ZoneMinder Forums

Hello

I want to use Zoneminder for my home surveillance needs. Initially I want to connect 4 cameras to the system, with motion detection activated for all the cameras. It can potentially grow to 6 cameras that I connect to the system.

I want to buy a pc/server that I'll dedicate for this purpose. As the server will be running 24/7, it should be both low power and quiet. Currently I'm looking at the Intel Core i3-3240 Dual-Core Processor 3.4 Ghz. It draws about 50W typically. Is this processor good enough for 6 cameras or is it a bit overkill? I'll also add 4GB of RAM to the system (1600Mhz) or should I go with 8GB?

Are there any other guidance available that will help me in creating a server specifically for Zoneminder?

Thanks

There is no real guide to speak of--just the collected experience of others. What type of camera (analog or IP) and resolution/frame rate do you want to achieve?

ZoneMinder transcodes all video to individual JPEG files (although there is work underway to change this), so the system load depends on the video resolution and frame rate you want to run through ZoneMinder. Most IP cameras provide more than one video stream, one full quality and the other lower quality. If you are willing to use lower resolution and frame rate, you can keep the load very low. You can always use ZoneMinder to capture motion and notify you of events using low-resolution video while simultaneously recording direct-to-disk at full resolution completely separately from ZoneMinder. That's what I do.

I run three cams in my system: one 3MP @ 8fps, one 2MP @ 8fps, and another 2MP @ 15fps, all on an Intel Atom machine, and load stays below 50% during simultaneous events on all three cams and idles around 15% recording video 24/7. The key is that I'm using VGA resolution for the 3MP cam and D1 resolution for the other two cams in ZoneMinder, all at 8fps, for motion detection. That's good enough for me to see if an event is important. If it is, I can pull full 15-minute video files off the server to see everything in max quality.

If I had to upgrade, I'd probably go with the AMD Kabini chips like the Athlon 5350 with the AM1H-ITX motherboard, which is quad-core and benchmarks about 4X higher than the Atom and less than a new Core-i3.

If you're planning to use 480TVL or 600TVL analog cams, then you should have no issues with load on an i3 as long as you keep you expectations of frame rates realistic. If you cut the frame rate in half the load cuts in half.

6-10 fps isn't exactly fluid video but is good for security.

That's very good advise, thank you very much.

I think I'll first run Zoneminder on an old T400 laptop that I have. If its good enough I can use it as a long term solution.