Difference between revisions of "ZoneMinder CCTV Camera Monitoring Software"

Revision as of 14:07, 11 April 2008

ZoneMinder is a set of applications intended for use in CCTV video camera security applications. It supports capture, analyse, recording and monitoring of any cameras you have attached to a Linux based machine. It also features a user-friendly Web interface which allows viewing, archival, review, and deletion of images and movies captured by the cameras.

ZoneMinder has a highly configuratble image analysis system permitting retention of specific events, while eliminating false positives. ZoneMinder supports both directly connected and network cameras and is built around the definition of a set of individual 'zones' of varying sensitivity and functionality for each camera.

This allows the elimination of regions which should be ignored or the definition of areas which will alarm if various thresholds are exceeded in conjunction with other zones. All management, control, and other functions are supported through the Web interface.

ZoneMinder is designed to run on kernels which support the Video For Linux (V4L) interface and has been tested with cameras attached to BTTV cards, various USB cameras and IP network cameras. It is designed to support as many cameras as you can attach to your computer without too much degradation of performance.

ZoneMinder Web Site

• http://www.zoneminder.com/

Fedora Information for package zoneminder

• http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=4691

ZoneMinder Tutorial

• http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Documentation#Tutorial

Fedora Setup

• Have packages for Apache and MySQL installed on the sytem.

• Install the zoneminder RPM package on the system

• Configure zoneminder

The packaged version of Zone Minder installs all binarys to /usr/lib/zm including the web pages. So don’t worry when you do not see any files installed to the root directory for your web server. The web pages for Apache are aliased by zm.conf in the apache/conf.d directory which vary depending on your distribution.

• Make sure Apache and MySQL services are running

• Edit the zoneminder.conf apache configuration file to allow web connections

 vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/zoneminder.conf

• Build the MySQL database table for zoneminder

 mysql -p -u root mysql < /usr/share/zoneminder/db/zm_create.sql > mysqladmin -p -u root reload

Monitor Functions

• None – The monitor is currently disabled and no streams can be viewed or events generated.
• Monitor – The monitor will only stream feeds but no image analysis is done and so no alarms or events will be generated,
• Modect – or MOtion DEteCTtion. All captured images will be analysed and events generated where motion is detected.
• Record – In this case continuous events of a fixed length are generated regardless of motion which is analogous to a convention time-lapse video recorder. No motion detection takes place in this mode.
• Mocord – This is a hybrid of Modect and Record and results in both fixed length events being recorded and also any motion being highlighted within those events.
• Nodect – or No DEteCTtion. This is a special mode designed to be used with external triggers. In Nodect no motion detection takes place but events are recorded if external triggers require it.

Capture Width x Height

The Analog TV and Digital Video Resolution Guide explains how lines of TV resolution translates into pixels. The default setting for a camera on ZoneMinder is 320x240 pixels.

The best match between camera and pixel resolution is if the number of lines equals with the height of the captured picture.