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ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 8:25 pm
by Mad Professor
Good Day All.

Can anyone here please tell me if there are any app's for android phones, that are compatible with ZoneMinder so that I can remote view cameras on my system?

Thanks for your time.

Best Regards.

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2011 8:38 pm
by BlankMan
I'm using tinyCam Monitor tinycammonitor.com which is ZoneMinder aware.

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2011 3:47 pm
by Mad Professor
Thanks for that, working a treat!

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 12:30 am
by linuxsense
IMO the one to use is "IP Cam Viewer Pro". I have been using it for quite a long time and it works very well with ZM. A free version is available but you cant go wrong for $3.99 for the Pro version. Me and my wife both have it on our phones and we use it all the time.

https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... Paid&hl=en

No affiliation, just a happy user.

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 2:08 am
by BlankMan
linuxsense wrote:IMO the one to use is "IP Cam Viewer Pro". I have been using it for quite a long time and it works very well with ZM. A free version is available but you cant go wrong for $3.99 for the Pro version. Me and my wife both have it on our phones and we use it all the time.

https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... Paid&hl=en

No affiliation, just a happy user.
How's it compare to tinyCam Monitor?

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 2:21 am
by linuxsense
BlankMan wrote:
linuxsense wrote:IMO the one to use is "IP Cam Viewer Pro". I have been using it for quite a long time and it works very well with ZM. A free version is available but you cant go wrong for $3.99 for the Pro version. Me and my wife both have it on our phones and we use it all the time.

https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... Paid&hl=en

No affiliation, just a happy user.
How's it compare to tinyCam Monitor?
I cant honestly say as its been a long time since I have looked at Tinycam, I looked at its website after posting here earlier and it looks much improved over what I remember. I'll probably give it a try.

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 5:25 am
by linuxsense
OK, I have both IP Cam Viewer and Tinycam setup and they both are good. Tinycam has some nice layout modes that IP Cam does not have but IP Cam has better performance when viewing multiple cams.

Tough call but for my setup I think IP Cam works better. I will keep playing with Tinycam, perhaps it will grow on me.

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 5:58 am
by BlankMan
I'd be interested in hearing what you find as the pros/cons while comparing them.

I've using the free version and has all the functionality I need. The only limitation of the free version is streaming 4 cameras simultaneously verses 16 but hey 4 cameras at one time on a smart phone display is about enough. Any more and you need a magnifying glass anyway.

I got 4G and I don't know if it's tinyCam or the wireless that is limiting the performance. When using it with 2 or 4 cameras up and watching ZM's logs I see ZM scaling back the frame rate. But even 1 fps for 4 cameras at once I feel is pretty good especially when all my cams are 640x480 or better.

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 5:36 pm
by Kogashuko
So how are you all setting it up. It has an option to add camera but obviusly http://192.168.1.x/zm is not the url for the individual camera stream? Also does this work with a AVI or mpeg stream or does it have to be jpeg which looks awful and slow on my home pc web browsers? Thanks.

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 12:28 am
by BlankMan
Kogashuko wrote:So how are you all setting it up. It has an option to add camera but obviusly http://192.168.1.x/zm is not the url for the individual camera stream? Also does this work with a AVI or mpeg stream or does it have to be jpeg which looks awful and slow on my home pc web browsers? Thanks.
If you're referring to tinyCam: You're right, the IP has to be accessible from the Internet but if your router/gateway to the Internet can port forward you can forward http traffic to 192.168.x.x. I used to do that myself when my web server was 192.168.20.100.

You point it at the web server, tell it it's Zoneminder, set the username and password, and the monitor ID number. I far as I can tell you don't need /zm in the URL at least I don't have it in there and it works. It tries to connect to /zm/index.php but but I don't use the default location so it doesn't find it and moves along and uses nph-zms directly with the proper params.

Looks like it's using mjpeg but you can use jpeg also. Can't see any other choices in the free version.

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 4:30 pm
by Kogashuko
I will try yet again...

tinyCam Monitor for Android and ZM

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 9:41 am
by alexvas
A new version of tinyCam Monitor has an ability to load custom HTTP GET requests for ZoneMinder. So you can specify your own requests if have installed ZM not in default http://ip:port/zm directory. Please read here for more info and XML template. This template has a full request list used currently by the app to work with ZM.

For instance you can define the following XML script:

Code: Select all

<vendors>
    <vendor name="ZoneMinder Custom">
        <model name="Generic">
            <request name="Login">/zm/index.php?view=watch&mid=%CAMERANO%&username=%USERNAME%&password=%PASSWORD%&action=login</request>
            <request name="MJPEG">/cgi-bin/nph-zms?mode=jpeg&monitor=%CAMERANO%&user=%USERNAME%&pass=%PASSWORD%</request>
            <request name="MJPEG2">/cgi-bin/nph-zms?mode=jpeg&monitor=%CAMERANO%&user=%USERNAME%&pass=%PASSWORD%&maxfps=1</request>
            <!-- More requests here, see custom_vendors.xml template -->
    </vendor>
</vendors>
There is also a big performance optimization in latest tinyCam Monitor versions. You can check this video for your reference.

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2011 1:44 am
by linuxsense
Since I switched to a new phone I decided to try both apps and I still find IP Cam Viewer to be much faster...no comparison.

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2011 8:15 am
by alexvas
linuxsense wrote:Since I switched to a new phone I decided to try both apps and I still find IP Came Viewer to be much faster...no comparison.
What do you mean by "faster"? Do you see UI lags in tinyCam or do you get more FPS watching ZM?

tinyCam Monitor is not limiting frame size. Maybe that is the case. This is an xml file with all HTTP requests being sent to ZM. You can change it and upload to your phone for better performance.

Re: ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2011 8:42 am
by linuxsense
alexvas wrote:
linuxsense wrote:Since I switched to a new phone I decided to try both apps and I still find IP Came Viewer to be much faster...no comparison.
What do you mean by "faster"? Do you see UI lags in tinyCam or do you get more FPS watching ZM?

tinyCam Monitor is not limiting frame size. Maybe that is the case. This is an xml file with all HTTP requests being sent to ZM. You can change it and upload to your phone for better performance.
The time between starting the application and viewing live images from my 6 cam ZM server is far shorter with IP cam viewer, almost instant, TinyCam takes much longer. Since I often need to quickly see my feeds that is the major factor in using IP cam viewer over TinyCam. TinyCam also shows lower FPS in comparison to IP cam but that is not that big of a deal, its the start-up time.