ZoneMinder Forums

Been trying to get a usbcam going in ZM for several days now, (ok weeks, leave me alone!)

One way or another my source always stays red. My latest attempt now is with a MS Lifecam cinema- (great image btw...) and Ubuntu Karmic. I am able to see this cam in guvcview and xawtv no problem now. I did this by using a uvc driver from berlios and I think I tried v4l-dvb at one point also.

I've followed several guides and although it appears ZM 1.24.1 support v4l2 cams, I find most people recommending mjpg-streamer or uvc-streamer. I'm trying to get mjpg-streamer setup, but I get errors on the 'make clean' and the stream check through firefox does not render anything. Also, I'm concerned that I may not be able to use the full res of the cam with a streamer. Seems like mjpg-streamer may need libjpeg but I can't find how to install this for ubuntu.

I installed ZM using the synaptic package manager and guides found in the ZM Wiki. I'm really excited to try out ZM and I think the lifecam cinema with a res of 1280x720 would make quite the awesome security cam setup.

I've tried to find ways of polling the camera for appropriate settings to use in the source page of ZM and am coming up short. ZMU commands against /dev/video0 error out. It is frustrating that I can see video in guvcview, xawtv and cheese without problem, but not in ZM.

Although I keep seeing mention of ZM support v4l2 natively and UVC, I'm not finding any info on how to set the source properties properly. Really looking forward to using ZM and gotta say that I'm really getting frustrated chasing my tail trying to set this up... Probably would go a lot better if I were more linux savvy. Thanks for info.

I got mjpg_streamer to work (required jpg library) apt-get install libjpeg62

I also got ZM to see the stream, but only at 320x240. Also, setting the camera to record rather than monitor makes the source label go red and stop working within 1 minute. Perhaps this is the memory/buffer setting thing I see on various posts.

Seems like it would be much nicer to setup the cam within ZM without use of mjpg_streamer. Thanks for info again.

Errr sounds like alot of trouble with setting up streamer. I have this exact same camera on ubuntu karmic and I believe it didnt require anything but to be plugged in. It also worked with the vs. of zone alarm from the repos. Just choose source tab video for linux version 2. dev channel 0, device format PAL, for capture palette YUYV , and cap width 1280x720.I think I restarted zm to kind of update the page and got orange than green. Be prepared to warm up that dual core or quad core with a brightly lit day and lots of action. Currently I am using motion to pipe to zone minder with vloopback but I know it worked out of the box with those settings I mentioned. I did later mess around with uvcvideo to get movement out of a logitech orb af I found that tut in the ubuntu forum. Little tip I found the karmic package to be buggy the web page kept locking up although zm kept going so I am using the debian 1.24.2.2 package and its libdirac dependency you can find the thread in this forum somewhere.

Thanks for the info... I just reinstalled Karmic and ran updates- I'm going to try the debian 1.24.2.2 package. I'm still pretty new to linux- should I use apt-get to get the debian 1.24.2.2 package? I'm assuming I have to make some change to the command to allow unstable releases, right? Would you be kind enough to mention how to get the libdirac dependency setup in ubuntu also? (I'll try to do some reading also)

In the source settings, I tried your recommendation- However regarding the format setting PAL- There are about 10 flavors of PAL, PAL B1 PAL B for example... Is there a specific one to use?

Thanks for your input!