centralised server

[florin]

(i just learned about ZM today, please bear with me if i'm asking silly questions)

What i'm trying to accomplish is to install several embedded Linux systems ("sensors"), attach a camera to each one of them, then use a central server to somehow "glue" all the sensors together and provide authenticated access from several clients (browsers, etc.) to them - unified interface, unified authentication and stuff like that.
Essentially, the people behind the browsers or applets or whatever must only be aware of the server's existence.

Is that doable with ZM? Can ZM run on a central machine, using remote ZM sensors as sources? Encoding being done on the sensors then the video stuff being sent to the server, which distributes it to the clients?

Speaking about the tiny remote Linux devices - those do not have a hard-drive, just a read-only Compact Flash. Can ZM function in these conditions (as a remote sensor) and still provide reasonable functionality? Like, use the MySQL DB on the central server, or something?

If the answers to these questions are generally "yes", then is there any document discussing this type of deployment? If ZM can do all this, and if there is no such document, i'm willing to write one and post it on the Internet once i successfully do the project, but for the moment neither the ZM documentation nor Google offer usable hints.

Thanks in advance for your patience.

[rdmelin]

I think you may be exploring new territory, and others may be able to give you a more authoritative answer, but what you describe sounds possible.

I just thought I would mention that the "tiny remote linux devices" with cameras attached sound a lot like Axis network cameras, which work very well with Zoneminder. And there is no need for the cameras to access the database. They simply stream video, which the ZM server can then analyze and record as it would a local camera.

Don't know if that is helpful, just thought I'd chime in here.

Ross