ZoneMinder Forums

Hi guys!

I run a small game store and have purchased a reasonably capable computer which I plan to dedicate to a ZoneMinder setup. Getting the software installed and serving pages was a piece of cake, but I found that the cheap USB webcams I had purchased weren't compatible. I tested all four cameras and they worked when connected to my Windows XP camera over the Cat5 USB extensions I have.

I would like to buy four USB webcams. Requirements:
- Must "just work" with Ubuntu Linux 11.04
- Must have known configurations in ZM so I'm not stuck hunting for parameters
- Must be known to work even though four of the same cameras are installed. In Windows with certain cameras it is assumed that you will never have more than one of an identical model, so adding a second causes failure. I don't know if this is an issue in Linux but would like to avoid problems.

I am aware that I could buy and configure a 4-input video capture card, but I already have Cat5 extenders for the USB webcams run, and I like how low-profile they are in the corners. I also know that I could buy network cameras, but they will present power supply challenges and are much more expensive.

Is anyone out there running a plug-and-play multi-webcam system? Would you share the model of your cameras and how you have them configured in ZM?

Thanks for your help, and thanks again for supporting an awesome software solution.

Hi Clavet,

Welcome to ZoneMinder.

I too am fairly new to the ZoneMinder community however i'll take a gander at your questions...

From what I'm read, it seems that you'll be better off with IP Cameras as opposed to USB Cameras. Seems that ZM was designed to support IP Cameras and that's what most members use.

To use IP Cameras you can power them with PoE (Power over Ethernet).

You should also start reading the WiKi for more information, and read on the recommended hardware.

I'll let others chime in....


Good luck.

Actually, zm was designed with more of a bias to analogue cameras - and these are handled similarly to usb, although for a long time it's worked excellently with ip too.

Ip cameras are more expensive, yes. Power to them is less of an issue. Power over ethernet, either internal or with a splitter and injector works well for an extra £30 or so per cam. (Cheaper than having a socket fitted, but you could get several usb cams for that)

USB is a viable option if you can make the runs, but not all extenders work equally or work over long distances. Some extender kits are limited to 1.0 which ain't enough.

Finding a linux compatible usb camera is a bit of a challenge, but a more linux-specific forum or site might help you more than here, so long as you can get linux to recognise your camera and mount it as /dev/videoX you should be fine with zm. I don't know if there are any limits for usb webcams though.

Here's my experience... Pretty new around here, but I have 3 web cams streaming: an MS Lifecam 720p, an older Logitech Notebooks Pro, and a cheapo $5 camera I picked up on Amazon. The 1st two are running on F14 and the last one is on Ubuntu 10.04 via mjpg-streamer-r63.

Some thoughts...

The guys are right.. if you're in a commercial setting and your business depends on it, spend a few bucks and get some real cams that are more straightforward to set up. After all, time is money.. you will spend time messing with this.. and your business probably depends on reliability.

Now, if you wanna start off with some web cams cause you already have those extenders and then phase in some ip cams as budget allows.. then hey.. that makes sense and we call can understand the budget thing.

On the 1st two cams, I was able to get these up and running on F14. But, I did test all 3 on Ubuntu 10.10 first and they all worked (just cause my laptop has 10.10 on it)...
1. The usb ports have a memory/resource ceiling that you might run into if you install too many cams, you can google that. It very well may be an issue with 4 cams on one machine...this might give you problems getting them to go yellow or green in ZM.
2. I also had shared memory challenges galore.. I don't recall all the specifics here, but watch out it.. theres lots in the documentation on that...I solved my shared memory issues by installing sys::mmap. All my shared memory tweaking hassles went away.. Much more stable:

1. build with mmap enabled (refer to install docs)
2. install sys: Now the last cam, worked in U 10.10, but F14 did not like.. but I wanted it remote anyway and I had an old laptop, I found out about mjpg-streamer... so I downloaded and installed 11.04 and no go.. I couldn't get it work.. then again, I didn't mess with it too long.. no patience at that point... I read something about new releases of the kernel dropping support for something.. it might not be related to the cam, but to a dependancy for mjpg-streamer.. . I tried to look it up, but don't see anything now.. I could be wrong on that.. So, I dont' care what's on that old machine, so I just fell back to 10.10 (with is long term support anyway) and bingo.. it just works.. not sure what the issue was there, but you might consider 10.10 instead of 11.04.. It's long term support and stable and yadda yadda...

So.. hope that helps a bit.. Tweaking these cams has been an exercise in frustration, but I've learned a bunch.. You WANT to install Masterknife's performance patch if you go down the web cam route.. he opened up the color pallette to include an mjpeg option that just works on web cams.. the yuvv one was a hassle and only worked on 1 of mine...

Hope this helps with you decision.. Time=Money.. Penny wise pound foolish.. (insert additional idioms here)

jbmia