of use.

Oh yeah, Push notification of events would be sweet too!

madmax wrote:Oh yeah, Push notification of events would be sweet too!

Push notifications might be a little more difficult due to the way Apple has structured things... but we'll see in time.

I wanted to check in and let everybody know that I haven't dropped this project, that I'm working on it, but right now, due to my real job, my free time to work on this is limited so it's gonna be a while longer than I'd hoped before I start soliciting for beta testers.

Keep the ideas coming, I'll certainly try to work in as many as I can within a reasonable time frame.

madmax wrote:I must have missed this post. An iPhone app would be awesome! Especially if it did both Live Streaming AND Events. As for cost? I'd pay anywhere from $0.99-$25 if depending on feature set, aesthetics ans ease of use.

The live streaming part is easy... well, relatively speaking. The events presents a much bigger problem, namely that of having so much information to present on a tiny screen. I want to be able to display and choose events in the program, but how to present that information in a usable, intuitive, and readable way (that doesn't violate Apple's UI guidelines) is a big problem right now.

There is a windows based Camera program & iPhone app that supports push. It's called iCam. They have a video demo just to give you an idea of how it works. Ideally when loading the app, I'd like to see two options. Live Cameras and Events. When you Click on Live Camera, it will list each of your zones and perhaps Quad View. In the Events option I'd like to see a list of all of my zones and maybe the current total number of events for that zone (ex.) Front Yard (1,726) Back Yard (544)

When I click on the zone, I'd then like to see a list of each event.
Not sure how possible this is, but it sounds awesome. I'd like it to be similar to the Remote app for iTunes in layout. what does everyone else think?

This project is very interesting!
I have 5-20$ ready for this app!!

Good work!!

Yep i got money for this too

Me too!

I'd pay for it. Especially if it supported controlling my PTZs.

I've got $ for an iphone client ... Anxious to see a proof of concept at the very least.