Is there a way to test my sw installation without cameras?

[michaelbr]

Is there a way to do a dummy test to see if there's a problem with my software installation? It seems to me that it's quite complex, like instead of a camera, use a file as video output of a camera to test the software installation.

[dougmccrary]

Don't have a camera yet?
If you have a "smart" phone, there's apps that will make it an IP camera.
If you get to the welcome page and then the console, it's probably at least mostly right.

[michaelbr]

Don't have a camera yet?
If you have a "smart" phone, there's apps that will make it an IP camera.
If you get to the welcome page and then the console, it's probably at least mostly right.

Thanks for this tip, which one would you recommend, that works best with ZM?

[dougmccrary]

You're welcome.
I've not used any of them, so why don't you pick one and if it gives you problems, I'll test it here and let you know if it works, or doesn't?
I have access to several droid and iOS devices.

[makers_mark]

Is there a way to do a dummy test to see if there's a problem with my software installation? It seems to me that it's quite complex, like instead of a camera, use a file as video output of a camera to test the software installation.

Yeah, with ffmpeg. I do it for a generated monitor that displays weather/alert data. Also to visualize audio from my lorex doorbell (been meaning to write a thread about that, alarms from audio are just crazy specific and has lots of use cases (just think, with zoneminder, how specific you can be when choosing your zones on a audio wave 'showcqt' where your zones are frequencies and you control the amplitude and color variation)).

Here is a simple rtp example to generate a monitor:

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -re -f lavfi -i testsrc=s=1280x720:r=20 -f rtp_mpegts -pix_fmt yuv420p  rtp://127.0.0.1:4004/

You can run this on the zoneminder server with that localhost:port config, or you can run it on another computer and substitute the IP address accordingly.
On the monitor setup in zoneminder choose source ffmpeg and do everything else like normal (source would be rtp://127.0.0.1:4004 here). This example uses a resolution of 1280x720 and is limited to 20fps (r=20). Take away that '-re' in this instance and ffmpeg will race as fast as allowed.

Check out this page, you can do anything on here (and way more, the skies the limit with ffmpeg) by adapting ffmpeg commands to your need. It's fun to play around with too.

http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/FancyFilteringExamples

[michaelbr]

You're welcome.
I've not used any of them, so why don't you pick one and if it gives you problems, I'll test it here and let you know if it works, or doesn't?
I have access to several droid and iOS devices.

Thanks so much for your help, I'll give it a try, since I'm newbie (lot of reading to do), it might take sometime to post it back.

[michaelbr]

Yeah, with ffmpeg. I do it for a generated monitor that displays weather/alert data. Also to visualize audio from my lorex doorbell (been meaning to write a thread about that, alarms from audio are just crazy specific and has lots of use cases (just think, with zoneminder, how specific you can be when choosing your zones on a audio wave 'showcqt' where your zones are frequencies and you control the amplitude and color variation)).

Here is a simple rtp example to generate a monitor:

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -re -f lavfi -i testsrc=s=1280x720:r=20 -f rtp_mpegts -pix_fmt yuv420p  rtp://127.0.0.1:4004/

You can run this on the zoneminder server with that localhost:port config, or you can run it on another computer and substitute the IP address accordingly.
On the monitor setup in zoneminder choose source ffmpeg and do everything else like normal (source would be rtp://127.0.0.1:4004 here). This example uses a resolution of 1280x720 and is limited to 20fps (r=20). Take away that '-re' in this instance and ffmpeg will race as fast as allowed.

Check out this page, you can do anything on here (and way more, the skies the limit with ffmpeg) by adapting ffmpeg commands to your need. It's fun to play around with too.

http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/FancyFilteringExamples
[/quote]
Thanks for this tip, will give it a try.