ZoneMinder Forums

Hi, I have read alot of posts about the Foscam FI8904W and how to set it up in zoneminder. I bought 2 of the original ones (not fakes) from foscam.ca

Anyhow after setup I was not very happy with this camera. What I found was 2 problems.

1. frame rate is very slow 2-3 FPS or less for 640x480
2. camera hangs after some time both with using the snapshot.cgi and even worse with the videostream.cgi

So I set it up as follows:
Left the max FPS and Alarm FPS blank

I have yet to here from foscam support but I highly doubt they can fix the reliability issue. Also I have heard that the night vision range is very low because they have the IR leds behind the glass so to get the range you need you have to remove the glass and it will not be waterproof.

If anyone has some helpful information on how to get these working I would appreciate it before I attempt to return them (BTW - Foscam does not accept returns, however since I paid with paypal I think they will have to refund me if they cannot fix the stability issues and the framerate issues).

Cheers
GD

Hi,

I have one, and it works fine since I installed it (more than one year ago). About the problems you mentioned:

- In my camera, the image is better in 320x240, 640x480 is very pixelated, seems not real. It's setup to capture 3fps, but switching to 7.5 fps when motion is detected and works perfectly. I have made test capturing at higher fps and no problems. I use the previous configuration, because that way the cpu is not overloaded.

- If the camera hangs, maybe you're using the wifi connection. I was using it and decided to buy a PLC (ethernet over power line cables). The wifi connection in my case was weak, distance from router to camera is more than 10 meters. Also, check the firmware, maybe is not the latest.

The night vision is good enough for my application, and have been working at 40 degress Celsius to -5 degrees without problems. Also, I had to change the lens to have more angle.

Good luck!

PacoLM

Thanks PacoLM, So I am using the WiFi but I still had issues wired as well. So here is what I had to do since zoneminder was getting 2 errors. The first was an HTTP response timeout when the capture thread for that monitor started. To fix that the HTTP Timeout had to be trippled from 2.5 seconds to 7.5 seconds. That fixed the response issue.

Second this camera is very slow at streaming so you can get delays of up to 8 seconds between frames so you need to double the Delay time between frames from 5 sec to 10. See below for info. I will post my configuration for this cam here too for you all:

Had to change the Zoneminder settings for the following to get things to work reasonably:

This is in the Options->Web tab (remove ZM_ and you can change it)
ZM_HTTP_TIMEOUT (How long ZoneMinder waits before giving up on images) from 2500 to 7500 (milliseconds) this is a very long time

This is in the Options->Systemtab (remove ZM_ and you can change it)
ZM_WATCH_MAX_DELAY (The maximum delay allowed since the last captured image) from 5 seconds to 10 seconds

Monitor config:
General
Name: FI8904W Camera
Source Type: Remote
Function: Modect
Enabled: Tick
Maximum FPS: 10
Alarm Maximum FPS: 5

Source
Remote Protocol: HTTP
Remote Method: Simple
Remote Host Name: 192.168.1.x
Remote Host Port: 80
Remote Host Path: /videostream.cgi?user=zoneminder&pwd=&resolution=32&rate=3
Remote Image Colours: 24 bit colour
Capture Width: 640
Capture Height: 480

Zone setup that works best for me:
Preset: Best, High sensitivity
Units: Percent
Alarm Method: Alarmed Pixels

Reduce the zone area as much as possible to target smaller movements.
Lastly may want to bump up the alarm framerate if your system can handle it.

So all in all it seems to work. I have to say I am not very impressed with this camera, very slow. I will report these issues to Foscam and cross my fingers since if they make it faster and fix the networking to be wireless N then it would be very good.

PacoLM wrote:Hi,

I have one, and it works fine since I installed it (more than one year ago). About the problems you mentioned:

- In my camera, the image is better in 320x240, 640x480 is very pixelated, seems not real. It's setup to capture 3fps, but switching to 7.5 fps when motion is detected and works perfectly. I have made test capturing at higher fps and no problems. I use the previous configuration, because that way the cpu is not overloaded.

- If the camera hangs, maybe you're using the wifi connection. I was using it and decided to buy a PLC (ethernet over power line cables). The wifi connection in my case was weak, distance from router to camera is more than 10 meters. Also, check the firmware, maybe is not the latest.

The night vision is good enough for my application, and have been working at 40 degress Celsius to -5 degrees without problems. Also, I had to change the lens to have more angle.

Good luck!

PacoLM