ZoneMinder Forums

Hello ZM enthusiasts! I've been using ZM for a long time and there's something that really chaps my hide and I can't figure out a good way to handle it. Inevitably when the warm weather rolls around the spiders come out and love to drape webs all over the front of my camera, then as the wind blows the webs trigger the camera to record over and over again.

Most of the time I get a bunch of shorter clips. I've been able to build some automations into Home Assistant to detect when I get a high number of captures in a short amount of time it's likely because of a spiderweb and Home Assistant will temporarily disable the camera. However, sometimes I get 6000 frames of a web blowing in the wind. When that happens I just get a bunch of really long recordings.

I really want to set up a rule or something that says: if the capture is running for more than 3 minutes stop it and move on. I don't expect too many recordings to be longer than a minute of continuous triggering so three would force the Home Assistant to work more quickly in temporarily disabling the camera.

Is there any way in ZoneMinder to put a hard limit on the length of recordings?

Options > Misc > Section length 600 seconds

I think this defines how long the events are recorded for before it starts again

You also need to set Options -> Config -> EVENT_CLOSE_MODE to Time, if it isn't already.

I also suffer from the spider menace, or more specifically that one tiny microscopic strand of web that keeps floating in front of the lens. But funnily enough the spiders have learned over time not to put up webs near the camera. I've got solar powered sensor lights all around my house, and I've noticed spiders put up webs around the light source, and physically stay near the sensor so the light keeps going off. Smart bastards are gonna be the end of us someday.