ZoneMinder Forums

Scenario:
I have a friend living on a farm that would like to setup a community CCTV network, right now will be about 7 households.

The backbone will be a wireless link.

Each of the households will have a zoneminder machine servicing the cameras connected to it.

The idea is to have a centralised monitoring "station" from where he can login and check all the cameras connected to the network.

Due to cost IP cameras not really an option.

Thanx in advance

Sounds like a fun project.

Don't rule out ip cameras, they're cheaper now and I know from doing several farms myself, long runs are much much easier with cat5 and you could save significantly on cabling costs.

For centralised - not sure. I have a server on each farm from which zm is viewable from each location. Maybe there's a way you can replicate the mysql databases centrally to have a big list of events, I'm not a mysql expert though.

For looking at live feeds, at least with ip cameras, that's easy with html and <img> tags to an mjpeg feed. (firefox or chrome, not ie)

You don't actually ask any questions, but as a broad idea I know having seperate installs works great, but I don't know about merging together but am not entirely sure what you want.

Just stick a huge computer at the most central AP of the wireless link and set up an account on each ZM box with the same login/pw ( makes it easier )
and configure for remote monitoring in (options)
. Keep in mind that video over wifi will take up a lot of bandwidth. So setting lower frame rates will help out a lot.

I have the same basic scenario here. But not every cam is monitored by the central. (indoor cams NOT) main door ways are. I set up monitors and disable them. Re-enable them when we know a house hold will be vacant for a day or more. ( saves Bandwidth)

If you haven't setup the wireless link I recommend looking at Ubiquiti M series. Up too and some times over 80 Mbps 1 way. Close to the speed of 10/100 cat5.

I've never gotten Zoneminder to successfully install, though I haven't tried it in awhile. Just looking at your screenshot I see that /var/log/apt/ could be missing. Run

Code: Select all
ls -l /var/log | grep apt


and see if you get a response that looks like this:
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-12-01 08:03 apt
if you do, then /var/log/apt already exists and there is some error with zoneminders installer. If you don't see apt, run

Code: Select all
sudo mkdir /var/log/apt/


to create the directory and try installing Zoneminder again.