ZoneMinder Forums

Hello everyone,

I read in several places that ZoneMinder has a light footprint... but the specs I see everyone posting about their setup look kind of heftier than I thought they would be.

For example, you can buy a cheap "4 CHANNEL WIRELESS DVR SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM" on Ebay for a hundred bucks. The included dvr doesn't look like its mobo can be more powerful than some Jetway mini ITX or whatnot, with a gig of RAM or worse.

$100 sounds like a lot less than the outlay we'd need to make to get the same setup with ZoneMinder. I'm all about do-it-yourself, but I also want inexpensive, yet at the same time, expandability.

So help me decide... what is ZoneMinder doing that takes so much more power to run than these seemingly "okay" ebay systems?

Thank you so much for your time,

AML

For recording, it uses very little CPU.

Where it becomes needed is when you're doing motion detection.

Those cheap boxes don't do that, they just quietly sit there putting images onto disk. ZM can do that if you like on pretty much any linux machine, it doesn't need to be fast.

Thanks so much, that's exactly what I wanted to hear.

SOOooo, if I actually used a 1 GHz Jetway mini-ITX motherboard with a Gig of RAM and 3 of those 4 port cards (12 cameras running), do you think it would work okay as a monitoring station only running with at least a few frames per second each?

What if I want internet monitoring?

What if I wanted to add motion detection on ONE camera occasionally?

Sorry - I work at an elementary school and we've been having some trouble with gang members vandalizing the place. Obviously our budget is $Zero, so, I'm trying to get a setup where the maintenance guy and I can watch whats up on twelve cameras, but we may occasionally want motion detection on one or even two of them. I need the minimum system I can get that will actually handle the load.

Any ideas about what that would be?

If I leave out all motion detection would the Jetway at least serve to allow us to monitor and run the internet monitoring thing?

Thanks
AML

I *just* built a zoneminder DVR using the following JetWay system, which is a Dual-core Atom D525 1.8GHz. I put in 2GB RAM and an old 320GB hard drive I had.
Newegg Item# N82E16856107078

I followed this guide for Ubuntu Server 64-bit (except I used Ubuntu 11.04) here: http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... _Cambozola

My setup currently monitors 3 IP cameras (soon to be 4). Each camera has several blob motion detect zones. In fact, I've added two monitors for each camera -- one for motion detect recording at 15fps, and one for continuous record at 8fps. I've been nothing but impressed so far. Everything is extremely responsive, fast, and stable. Total CPU load in this setup is approximately 40% with load average of about 0.30. Keep in mind, my system is dual-core with hyperthreading. The majority of that load is in the motion detect processes (zma).

I know my setup is quite a bit different (fewer cameras, IP cameras, and more processing power) from your proposed setup, but I hope it helps guide you on selecting your hardware.

As long as your processor supports SSSE3 (e.g. Atom), i will soon enough have a solution for you. stay tuned

mastertheknife.

Cool - thanks... the Jetway I actually have lying around is the older one (which doesn't even really have 3 PCI slots so it couldn't really handle everything I said).

However, I think on NewEgg that 1.8 GHz one you're talking about is only $59 bucks or something... I can swing that out of my own pocket I guess - except I assume it doesn't have 3 PCI slots either... haha. Thanks for the heads up, though. Now I know what kind of power you're getting and it sounds like anything will work as long as have more than one core at a good speed, and a solid system like CentOS.

I'll hold for more news of course.

Thanks again!

AML

MrWilder wrote:Cool - thanks... the Jetway I actually have lying around is the older one (which doesn't even really have 3 PCI slots so it couldn't really handle everything I said).

Why do you want 3 pci slots? IP cams don't need anything, other than a reliable network connection. Analogue cams need one tuner card for 4 or 8 cameras.

A) I already have the analog cards.
B) I heard ip cams require more horsepower
C) There are not enough convenient Ethernet jacks at the school
D) $0 budget

:^(

Am I wrong about b? Are ip cameras expensive? Some analog cams are $10. Are ip cameras resource hogs? If I'm wrong, maybe they are a good option.