ZoneMinder Forums

This might be a silly question...

I looking to reduce the power consumption of my PC running zoneminder.

I am assuming I can't have it in sleep mode? It won't record then?

Any thoughts or suggestions on what I am trying to do?

How 'bout a lower power machine just for zm?
At least you can turn off the monitor, if it's using one.

Set up a headless Linux server. Install a minimal command line system with LAMP or LEMP. Use low resolution (640x480) and frame rate (5 FPS) on your monitors using MODECT. SSD for the OS and Data and a WD Green HD for storage.
If you want really low power use a Pi 3 or 4 but you will be limited in the number of monitors you can run.

I have a small NUC system, I could use.
But it won't have the storage on it.

Will I just bog down my network with the camera feeds, then the transfer of recordings to my second machine with HD space?

You haven't said how many cams or what resolutions you're planning on.

I have 11 cams mostly at 640 or 1280 and about 6 FPS. Unless you have an 802.11 a or b network, bandwidth won't be a problem. I hardly ever see more than 2 or so mbps in, and 3 or 4 out, with two machines running montage.

And from what I can see, you can either outrig a sata drive or use usb on the nuc, if you have something laying around. You can network storage as well, with around the same as camera stream bandwidth.

7 cameras, all hardwired with POE switches

10fps set on the cameras.
They range from 1080 or higher

Looking at zoneminder I am currently 1.7MB/s

That sounds manageable, even with remote storage.
Although I just did an update which is not connecting any camera, so you might want to start the nuc on a release version.