ZoneMinder Forums

Hello!
I found this Zoneminder while asking my son 'how to do this?'. This ZM look's very interesting and potential to solve my problem, but instead of installing and testing (or reading the manual), I write it here and ask you the following:

We live in an old house with old waterpipes. To prevent or find as early as possible possible waterleaks I have an idea:
- there is a metering instrument on the incoming waterpipe that shows how much water has been used, ie. it measures the water consumption in our house
- on the instrument there is a small red spinning wheel that is rotating all the time water is 'running', that is there is somewhere a water tap open

If I put a webcam to watch the instrument, I need an alarm if (f.ex) the spinning wheel has not been paused at least one 3 hours time within 3 days.
In other words, if there hase been not a single 3 hours period within 3 days when no water at all has been used, then there must be a waterleak somewhere in the house.

I wish you got the idea and can answer: is this possible with ZM as 'out of the box' or not. And if not, is there any easy way to solve this with ZM.

Thanks in advance and congratulations for your effort to develope this kind of a system!

Juha Kari
Vantaa, Finland

I don't think you would be able to get zm to do what your after. You might be able to use an led emiter and a phototransister to count the times the red portion comes around but the circuitry behind it would be difficult if you don't know some basic electronics. You might be able to find a simular electronics kit that could do this for alot cheaper than putting together a computer to use zm.
Here are a few simple kits:
http://www.electrokits.com/electronics/ ... nt/207.htm
http://www.apogeekits.com/liquid_level.htm
http://www.circuithut.com/index.php?/ci ... ronic_kits

You could also make something more programable like a pic microcontroler so you can set time variables to produce an alarm.
This is something that is close, not exact put could be easly reprogramed. Requires some advaced skills though.
http://www.nutsvolts.com/ftpindex.htm

Something you might enjoy if you like projects is the "Basic Stamp" You can find this at most electronic stores that carry kits. We ran out of time on developing our Final and got one of this as a quick fix. Was fun to play with.
Regards,
Cordel

There migh be a very very crude but simple method to solve this.
without researching any fact i'll throw you a plausible solution.

If you change the criteria to that the weel hasn't "rested" for 1 1/2 days or something like that, it might be possible to set up a filter-rule that calls for your attention in some way that you want.
i have been told that the filters run every 300 seconds but since this is a task that not recuire realtime execution it might work really well

another metod would be to set a *very* high value on the "Alarm Frame Count" (how many frames in a row with movement that is required for zm to consider it a alarm) combined with a low framrate so it will take the time you desire befor ZM take action.

as i said, crude but plausible good luck!

another way would be to ensure that the camera was constantly in alarm. Set your section length to say 60 seconds. Use mocord. Set a filter that looked at this cam and reported any events with a score of 0, then email this to your self.

James