ZoneMinder Forums

Hi,
I am trying to test out the system with a usb webcam. the camera is working as i can use that viewing window software to view the camera although when i set it up in ZM, it is displaying a broken image. what do i need to do?

thanks
Sam

Hi Sam,
You can use TVTime or xawtv to see if your camera has been "recognized" by your system. You can also look at the output of the command "dmesg" and the kernel will have printed some info there if it found your camera.
If not, it may simply be a matter of loading the correct driver for it. You can do this with the command "modprobe somedriver" where "somedriver" is one of the modules found in /lib/modules/2.6.7-2.tmb.6mdk/kernel/drivers/usb/media/
You want to use only the basename of the module. So for example you might try "modprobe usbvideo" not "modprobe usbvideo.ko.gz".
If the module is correct for your camera it will "find" it and you will see some output in dmesg indicating this. /dev/video0 will be created automatically, and you can then use one of the tv programs to see if it is working correctly.
You will find some helpful info for specific webcam models here:
http://www.linux.com/howtos/Webcam-HOWTO/devices.shtml

Best regards,

Ross

Thanks,

/dev/video0 is being created and when I run xawtv it shows the camera but if I set up zoneminder with the device_no set to 0 and Device Format to 0 and Capture Palette set to YUV420P (that’s the one I think it is, but have tried all the others) and all the other settings I think are right. It doesn’t work. Just a broken image and it the text 0 fps below.
What am I doing wrong?

sam

Device format 0 is PAL. I think you want NTSC so format 1. Try resolution 320 x 240.