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Ubuntu 12.04 aircam no image capture with more than one cam

Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2013 7:20 am
by marcus_dsk
Hello all,

I am extremely new to Ubuntu and Zoneminder, so please bare with me and my questions. I will be as detailed as I possibly can with the problem I am having. I have spent literally a week reading forums trying to get this to work...

Up until a week ago we had Ubuntu 11.10 with Zoneminder 1.23 (I think) with 7 cameras running on the system over the network. Then a few things went wrong and now we are sitting with the following setup:

PC:
- Dell Optiplex 360
- Core2Duo E5200 2.5GHz
- 2GB RAM

Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 32-bit (I did find a post that describes this installation exactly - I'd post the link, but the forum says I'm not allowed to :/ )

Zoneminder v1.25

Cambozola v0.931

Camera:
- Ubiquite aircam
- Firmware v1.1

Zoneminder monitor settings:
- Source type: ffmpeg
- Function: Modect
- max and alarm max fps blank
- ref image: 7
- source path: rtsp://<uname>:<pwd>@192.168.1.x:554/live/ch00_0
- source colours: 24 bit colour
- capture w(1280px) h(720px)
- timestamp and buffers tab all set to default settings
- misc tab default settings except default scale: 1/2x

(i hope i have covered all the important settings...)

The Problem:
My current issue is that I can not get the cameras to display in Zoneminder. I am able to add one specific camera (called "admin") and it works fine (modect works, events are created and stored without a hitch!) The moment I add our "Foyer" cam it all goes downhill. The admin cam still works (sometimes) but the foyer cam either only displays a black box or an image placeholder, but never a stream. Restarting Zoneminder (or the whole server for that matter) cause the admin camera to do the same as the foyer camera. Removing the foyer cam does NOT fix the admin cam.

HOWEVER, if I add the admin cam and the add "Principals Office", both cameras work perfectly. Full functionality.

The hardware we are using has NOT changed. before, the system would handle 8 cameras and CPU usage didn't go above 40%. Now, WHEN and IF two cameras decide to work, the CPU is maxed out...

What have I tried?
I have made certain that the cameras on board settings are identical. Enabling and disabling rtsp authentication makes no difference. Before all of this started, the original server did not require the rtsp auth on the cameras at all.

I have triple checked the monitor settings in Zoneminder. I got these settings off of the ubiquiti forums. Other people are using the same cameras, versions and configuraion as I am with success.

I have increased the shared memory on the server after receiving some sort of shared memory error (which doesn't seem to be coming up anymore). running "ipcs -l" gives me the following values AFTER increasing shared memory:
------ Shared Memory Limits ------
max number of segments = 4096
max seg size (kbytes) = 524288
max total shared memory (kbytes) = 1342177280
min seg size (bytes) = 1

------ Semaphore Limits ------
max number of arrays = 128
max semaphores per array = 250
max semaphores system wide = 32000
max ops per semop call = 32
semaphore max value = 32767

----- Message Limits -----
max queues system wide = 1718
max size of message (bytes) = 8192
default max size of queue (bytes) = 16384

I have gone through the Zoneminder Web interface error log (I have no clue where to look for error logs in the server itself) and found the following errors:
- Level: FAT PID: 5687 Message: Unable to decode frame at frame 0
- Level: ERR PID: 5085 Message: 'zmc -m x' exited abnormally, exit status 255 [x = camera number]
- Level: ERR PID: 6275 Message: Failed to capture image from monitor 6 (0/1)
- Level: ERR PID: 6275 Message: Captured image does not match expected size, check width, height and colour depth
I have googled myself silly and I can not find anything on these errors or how to fix them and I don't what role they play in my current situation.

I have done a few other things that I can't even remember anymore as I have read so many posts.

Lastly, I have run around in circles screaming, lost hours of sleep and I think I grew a few more gray hairs...Zoneminder doesn't seem to care :cry:

Thank you for reading!

Best Regards,
Marcus

Re: Ubuntu 12.04 aircam no image capture with more than one

Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 11:01 am
by TheKorn
I'd try setting the camera up as a standard def camera; make 100% sure this isn't just a "exceeded available CPU power" issue. (Switch to ch01_0 .)