ZoneMinder Forums

Hello,

I am currently working with Zoneminder on an old P3-600 Server System holding a bt8x8 Tv-Card where I have connected a small cam. Because of the fact that my users have problems handling the web-interface (they often deleted the monitor...) I was looking for a way to arm/disarm the motion detection externally - the most effictive way ist to pull the plug of the cam which leads to a black screen and no motion will be detected afterwards. So I could leave the system in modect all the time (time controll via cron is not possible because there are no fixed hours).

Right now it is planned to enlarge the System and switch to several IP Cams (mostly cheap ones like Trendnet TV-IP100). One idea how to tranfer the procedure described above to the new scenario would be to connect the PC and the cams on a single switch and power this unit down. This would kill the connection between ZM and the Cams.
Unfortunately I haven't bought any equipment right now so that I cannot test my idea -

How does ZM react upon losing connection to the cams? Will it just work and take the missing pics as blanks and continue work after replugging the switch or will it throw errors and stop working?

it will error but work, but when you cams turn back on you will have to raid till zm restarts the capture demons before it will know its back. Perhaps a better wat i 'arming' it another way would be better

If a capture daemon cannot connect to a cam it will die. It will then be restarted to try again at ever increasing intervals until it can, with a maxium of 15 mins between retries. If you are having problems with users, why not just make then log in using an account which does not have privileges to delete monitors?

Another solution to turning it on and off is using the command line, or creating a script that does " zmpkg.pl start " / stop / Night / Day - depending on what states you have created.