Problems with NCS 370 ip camera

Darkstar · Post by **Darkstar** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 10:06 am

Hi,
I bought two of these: http://www.pearl.de/productchoice_redir ... 120&rate=4 and they look exactly like the Neu Fusion NCS-370. I managed to make them work with Zoneminder and even the PTZ works quite good. But I have some problems and would like to get some hints from other people who are using these cameras:

1. I can only use 640x480 pixel. 320x240 and 160x120 don't work with zoneminder giving me errors like "Corrupt JPEG data: premature end of data segment".

2. I have only 0.68 fps! I don't know if this is normal, but I would like to do some motion tracking, but this framerate is too low for this.

3. MJPEG doesn't work. Although I get an image when I point my browser to http://cam1/mjpeg.cgi or video.cgi (no stream though, but it seems the browser is trying to download something). If I configure Zoneminder to use this config, the CPU load goes to 100% but nothing happens. I saw this configuration here: http://www.hunter13.com/zoneminder/ncs370w.html , so at least one is using mjpeg with this type of camera.

4. Would it be faster not to fetch the images from the camera but letting the camera upload the images to an ftp-server?

Thank you for any information.
Regards,
Helge.

tech_fixer · Post by **tech_fixer** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 2:22 pm

Helge,
Many IP cameras need to be configured first through their own application or web interface, before use on ZoneMinder. That might be the case for your camera. See if you can configure the camera itself for 320x240 images. That should put and end to the corrupt JPEG data.

Now, about your camera, it is quite similar to this one:
http://www.trendnet.com/products/TV-IP400.htm

So, that might be another source of information.

Gotta go... I'll post more later.

Regards,
Jose.

Darkstar · Post by **Darkstar** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 4:42 pm

Hi Jose,
sorry I forgot to say that I changed the resolution via the web interface of the camera and I can get an image with 320x240, at least that is what firefox tells me, if I view the properties of the image. It is no problem to get images with this resolution from the camera, but I can't see any images in Zoneminder. I only changed the resolution of the camera and put the same settings into Zoneminder, but I don't get any images with a resolution other then 640x480.

Regards,
Helge.

tech_fixer · Post by **tech_fixer** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 4:09 pm

Helge,
You might need to turn on the option: ZM_NETCAM_REGEXPS.

You can fin this on the options sceen, under the "Network" tab. Also, switching the option ZM_HTTP_VERSION to value "1.1" might help.

Now, if you use this option and MJPEG streaming you might find you'll have really high CPU usage. Also your system may become slow to respond, because of the stress on the processor. Specially if you have many IP cameras, or intend to add more.

What fixed this situation for me was to use the JPEG image fetching, instead of MJPEG streaming. Please read my post on this subject on the following thread:

http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewto ... 12d587c873

Regards,
Jose.

Darkstar · Post by **Darkstar** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 8:15 pm

Thank you for your tip, switching ZM_NETCAM_REGEXPS OFF did the trick! I now have 12 fps with one single camera (the other one is broken and has to be fixed).

Helge.

tech_fixer · Post by **tech_fixer** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 8:34 pm

Pleased to help.

Regards,
Jose.