Empirical observations: Zoneminder versus iSpy

[alabamatoy]

Windows 7 Pro 64bit, running iSpy (latest version), 3 Foscam cameras. 1T separate dedicated data drive (SATA internal).

Exact same box, now running Ubuntu 16.04LTS and ZM 1.29, same cameras with no changes to camera configurations or network.

I was able to store about 30 days worth of recorded video coming off the 3 cameras without exceeding about 80% drive space utilization using iSpy. With ZM, I can get only about 7-8 days of video on same hard drive with the same cameras before I hit 80% and start deleting old stuff.

Some related issues:
iSpy stored video in a mov format with files named by date and time. So it was trivial to find the time and camera view you wanted and look at it, and share it with someone else. With ZM, one must use the HTTPS interface to dig around in the "events" and then export the event in order to arrive at the same point.

iSpy was far easier to setup email-based alerting. It had a form for entry of the SMTP server name, credentials, and the target delivery address. With ZM, I had to install some kind of locally running SMTP (I used SSMTP) in order to accomplish same thing.

iSpy did not have any real HTTP or HTTPS capability, ZM is miles ahead on that.

iSpy seemed to consume much more of the box from throughput perspective. When iSpy was running in W7, the box was pretty limited on what else it could do at same time. With Ubuntu and ZM, it seems much less so. For example, I can open FF and play Pandora on the same box without adversely affecting Pandora or ZM.

Hope this helps someone else....

[cyruspy]

I've installed 1.30 and tries with Samsung Smartcam cameras. It works, but the recorded actions are choppy at 1080p

This is transferring using WiFi on the same room with more that enough hardware. Using the Samsung software, even though it's proxied by their cloud platform, I get a super smooth stream.

Any comments on that?