ZoneMinder Forums

Hi all,

Setting up Zoneminder, I have a camera at the end of a hallway looking at the front door which has an "Active" zone covering the door and then an "Inclusive" zone covering the length of the entryway (See attachment):
I want the recordings to continue after the door is opened so long as movement is present in the "Inclusive" zone, but it seems like the "Inclusive" zone is just ignored (am I missing something about how Inclusive zones work?).

The "Active" zone works as intended, tripping once the door is opened, but the event recording stops while a person is still walking around in the "Inclusive" zone, which is very strange - the entirety of the event is just the "Post Event Image Count" after the initial "Active" zone is tripped and the "Inclusive" zone doesn't extend the recording, even though I am still walking around in that zone.

To test my settings, I changed the "Inclusive" zone to an "Active" zone - and it records as intended, as long as I walk around in the zone and then the correct "Post Event Image Count" after I leave the field of view. Unfortunately, I cannot keep it that way, as I don't want recordings to start unless the door has been moved first (preventing false alarms when walking into the camera's field of view, e.g. going into the closets, while the system is armed). I also don't want to simply put a long "Post Event Image Count," as I could end up missing activity of a true event.

Any help would be greatly appreciated - I already have some Python scripts I'm planning on tying into the system. Very cool piece of software, if I can just get this event recording settled. Thanks.

(Also, the timestamps are correct - I have been racking my head on this one all night)

I set up a test similar to yours and got the same results. Guess we will have to wait on a developer to chime in...

bb

From the documentation:

Inclusive
This zone type can be used for any zones that you want to trigger an alarm only if at least one other Active zone has already triggered one. This might be for example to cover an area of the image like a plant or tree which moves a lot and which would trigger lots of alarms. Perhaps this is behind an area you'd like to monitor though, in this case you'd create an active zone covering the non-moving parts and an inclusive zone covering the tree perhaps with less sensitive detection settings also. If something triggered an alarm in the Active zone and also in the Inclusive zone they would both be registered and the resulting alarm would be that much bigger than if you had blanked it out altogether.

What this means is that an inclusive zone can't create an event by itself. If the active zone no longer has an active alarm in it, then it does not matter what is going on in the inclusive zone. It will never trigger an event nor continue an event all by itself. Keep in mind, this was intended to prevent nuisance alarms such as objects blowing in the wind. It was not designed keep an active alarm going when the object causing the motion moves from the active zone to the inclusive zone.

Looking at your red (active) Zone, it appears that someone could kick the bottom half of the door in and you'd be none the wiser. Such a tiny detection area.

I would (and do) live with some "false" alarms and just ignore them, rather than set up something like this and -- as you noticed -- miss real events.

knnniggett wrote:From the documentation:

Inclusive
This zone type can be used for any zones that you want to trigger an alarm only if at least one other Active zone has already triggered one. This might be for example to cover an area of the image like a plant or tree which moves a lot and which would trigger lots of alarms. Perhaps this is behind an area you'd like to monitor though, in this case you'd create an active zone covering the non-moving parts and an inclusive zone covering the tree perhaps with less sensitive detection settings also. If something triggered an alarm in the Active zone and also in the Inclusive zone they would both be registered and the resulting alarm would be that much bigger than if you had blanked it out altogether.

What this means is that an inclusive zone can't create an event by itself. If the active zone no longer has an active alarm in it, then it does not matter what is going on in the inclusive zone. It will never trigger an event nor continue an event all by itself. Keep in mind, this was intended to prevent nuisance alarms such as objects blowing in the wind. It was not designed keep an active alarm going when the object causing the motion moves from the active zone to the inclusive zone.

So can I accomplish it by overlapping the zones somehow then?

Looking around the forums for this answer, it seems everyone wants the "Inclusive" zone to act like how I expected. How hard would it be to add another zone type to Zoneminder - something like a "Maintain alarm" zone to do what we're all expecting? Any savvy developers out there? I'm a Python developer - never worked with Perl.

The thing is, we have no shortage of people trying to tell us what we should be doing with our spare time. And when I respond with no, then we get to listen to whining/angry responses attempting to argue that person's idea should be more important than what we are currently working on. This is often from a total stranger whose first post in one of our forums is their feature request.

What we are in real need of, are volunteers who are willing to spend their free time helping out... Answer questions in the forum, add content to the wiki, update documentation, write code. If you want to make ZoneMinder better, then the best way to do that is to figure out how to help out. You said you currently develop in Python, so I'm sure it would not be an overwhelming task to learn the pieces of C, php, and Perl that make up ZoneMinder. I was not a developer in anything before I became part of the ZoneMinder team, but I took the time to learn it. I'm sure you could do the same if you were willing to spend the time.