ZoneMinder Forums

I bought a 8 channel video cctv capture card on ebay, it is a PCI card.

when I type: sudo lshw, here are all the channels that I see. It seems to be using the saa7134 driver. I have cameras hooked up to /dev/video0 and 1, but I see no video under zoneminder.

Is there anything else that I need to do, edit ? files ? for the driver to work ? The cameras are wired, and am using a $50 sony cam that I picked up on ebay, as well, for now just want the 4 cameras to work and the other 4 channels are for later if I decide to upgrade.

Anyone know how to fix this ?

Running Ubuntu 9.10 on an Intel machine, 1.8processor with 512MB of ram, but I can upgrade the ram to 2GIGs.


*-multimedia:0
description: Multimedia controller
product: SAA7130 Video Broadcast Decoder
vendor: Philips Semiconductors
physical id: 8
bus info: pci@0000:06:08.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=saa7134 latency=66 maxlatency=38 mingnt=15
resources: irq:16 memory:f8500000-f85003ff
*-multimedia:1
description: Multimedia controller
product: SAA7130 Video Broadcast Decoder
vendor: Philips Semiconductors
physical id: 9
bus info: pci@0000:06:09.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=saa7134 latency=66 maxlatency=38 mingnt=15
resources: irq:18 memory:f8500400-f85007ff
*-multimedia:2
description: Multimedia controller
product: SAA7130 Video Broadcast Decoder
vendor: Philips Semiconductors
physical id: a
bus info: pci@0000:06:0a.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=saa7134 latency=66 maxlatency=38 mingnt=15
resources: irq:21 memory:f8500800-f8500bff
*-multimedia:3
description: Multimedia controller
product: SAA7130 Video Broadcast Decoder
vendor: Philips Semiconductors
physical id: b
bus info: pci@0000:06:0b.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=saa7134 latency=66 maxlatency=38 mingnt=15
resources: irq:22 memory:f8500c00-f8500fff
*-multimedia:4
description: Multimedia controller
product: SAA7130 Video Broadcast Decoder
vendor: Philips Semiconductors
physical id: c
bus info: pci@0000:06:0c.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=saa7134 latency=66 maxlatency=38 mingnt=15
resources: irq:16 memory:f8501000-f85013ff
*-multimedia:5
description: Multimedia controller
product: SAA7130 Video Broadcast Decoder
vendor: Philips Semiconductors
physical id: d
bus info: pci@0000:06:0d.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=saa7134 latency=66 maxlatency=38 mingnt=15
resources: irq:18 memory:f8501400-f85017ff
*-multimedia:6
description: Multimedia controller
product: SAA7130 Video Broadcast Decoder
vendor: Philips Semiconductors
physical id: e
bus info: pci@0000:06:0e.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=saa7134 latency=66 maxlatency=38 mingnt=15
resources: irq:21 memory:f8501800-f8501bff
*-multimedia:7
description: Multimedia controller
product: SAA7130 Video Broadcast Decoder
vendor: Philips Semiconductors
physical id: f
bus info: pci@0000:06:0f.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=saa7134 latency=66 maxlatency=38 mingnt=15
resources: irq:22 memory:f8501c00-f8501fff

Did you read here???

http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... 34_chipset

Great to hear, so my card has 8 ports, would it be like this:

modprobe saa7134 card=60,60,60,60,60,60,60,60
or
edit your modprobe.conf to include
options saa7134 card=60,60,60,60,60,60,60,60



instead of like it was written ?

modprobe saa7134 card=60,60,60,60
or
edit your modprobe.conf to include
options saa7134 card=60,60,60,60

That's actually a valid question as there isn't really much explanation about the commands in that link.

Is that for a 4-channel card, 8-channel card or is the number of channels irrelevant for that modprobe?

If anyone cares to explain this, it would be greatly appreciated by all. Better documentation on the wiki would be great too...perhaps I'll update it if I'm able once this is sorted. My card came from camsecure.co.uk as recommended.

hooked up video cameras to channel /dev/video0 and video1, all that I am seeing is black and white lines (thin lines) no actual video, better than a blank black screen, but no luck yet.

Instructions are also not written well, for example, this part here:

$ sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

1. Shared memory settings changed for ZoneMinder (ZM) add this at bottom (128 MB)

kernel.shmall = 134217728 kernel.shmmax = 134217728

These two values have to be on their own respective lines:

kernel.shmall = 134217728
kernel.shmmax = 134217728

the way it is written, people will put it on the same line and that will never work, errors pop up. Still nothing for me, frustrated.

Ok, for /dev/video0 I see the video using:

sudo xawtv -c /dev/video0 -q -v

but not at first, once xaqtv starts, under input I have to select Composite2, then it works

under Composite1, I see black and white lines (which is what I also see in ZomeMinder)

For ZoneMinder, how do I make sure it uses Composite2 ???

Please help!!

For the options file, here is what I have:

alias char-major-81 saa7134
options saa7134 gbuffers=16 card=60,60,60,60,60,60,60,60

seems to work for now.

here is some more info for /dev/video0

Inputs: 4
Input 0
Name: Television
Type: Tuner
Audioset: 00000001
Standards: 0xffbfff
Power on (X)
Signal detected (X)
Colour Signal detected
Horizontal Lock not detected
Input 1
Name: S-Video
Type: Camera
Audioset: 00000001
Standards: 0xffbfff
Power on (X)
Signal detected (X)
Colour Signal detected
Horizontal Lock detected
Input 2
Name: Composite1
Type: Camera
Audioset: 00000001
Standards: 0xffbfff
Power on (X)
Signal detected (X)
Colour Signal detected
Horizontal Lock detected
Input 3
Name: Composite2
Type: Camera
Audioset: 00000001
Standards: 0xffbfff
Power on (X)
Signal detected (X)
Colour Signal detected
Horizontal Lock detected

Ok, device Channel must be set to 3, did that, now I see video, but it doesn't look very good

How can I improve it ?

My camera is: Sony CCD Waterproof Day/Night Camera
1/3" Sony CCD
420TVL
NTSC
Model: VT936

Ebay $50

What should I have under Capture Palette ?

Well, I figure everything out. I think I need a more powerful machine, the ones I got is 1.8 single core P4 with only 512 MB of ram, I can upgrade the ram to 2 gig, and the video card does not matter, because I have the machine boot to the command line, (slight Grub change), so that those resources are not used and I view it via the web browser on a different machine via WiFi (works pretty well)!

I ended up reducing the fps to 12 frames per second at 640 x 480, works pretty good, just discovered how to fine tune the Monitor motion detection for each camera, pretty cool!

Got 3 cameras working so far, 1 more to go and later I might do a few internal ones, so I know what my dogs are up to when I am not home, who did what :- ) The default of 30 fps or whatever it is, was too much the CPU was at 99% all the time, and the ZoneMinder web interface stopped working, but reducing it to 12 frames, does a pretty good job.

I guess my question is, can ZoneMinder upload the video to an off site server at the same time as it is recording an event ?

Also, my capture card has little heat-sinks glued to all the chips, but it still gets pretty hot (am thinking on installing a fan to deal with that, so that cards life is not shortened).

Glad to see things are working out for you.

I've got a single camera hooked up right now; zoneminder shows nothing, and xawtv shows a black screen at a resolution that is far too high for this camera (camera is 768x494, display is 1280x732).

I've worked with both Windows and Linux based systems and they are both a pain. At least Linux provides detailed logs on everything going on in the system.

Where did you place your modprobe.conf? I did a search for modprobe.conf using find and came up empty handed. Any other advice for tweaking this card?

/etc/modprobe.d/options

I first I had it to 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 that didn't work, changed it to 60 and added that buffer setting, then it worked. But the video comes in Composite2 which is Device Channel 3 in the Monitor setting.

I looped through all the device channel inputs under /dev/video0 in the xawtv program and it was showing the video under that, but only after I got the options file correctly set for modprobe.