ZoneMinder Forums

I have recently installed Zoneminder 1.25 on Ubuntu 12.04. This is my first experience using Zoneminder.
I am having trouble finding appropriate settings for zones.
Here is what happens:
I have one zone that covers the entire camera display (I will likely make multiple zones, but wanted to start with something simple). Everything looks fine and the alarms are enabled and the zone is in an Active state. But when an Alarm occurs it never goes away. It stays in the Alarm state for hours (and keeps recording). When I disable the Alarm the zone goes back into an Active state. It stays this way until another Alarm occurs and then it again stays in this state seemingly forever until I disable the alarms.

I have played with the Forced Alarm button. When I force an alarm the Zone also stays in an alarm state until I disable the alarms. I assumed (but not sure of this) that a forced Alarm should go away just like a real alarm if no real alarm state is present.

I have tried a bunch of the Zone Alarms setting (pixels, blobs) and changed the various parameters.
Any recommendations?

Larry

Any linked monitors?

You know that is an excellent question. I just noticed that the cause for the continuing alarm state says Linked. But I only have one camera set up and I have nothing entered in the field that for Linked Cameras.
And I see some other alarms showing up also saying Cause = Linked.
So is it possible I have my one camera linked to itself in an infinite feedback loop? I don't believe I have it configured that way in the GUI. So I guess I will go see if I can check this somehow from a command line output.

well thanks- you got me pointed in the right direction.
I didn't have any linked monitors configured as far as I could tell in the GUI (and I only had one monitor configured).

Anyway these steps solved the issue:
1. created a dummy monitor entry in the console
2. went to my real camera and linked it to the dummy
3. definitively unlinked (ctrl-enter) the dummy monitor from the real camera
4. deleted the dummy monitor in the console

Now I see when I force and cancel an alarm this behavior (which seems proper)
Alarm > Alert > Idle
Previously it stayed in Alarm mode. So it seems I somehow had my one monitor linked to itself in a loop.
Now I am seeing the fabulous power of this application.

Larry

Good job! That is exactly why I only ask the question rather then tell you the exact problem. With only one monitor you would have thought I didn't have a clue. Your repair though is unique (first I've heard of that working) so I'll keep it in mind.