ZoneMinder Forums

Hi, first of all sorry for my bad english.

I have 9 remote cameras configured in my ZM server. no camera camera has problems with registration, however constantly the origin link turns into red.
If I click on it, and then click on the save button the camera reconnects again without any problem. But again after some random period of time
some camera is disconnected.

Do you have some idea about what may be happening?

my first guess was some latency issue, but any idea will be appreciated.

lower your fps settings, maybe you don't need the full speed for all of them

fixed the same problem for me - WAN latency/bandwith can change over time!

jfkastner wrote:lower your fps settings, maybe you don't need the full speed for all of them

fixed the same problem for me - WAN latency/bandwith can change over time!

Thanks for you response,I will try that. any other sugestions?

Model of camera? Wired or wireless?

you have 9 cams - check your system load (cpu and memory) - especially WITH motion detection!

if your system is too busy it can't handle the new picture requests fast enough, and they time out (or blank out)

coke wrote:Model of camera? Wired or wireless?

The model is Vivotek PT7137, this is a wireless camera.

jfkastner wrote:you have 9 cams - check your system load (cpu and memory) - especially WITH motion detection!

if your system is too busy it can't handle the new picture requests fast enough, and they time out (or blank out)

The cpu load is about 12%, but i found that the memory usage is almost 100% , the system has 1G of ram. This may be the problem after all.

So I will try a memory upgrade, however I have searched the recommended system requirements, but i did not found that information.

Do you know where I can find that information, or do you have any suggestions. I am not using motion detection

Again thank you very much for your answer.

depending on how you get the information about the memory you'll see 100& memory, because linux uses as much as possible/available for caching

'top ' tells you xxxxx free but also yyyyyy cached, where webmin says 'real memory zzzzzzzz used'

your RAM might not be all really used up!

try a lower buffer size for the cams (goto main screen, choose a source, buffers, image buffer size)

keep in mind the memory you'll need is

(# of cams) x (resolution) x 3 x (buffer size) = bytes needed for the buffers

the '3' of course comes from 24bits color/pixel divided by 8 bits per byte

If that doesn't work, I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's a wireless issue. Any chance you can plug that cam in for a few days and see if it still experiences the same issues?

jfkastner wrote:depending on how you get the information about the memory you'll see 100& memory, because linux uses as much as possible/available for caching

'top ' tells you xxxxx free but also yyyyyy cached, where webmin says 'real memory zzzzzzzz used'

your RAM might not be all really used up!

try a lower buffer size for the cams (goto main screen, choose a source, buffers, image buffer size)

keep in mind the memory you'll need is

(# of cams) x (resolution) x 3 x (buffer size) = bytes needed for the buffers

the '3' of course comes from 24bits color/pixel divided by 8 bits per byte

Indeed I used the top command.

top - 16:29:55 up 3:37, 2 users, load average: 0.08, 0.17, 0.17
Tasks: 102 total, 2 running, 100 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 7.9%us, 0.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 91.6%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1027652k total, 1011996k used, 15656k free, 34216k buffers
Swap: 2650684k total, 764k used, 2649920k free, 804684k cached

coke wrote:If that doesn't work, I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's a wireless issue. Any chance you can plug that cam in for a few days and see if it still experiences the same issues?

Thanks also I will try that, but i have to say even if the camera disconnects from Zoneminder, I can still watching it. from the camera web interface.

Wireless issues could be tested independantly by simply leaving a ping running. Stop after it's timed out on zm and see if the packet loss is unusually high, or you notice any routing errors.

1g of ram ain't a lot, especially if you have a large ring buffer and could be a reason too. 'free' gives a little more info than top for where memory is actually going.

Following the advices, I have connected 2 cameras using UTP cable, and one of them is not disconnected, but the other is disconnected. so i think is not a wireless iissue by itself, but it can be influencing.

Dou you know if it is possible to run some script to reconnect the cameras periodically?

well i asked about some script to reconnect the cameras,

I found that the comand "zmu -m id -r" should do that, is this correct?

anyone??