ZoneMinder Forums

I have 3 wireless cameras monitored by ZoneMinder. Two are 2 Megapixel, located indoors, and work fine. One is a 3 Megapixel, located outdoors and has an issue. All cameras are Amcrest.

When I click on the outdoor camera in the console a window pops up and sometimes a picture will appear sometimes it doesn't. When it does appear the great majority of the time the time stamp at the top doesn’t increment and motion is not pick up, it is like a snap shot. The indoor cameras record at about 28 fps and the indoor camera at about 2 fps, when it works.

The log for the outdoor camera displays the following:

2017-02-19 18:02:04.851571, zmc_m4, 4705, INF, Priming capture from rtsp://admin:passwordremoved@IPaddressremoved:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0, zm_ffmpeg_camera.cpp, 104

2017-02-19 18:02:04.805229, zmc_m4, 4705, INF, Starting Capture version 1.29.0, zmc.cpp, 250

2017-02-19 18:01:50.845192, zmc_m4, 4623, INF, Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting, zm_signal.cpp, 40

All cameras can be viewed without problem on an Android phone, iphone, and a PC all using Amcrest software.

I thought that this is an issue with the strength of the wireless signal from the outdoor camera, but that doesn’t explain why it it works with the phones and PC. Any ideas?

The first thing I ask when some cameras work and another doesn't is how much memory does the server have? Specifically, how much free memory in tmpfs? The higher the resolution you use the more memory you need. There are plenty of forum topics that address this so I'll stay off of my soap box...

I limited the frames/second to 10 fps at the camera. I also used the guidance in the forums to calculate how much memory is used. That value is 163.35 MB. Then while zoneminder was running I did a df -h and got the following:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 2.9G 0 2.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 590M 8.8M 582M 2% /run
/dev/sda2 452G 6.6G 423G 2% /
tmpfs 2.9G 156M 2.8G 6% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 2.9G 0 2.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1 511M 3.6M 508M 1% /boot/efi
tmpfs 590M 40K 590M 1% /run/user/1000

It appears that there is 2.9 GB allocated, 156 MB used (close to the calculated value). So lack of memory does not appear to be a problem. Where else should I look?

Next would be resolution. What you choose has to match what the camera delivers. We usually recommend to use VLC to check the camera resolution:

Tools - Codec use the Display Resolution or fractions, by half, thereof. If it says 640x480 use that or 320x240

I used VLC to check the resolution and it was 640x480. I changed all cameras in ZoneMinder to this resolution and started the program. After 2 hours all three cameras stopped updating. I changed all cameras to 320x240. After 1 1/2 hours the 3 MegPixel camera stopped updating, the remaining two 2 MegPixel cameras continued to update. I checked the log and there were many that like the one below -

2017-03-03 20:29:53.442959, web_php, 3309, ERR, socket_sendto( /var/run/zm/zms-709967s.sock ) failed: No such file or directory, /usr/share/zoneminder/www/includes/functions.php, 2371

Are there other adjustments I should be making in ZoneMinder, or a camera setting?
I am using a laptop computer with an Intel Core i3 processor, 6 GB of memory, and a 500 GB hard drive. Is my system under powered?