Best settings for archiving images from a remote website?

[jemenake]

Okay... I realize that this isn't really the original intended use for ZM, but I'm already using ZM to monitor some webcams, and I want to see if I can get it to do this extra bit for me.

I want to collect a series of weather images from weather.com so that I can go back and see how the images change over several days, between seasons, etc. I figured ZM would be good for this, but the requirements are a little different from my webcam settings:

1 - I don't want to be slamming weather.com with a request every second or so. I'd like to get it so that it checks once per hour or so. However, unless this is done with the "Maximum FPS" setting, I have no idea where to change the rate at which I poll the remote site.
2 - I'd also like to only save an image if it has *changed*. This is probably a job for Modect, but I don't want ZM to highlight the changed portions of the weather picture. I've found the place in ZM where I can change the *color* of the alarmed areas of zone, but I don't see where to turn it off completely.
3 - For the time being, I don't want to generate any video from these images... I just want to see the stills. However, whenever I click on this monitor's name in the main ZM window, the popup window defaults to the "Stream" mode... and I always have to click on "Stills" to get what I want. Is there a way to get it to default to Stills?

Any help would be appreciated.

- Joe

[jameswilson]

sounds interesting
1 your right just set your fps at something like 0.001 or whatever it works out to be

2 options turn offf the lower ticks ie zm_create_anaylis_images not sure how modect would do this but worth a go

3 it shouldnt matter streaming as the image wont be changing or am i missing something

Good luck

James

[zoneminder]

Modect works just fine without analysis images. It's just a bit of extra eye candy really so you can see where ZM thinks the interesting parts are.

You can change the streaming behaviour either by changing Options->Tools->ZM_CAN_STREAM to no (if you never want streaming) or edit zm_html_view_watchfeed.php and change the default streaming mode near the top of that file.

Phil

[jemenake]

sounds interesting
1 your right just set your fps at something like 0.001 or whatever it works out to be

Well, ZM doesn't seems to treat anything less than 0.01 as 0.00.

Now, I've got a new problem.

When ZM sees the image change, it treats it as an alarm event and it then records a few dozen frames... which all look the same.

What I want is for each alert event to capture *one* frame, and then revert back to its normal "watching for image changes" again.

Is there a way to get ZM to behave like this?

- Joe

[jameswilson]

not sure but i assume this would be the buffers setting,
If you have alook in buffers how are you currently set for pre and post alarm
Im only guessing but if both these values are at zer it would only capture the image in alarm which would be once?

James

[cordel]

You can play with both the buffers setting (decreasing the images capture for pre and post) and set the referance image to be updated at a higher percentage.