ZoneMinder v0.9.11
1. Introduction
Welcome to ZoneMinder, the new all-in-one Linux GPL'd security
camera solution. A few months back my garage was burgled and all
my wine and power tools were nicked! I realised shortly after that
if I'd just had a camera overlooking the door then at least I'd
have know exactly when and who did the dirty deed. And so
ZoneMinder was born. It's still a baby but hopefully it can grow
up to be something that can be genuinely useful and maybe one day
either prevent similar incidents or perhaps bring some
perpetrators to justice.
ZoneMinder is designed around a series of independent components
that only function when necessary limiting any wasted resource and
maximising the efficiency of your machine. A fairly ancient
Pentium PC should be able to track one camera per device at up to
25 frames per second with this dropping by half approximately for
each additional camera on he same device, additional cameras on
other devices do not interact so can maintain this frame rate.
Even monitoring several cameras still will not overload the CPU as
frame processing is designed to synchronise with capture and not
stall it.
As well as being fast ZoneMinder is designed to be friendly and
even more than that, actually useful. As well as the fast video
interface core it also comes with a user friendly and
comprehensive PHP based web interface allowing you to control and
monitor your cameras from home or even at work or on the road. It
supports variable web capabilities based on available bandwidth.
The web interface also allows you to view events that your cameras
have captured and archive them or review them time and again, or
delete the ones you no longer wish to keep. The web pages directly
interact with the core daemons ensuring full co-operation at all
times. ZoneMinder can even be installed as a system service
ensuring it is right there if your computer has to reboot for any
reason.
The core of ZoneMinder is the capture and analysis of images and
there is a highly configurable set of parameters that allow you to
ensure that you can eliminate false positives whilst ensuring that
anything you don't want to miss will be captured and saved.
ZoneMinder allows you to define a set of 'zones' for each camera
of varying sensitivity and functionality. This allows you to
eliminate regions that you don't wish to track or define areas
that will alarm if various thresholds are exceeded in conjunction
with other zones.
ZoneMinder is fresh off the keyboard and so comes with no warranty
whatsoever, please try it, send your feedback and if you get
anything useful out of it please let me know.
2. Requirements
ZoneMinder needs a couple of things to work.
Firstly, it uses MySQL so you'll need that. In order to compile
you need to make sure you have a development installation and not
just a runtime, this is because it needs to use the MySQL header
files.
Next it does things with JPEGs so you'll need at least libjpeg.a
which I think come as standard nowadays with most distributions.
It also uses the netpbm utilities in a very limited way to
generate thumbnails under certain circumstances though this can be
modified.
ZoneMinder can generate MPEG videos if necessary, for this you'll
need the Berkeley MPEG encoder, if you don't have it don't worry
the options will be hidden and you'll not miss much really. The
web interface uses PHP and so you need that in your apache or
other web server as well. There are also various perl modules that
you may need that vary depending on which options you choose on
installation.
Finally, there is quite a bit of image streaming in the package so
if you don't have Netscape or other browser that supports image
streaming natively I recommend you get the excellent Cambozola
java applet from http://www.charliemouse.com/code/cambozola/ which
will let you view the image stream in Internet Explorer and
others. Otherwise you're limited to just refreshing still images.
Hardware-wise, ZoneMinder has been used with BTTV cards and USB
cameras with the V4L interface. I don't have a lot of cameras
myself so I've not had change to test it much. There will soon be
a list of devices that are definitely known to work on the web
site. Please let me know if your camera works or not. You do need
to have Video 4 Linux installed. I've not got many machines so
I've only really used it on RedHat, which does have everything
there by default I think. SlackWare does need a bit more tinkering
than other distributions; there will be document on the web site
describing what users have had to do to get it working with very
soon, though I can email additional information if requested.
Please give me feedback on other distributions.
3. Building
The first thing you need to do is run the included configure
script to define some initial configuration, just type
./configure --with-mysql=<your MySQL root> --with-webdir=<your web
directory> --with-cgidir=<your cgi directory>
where --with-mysql identifies where you have installed MySQL
(usually /usr), --with-webdir is the directory to which you want
to install the PHP files, and --with-cgidir is the directory to
which you want to install CGI files. These directories could be
/var/www/html/zm and /var/www/cgi-bin for example. There are also
two further arguments you can add if your web user and group are
not both 'apache'. These are --with-webuser and --with-webgroup.
Type
./configure -help
for details.
That's the build configuration sorted out. The next thing you have
to do is do a little more runtime specific configuration.
ZoneMinder config is scattered around various files in the
distribution so to make things easier for you there is a
ZoneMinder configuration utility included. Type
perl ./zmconfig.pl
to get it started. It is an interactive utility and will prompt
you by asking you various questions. For most questions typing '?'
will give you additional help if you need it. Once you've answered
all the questions it will write out a configuration file called
'zmconfig.txt' and then process various files to substitute the
information in them. If you run it again it will remember your
answers from before by reading 'zmconfig.txt' before it starts.
You can also edit this file directly to change values. If you do
you can run zmconfig.pl in non-interactive mode by typing
perl ./zmconfig.pl -noi
which will just read your file and do the substations with no
questions asked. Also if you are upgrading from version 0.9.7 (or
later) you can copy your old zmconfig*.txt files into the current
build directory before you run zmconfig.pl and it will use your
preferences as a basis for generating the new ones.
If you get errors such as 'Can't locate Term::ReadKey.pm' when
trying to run zmconfig.pl then this module is missing from your
system. See the troubleshooting section for details of how to
install it.
Among the first questions zmconfig.pl asks you are to do with the
database and the next thing you should do is create it and the
associated database users. You may notice that there are two sets
of users and passwords. This is because the streaming server and
utility binaries require only read access to the database so you
may wish to create both a full access user and a limited access
user. You can of course set both to the full access user. The
included schema (zmschema.sql) can be used to actually create the
tables required. The database is usually called just 'zm'.
If you are upgrading from a previous version you can use zmalter-
x.y.z.sql to upgrade your database and make the necessary changes
where x.y.z identifies the version of ZoneMinder you had installed
previously. So if you are going from version 0.9.7 to version
0.9.11 you would run the scripts for all intervening versions to
get to the current one. For a new installation the simplest way to
create your database and users is as follows,
mysql mysql < zmschema.sql
mysql mysql
grant select,insert,update,delete on <your database name>.* to
'<your first
username>' identified by '<your first password>';
grant select on <your database name>.* to '<your second username>'
identified by
'<your second password>'
quit
mysqladmin reload
You may need to supply a username and password to the mysql
commands in the first place to give yourself sufficient privileges
to perform the required commands.
Then just type 'make' and off you go.
4. Installation
Once the build has completed you should have several shiny new
binaries. I will now briefly describe what each of them does.
zmc - This is the ZoneMinder Capture daemon. This binary's job
is to sit on a video device and such frames off it as fast as
possible, this should run at more or less constant speed.
zma - This is the ZoneMinder Analysis daemon. This is the
component that goes through the captured frames and checks them
for alarming events. It generally keeps up with the zmc but if
very busy may skip some frames to prevent it falling behind.
zms - This is the ZoneMinder Streaming server. The web interface
connects with this to get real-time or historical streamed
images.
zmu - This is the ZoneMinder Utility. It's basically a handy
command line interface to several useful functions. Not really
meant to be used by anyone except the web page (there's only
limited 'help' in it so far) but can be if necessary, especially
for debugging video problems.
zmfix - This is a small binary that exists only to ensure that
the video device files can be read by the main capture daemons.
It is often the case that these device files are set to be
accessible by root only on boot. This binary runs setuid and
ensures that they have appropriate permissions. This is not a
daemon and runs only on system start and then exits.
As well as this there are the web PHP files in the web directory
and some perl scripts in the scripts directory, only one of which
may actually be used in a minimal installation. These scripts all
have some configuration at the top of the files which should be
viewed and amended if necessary and are as follows.
zmpkg.pl - This is the ZoneMinder Package Control script. This
is used by the web interface and service scripts to control the
execution of the system as a whole.
zmdc.pl - This is the ZoneMinder Daemon Control script. This is
used by the web interface and the zmpkg.pl script to control and
maintain the execution of the capture and analysis daemons
amongst others. You should not need to run this script yourself.
zmfilter.pl - This script controsl the execution of saved
filters and will be started and stopped by the web
interface based on whether there are filters that have been
defined to be autonomous. This script is also responsible for
the automatic uploading of events to a 3rd party server.
zmaudit.pl - This script is used to check the consistency of the
event file system and database. It can delete orphaned events,
i.e. ones that appear in one location and not the other as well
as checking that all the various event related tables are in
line. It can be run interactively or in batch mode either from
the command line or a cron job or similar. In the zmconfig.pl
there is an option to specify fast event deletes where the web
interface only deletes the event entry from the database itself.
If this is set then it is this script that tidies up the rest.
zmx10.pl - This is an option script that can be used to initiate
and monitor X10 Home Automation style events and interface with
an alarm system either by the generation of X10 signals on
ZoneMinder events or by initiating ZoneMinder monitoring and
capture on receipt of X10 signals from elsewhere, for instance
the triggering of an X10 PIR.
zmwatch.pl - This is a simple script purely designed to keep an
eye on the capture daemons and restart them if they lockup. It
has been known for sync problems in the video drivers to cause
this so this script makes sure that nothing important gets
missed.
zm - This is the (optional) ZoneMinder init script, see below
for details.
Finally, check zm_config.php in the web directory and amend any
configuration necessary in there. Most will have already been done
by the configuration utilities.
At this stage typing 'make install' will install everything to the
desired locations, you may to su to root first though. The
installation routine will copy the binaries and scripts to your
chosen install location, usually /usr/local/bin and then move zms
to your cgi-bin area. It will then copy the web files to your
chosen directory and ensure they have the right permissions.
Finally it tries to link zm.php to index.php but will not
overwrite an existing file if it exists.
The 'zm' script does not get installed automatically as it is not
necessary for the operation of the ZoneMinder setup per se.
However if you want to ensure that the ZoneMinder daemons are
started on reboot etc copy it to your init.d directory, usually
something like /etc/rc.d/init.d and then add it by doing
/sbin/chkconfig --add zm
or similar command. ZoneMinder will then start up when your
machine reboots and can be controlled (by the root user) by doing
'service zm start' or 'service zm stop' etc.
Now start your web browser and point it at your zm.php and off you
go.
5. Tutorial
To start with you should see the ZoneMinder Console window, this
will resize itself to avoid being too intrusive on your desktop.
Along the top there are several informational entries like the
time of the last update and the current server load. There will
also be a 'start' or 'stop' link depending on the current state.
Below that are various other links including a set allowing you to
configure your bandwidth. This enables you to optimise your
settings depending on where you are, the actual values relating to
this are defined at the op of the zm_config.php file. If you are
using a browser on the same machine or network then choose high,
over a cable or DSL link maybe choose medium and over a dialup
choose low. You can experiment to see which is best. This setting
is retained on a per machine basis with a persistent cookie. Also
on this line is a 'Report Bug' email link which you can use to
easily report any problems (or successes!) and a couple of other
links to the left which will be covered below.
5.1. Defining Monitors
To use ZoneMinder properly you need to define at least one
Monitor. Essentially a monitor is associated with a camera and
will continually check it for motion detection and such like. So,
next click 'Add New Monitor' to bring up the dialog. You will see
a bunch of things you have to fill in.
To help you get started on the video configuration the best thing
is to us a tool like 'xawtv' to get a picture you're happy with,
and to check your camera works and then run 'zmu -d <device_no> -q
-v' to get a dump of the settings. You can then enter these values
into the video related options of the monitor configuration panel.
Note that 'device_no' here is a number corresponding to the digit
at the end of your device file, so /dev/video0 has a 'device_no'
of 0 etc. If 'zmu' gives you an error related to permissions run
'zmfix -a' to make sure you can access all the video devices.
The options explained in a little more detail are as follows,
Name - First choose a name for it, anything you like.
Function - This essentially defines what the monitor is doing.
This can be 'None' meaning the monitor is currently disabled,
'Passive' meaning you can watch the streams coming from the
camera but no alarms or events will be generated, or 'Active'
meaning all the images will be analysed as well as the stream
being available to watch. If you have specified X10 support
then X10 is also available as an option which means that the
monitor is generally passive but may go active on receipt of
X10 commands. Generally you'll want 'Active' but for now leave
this at 'None'.
Source Type - This determines whether the camera is a local
one attached to a physical video or USB port on your machine
or a remote network camera or similar. Choosing one or the
other affects which set of three options are show next.
Device Number/Channel - For a local camera enter the device
number that your camera is attached to. If it is /dev/video0
enter '0' etc. Some video devices, e.g. BTTV cards support
multiple cameras so in the Channel box choose the appropriate
channel, or leave it at zero if you're using a USB camera or
one without channels.
Device Format - For a local camera enter the video format of
the video stream. This is defined in various system files
(e.g. /usr/include/linux/videodev.h) but the two most common
are 0 for PAL and 1 for NTSC.
Remote Host/Port/Path - For remote cameras use these fields to
enter the full URL of the camera. Basically if your camera is
at http://camserver.home.net:8192/cameras/camera1.jpg then
these fields will be camserver.home.net, 8192 and
/cameras/camera1.jopg respectively. Leave the port at 80 if
there is no special port required.
Capture Width/Height - The dimensions of the video stream your
camera will supply. If your camera supports several just enter
the one you'll want to use for this application, you can
always change it later. However I would recommend starting
with no larger than 352x288 and then perhaps increasing and
seeing how performance is affected. This size should be
adequate in most cases.
Capture Palette - Finally for the video part of the
configuration enter the colour depth. ZoneMinder supports a
handful of the most common palettes, so choose one here. If in
doubt try grey scale first, and then 24 bit colour. If neither
of these work very well then YUV420P probably will.
Timestamp Label Format - This relates to the timestamp that is
applied to each frame. It is a sprintf style string. It is
actually passed through sprintf and then through print to add
the monitor name so a format of '%%s - %y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S'
would be recommended though you can modify it if necessary. If
you don't want a timestamp or have a camera that puts one on
itself then leave this field blank.
Timestamp Label X/Y - The X and Y values determine where to
put the timestamp a value of 0 for the X value will put it on
the left side of the image and a Y value of 0 will place it at
the top of the image. A Y value of the height you supplied
earlier minus 8 will place it on the bottom of the image.
Image Buffer Size - This option determines how many frames are
held in the ring buffer at any one time. The ring buffer is
the storage space where the last 'n' images are kept, ready to
be resurrected on an alarm or just kept waiting to be
analysed. It can be any value you like with a couple of
provisos, (see next options). However it is stored in shared
memory and making it too large especially for large images
with a high colour depth can use a lot of memory. A value of
no more than 100 is usually ok.
Warm-up Frames - This specifies how many frames the analysis
daemon should process but not examine when it starts. This
allows it to generate an accurate reference image from a
series of images before looking too carefully for any changes.
I use a value of 25 here, too high and it will take a long
time to start, too low and you will get false alarms when the
analysis daemon starts up.
Pre/Post Event Image Buffer - These options determine how many
frames from before and after an event should be preserved with
it. This allows you to view what happened immediately prior
and subsequent to the event. A value of 10 for both of these
will get you started but if you get a lot of short events and
would prefer them to run together to form fewer longer ones
then increase the Post Event buffer size. Both of these values
added together should not exceed the ring buffer size.
Maximum FPS - On some occasions you may have one or more
cameras capable of high capture rates but find that you
generally do not require this performance at all times and
would prefer to lighten the load on your server. This option
permits you to limit the maximum capture rate to a specified
value. This may allow you to have more cameras supported on
your system by reducing the CPU load or to allocate video
bandwidth unevenly between cameras sharing the same video
device. This value is only a rough guide and the lower the
value you set the less close the actual FPS may approach it
especially on shared devices where it is difficult to
synchronise two different capture rates precisely. There is a
global option in zmconfig.pl that allows you to turn this
limiting off in the event of an alarm.
FPS Report Interval - How often the current performance in
terms of Frames Per Second is output to the system log. Not
used in any functional way so set it to maybe 1000 for now. If
you watch /var/log/messages (normally) you will see this value
being emitted at the frequency you specify both for video
capture and processing.
Reference Image Blend %ge - Each analysed image in ZoneMinder
is a composite of previous images and is formed by applying
the current image as a certain percentage of the previous
reference image. Thus, if we entered the recommended value of
10 here, each images part in the reference image will diminish
by a factor of 0.9 each time round. So a typical reference
image will be 10% the previous image, 9% the one before that
and then 8.1%, 7.2%, 6.5% and so on of the rest of the way. An
image will effectively vanish around 25 images later than when
it was added. This blend value is what is specified here and
if higher will make slower progressing events less detectable
as the reference image would change more quickly. Similarly
events will be deemed to be over much sooner as the reference
image adapts to the new images more quickly. In signal
processing terms the higher this value the steeper the event
attack and decay of the signal. It depends on your particular
requirements what the appropriate value would be for you but
start with 10 here and adjust it later if necessary.
X10 Activation String - This option is only available if you
have specified X10 support in the configuration. If you have
then this contents of this field determine when a monitor
starts and stops being Active if its function is set to X10.
Basically what this means is that a monitor with a Function of
X10 normally acts as it is Passive, i.e. you can watch the
video stream but no analysis is done. On receipt of the
appropriate X10 signal however it effectively changes to
Active mode and starts to analyse images until an X10 signal
changes it back to Passive again. The format of this string is
as follows,
n : If you simply enter a number then the monitor will be
activated when an X10 ON signal for that unit code is
detected and will be deactivated when an OFF signal is
detected.
!n : This inverts the previous mode, e.g. !5 means that the
monitor is activated when an OFF signal for unit code 5 is
detected and deactivated by an ON.
n+ : Entering a unit code followed by + means that the
monitor is activated on receipt of a ON signal for that unit
code but will ignore the OFF signal and as such will not be
deactivated by this instruction. If you prepend a '!' as per
the previous definition it similarly inverts the mode, i.e.
the ON signal deactivates the monitor.
n+<seconds> : As per the previous mode except that the
monitor will deactivate itself after the given number of
seconds.
n- : Entering a unit code followed by - means that the
monitor is deactivated on receipt of a OFF signal for that
unit code but will ignore the ON signal and as such will not
be activated by this instruction. If you prepend a '!' as per
the previous definition it similarly inverts the mode, i.e.
the OFF signal activates the monitor.
n+<seconds> : As per the previous mode except that the
monitor will activate itself after the given number of
seconds.
You can also combine several of these expressions to by
separating them with a comma to create multiple circumstances
of activation. However for now leave this blank.
X10 Input Alarm String - This has the same format as the
previous field but instead of activating the monitor with will
cause a forced alarm to be generated and an event recorded if
the monitor is Active. The same definition as above apply
except that for activated read alarmed and for deactivated
read unalarmed(!). Again leave this blank for now.
X10 Output Alarm String - This X10 string also has the same
format as the two above options. However it works in a
slightly different way. Instead of ZoneMinder reacting to X10
events this option controls how ZoneMinder emits X10 signals
when the current monitor goes into or comes out of the alarm
state. Thus just entering a number will cause the ON signal
for that unit code to be sent when going into alarm state and
the OFF signal when coming out of alarm state. Similarly 7+30
will send the unit code 7 ON signal when going into alarm
state and the OFF signal 30 seconds later regardless of state.
The combination of the X10 instruction allows ZoneMinder to
react intelligently to, and also assume control of, other
devices when necessary. However the indiscriminate use of the
Input Alarm and Output Alarm signals can cause some horrendous
race conditions such as a light going on in response to an
alarm which then causes an alarm itself and so on. Thus some
circumspection is required here. Leave this blank for now
anyway.
Finally, click 'Save' to add your monitor.
On the main console listing you will now see your monitor and some
of its vital statistics. Each column is also a link and you get to
other functions of ZoneMinder by choosing the appropriate one.
Describing them left to right, they are as follows.
The first column is the Id, clicking on this gives you the
opportunity to edit any of the settings you have just defined your
monitor to have.
The next column is the Name column, clicking on this will give you
the watch window where you can view a live feed from your camera.
This is described more fully below.
Following that are the Function and Source columns, which may be
represented in various colours. Initially both will be showing
red. This means that that monitor is not configured for any
function and as a consequence has no zmc (capture) daemon running
on it. If it were orange it would mean that a zmc daemon was
running but no zma (analysis) daemon and green means both are
running. In our case it is red because we defined the Monitor to
have a Function of None so no daemons are required. To get the
daemons up and running you can either click on the source listed
in the Source column and edit the monitor properties or click on
the Function listed and change it to 'Passive' or 'Active', which
will ensure that one or more appropriate daemons are started
automatically.
Having a device status of red or orange does not necessarily
constitute an error if you have deliberately disabled a monitor or
have just put it into Passive mode.
If you have several cameras (and thus monitors) on a device the
device status colour reflects all of them for the capture daemon.
So if just one monitor is active then the daemon is active for
both even if all the other monitors are switched off.
Once you have changed the function of your monitor, the main
console window will be updated to reflect this change. If your
device status does not go green then check your system and web
server logs to see if it's something obvious.
You can now add further monitors if you have cameras set up to
support them. Once you have one or more monitors you may notice
the '<n> Monitors' title becomes a link which allows you to cycle
through a shot from each of your monitors (unless they are
switched off) and get a streamed or still image from each in turn.
There may also be a link titled 'Montage' which allows you view
all your enabled cameras simultaneously. Be aware however that
this can consume large amounts of bandwidth and CPU so should not
be used continuously unless you have resource to burn.
5.2. Defining Zones
The next important thing to do with a new monitor is set up Zones
for it to use. By default you'll already have one created for you
when you created your monitor but you might want to modify it or
add others. Click on the Zones column for your monitor and you
should see a small popup window appear which contains an image
from your camera overlain with a stippled pattern representing
your zone. In the default case this will cover the whole image and
will be red. Beneath that will be a table containing a listing of
your zones. Clicking on either the relevant bit of the image or on
the Id or Name in the table will bring up another window where you
can edit the particulars for your Zones. As you can see there are
quite a few, so now is a good time to go through them. The options
are as follows.
Name - This is just a label to identify the zone by. You can
change this to be more representative if you like, though it
isn't used much except for logging and debugging.
Type - This is one of the more important concepts in
ZoneMinder and there are five to choose from.
Active : This is the zone type you'll use most often, and
which will be set for your default zone. This means that this
zone will trigger an alarm on any events that occur within it
that meet the selection criteria.
Inclusive : This zone type can be used for any zones that you
want to trigger an alarm only if at least one other Active
zone has already triggered one. This might be for example to
cover an area of the image like a plant or tree which moves a
lot and which would trigger lots of alarms. Perhaps this is
behind an area you'd like to monitor though, in this case
you'd create an active zone covering the non-moving parts and
an inclusive zone covering the tree perhaps with less
sensitive detection settings also. If something triggered an
alarm in the Active zone and also in the Inclusive zone they
would both be registered and the resulting alarm would be
that much bigger than if you had blanked it out altogether.
Exclusive : The next zone Type is Exclusive. This means that
alarms will only be triggered in this zone if no alarms have
already been triggered in Active zones. This is the most
specialised of the zone types and you may never use it but in
its place it is very useful. For instance in the camera
covering my garden I keep watch for a hedgehog that visits
most nights and scoffs the food out of my cats bowls. By
creating a sensitive Exclusive zone in that area I can ensure
that a hedgehog alarm will only trigger if there is activity
in that small area. If something much bigger occurs, like
someone walking by it will trigger a regular alarm and not
one from the Exclusive zone. Thus I can ensure I get alarms
for big events and also special small events but not the
noise in between.
Preclusive : This zone type is relatively recent. It is
called a Preclusive zone because if it is triggered it
actually precludes an alarm being generated for that image
frame. So motion or other changes that occur in a Preclusive
zone will have the effect of ensuring that no alarm occurs at
all. The application for this zone type is primarily as a
shortcut for detecting general large-scale lighting or other
changes. Generally this may be achieved by limiting the
maximum number of alarm pixels or other measure in an Active
zone. However in some cases that zone may cover an area where
the area of variable illumination occurs in different places
as the sun and/or shadows move and it thus may be difficult
to come up with general values. Additionally, if the sun
comes out rapidly then although the initial change may be
ignored in this way as the reference image catches up an
alarm may ultimately be triggered as the image becomes less
different. Using one or more Preclusive zones offers a
different approach. Preclusive zones are designed to be
fairly small, even just a few pixels across, with quite low
alarm thresholds. They should be situated in areas of the
image that are less likely to have motion occur such as high
on a wall or in a corner. Should a general illumination
change occur they would be triggered at least as early as any
Active zones and prevent any other zones from generating an
alarm. Obviously careful placement is required to ensure that
they do not cancel any genuine alarms or that they are not so
close together that any motion just hops from one Preclusive
zone to another. As always, the best way is to experiment a
little and see what works for you.
Inactive : This final zone type is the opposite of Active. In
this zone type no alarms will ever be reported. You can
create an Inactive zone to cover any areas in which nothing
notable will ever happen or where you get constant false
alarms that don't relate to what you are trying to monitor.
An Inactive zone can overlay other zone types and will be
processed first.
I mentioned above that Inactive zones may be overlaid on other
zones to blank out areas however as a general principle you
should try and make zones abut each other as much as possible
and not overlap. This helps avoid repeated duplicate
processing of the same area. For instance an Inclusive zone
overlaying an Active zone when all other settings are the same
will always trigger when the Active zone does which somewhat
defeats the object of the exercise. One exception to this is
Preclusive zones. These may be situated within Active areas
are they are processed first and if small may actually save
processing time by preventing full analysis of the image.
Units - This setting which details whether certain of the
following settings are in Pixels or Percent of the frame. In
general pixels is more precise whereas percentages are easier
to use to start with. If you change this setting all
appropriate values below are redisplayed in the correct
context. A good tip would be to initially enter the settings
in Percent and then change to Pixels and refine any gaps.
Repeated flipping between the settings will cause rounding
errors, as ZoneMinder in general is not at home to Mr Floating
Point for reasons of performance.
Min/Maximum X/Y - Following the units the next four settings
define the bounds of the Zone in the monitor frame and are
self-explanatory with the exception of the fact that the
minima are at the top left of the frame and the maxima are at
the bottom right rather than in a Cartesian style.
Alarm Colour - The option after that allows you to specify
what colour you'd like any alarms this zone generates to be
highlighted on images, pick anything you like that will show
up against your normal image background. This option is
irrelevant for Preclusive and Inactive zones and will be
disabled For Inactive zones all subsequent options are
likewise disabled.
Alarm Threshold - This represents the difference in value
between a pixel and its predecessor in the reference image.
For greyscale images this is simple but for colour images the
colours are averaged first, originally this used an RMS (root
mean squared) algorithm but calculating square roots mugs
performance and does not seem to improve detection. Using an
average does means that subtle colour changes without any
brightness change may go undetected but this is not the normal
circumstance. There is also the option to use a more
sophisticated integer algorithm to calculate a Y (or
brightness) value from the colours themselves.
Min/Maximum Alarmed Area - The following two settings define
the minimum and maximum number of pixels that exceed this
threshold that would cause an alarm. If the units are Percent
this (and following options) refers to the percentage of the
frame and not the zone, this is so these values can be related
between zones. The minimum value must be matched or exceeded
for an alarm to be generated whereas the maximum must not be
exceeded or the alarm will be cancelled. This is to allow for
sudden changes such as lights coming on etc, which you may
wish to disregard. In general a value of zero for any of these
settings causes that value to be ignored, so you can safely
set a maximum to zero and it will not be used. The use of just
a number of pixels is however a very brute force method of
detection as many small events dispersed widely are not
distinguished from a compact one.
Filter Width/Height - To improve detection of valid event
ZoneMinder applies several other functions to the data to
improve its ability to distinguish interesting signals from
uninteresting noise. The first of these is a filter that
removes any pixels that do not participate in a contiguous
block of pixels above a certain size. These options are always
pixels and should be fairly small, and an odd number.
Application of this filter removes any tiny or discontinuous
pixels that don't form part of a discrete block.
Min/Maximum Filtered Area - These are two additional bounds
that specify the limits of pixels that would cause an alarm
after this filtering process. As the filtering process can
only remove alarmed pixels it makes no sense for the Minimum
and Maximum Filtered Area to be larger than the equivalent
Alarmed Area and in general they should be smaller or the
same.
Min/Maximum Blob Area - The next step in the analysis phase is
the collation of any remaining alarmed areas into contiguous
blobs. This process parses the image and forms any pixels that
adjoin other alarmed pixels into one or more larger blobs.
These blobs may be any shape and can be as large as the zone
itself or as small as the filtered size. The Minimum and
Maximum Blob Size settings allow you to define limits within
which an alarm will be generated. Of these only the Minimum is
likely to be very useful.
Min/Maximum Blobs - Finally the Minimum and Maximum Blobs
settings specify the limits of the actual number of blobs
detected. If an image change satisfies all these requirements
it becomes an alarm event.
5.3. Viewing Monitors
As this point you should have one or more Monitors running with
one or more Zones each. Returning to the main Console window you
will see your monitors listed once more. The columns not explored
so far are the Monitor name, and various event totals for certain
periods of time. Clicking on any of the event totals will bring up
a variation on the same window but click on the Monitor name for
now. On doing so up will pop another window which should be scaled
to contain a heading, an image from your monitor, a status and a
list of events if any have been generated. Depending on whether
you are able to view a streamed image or not the image frame will
either be this stream or a series of stills. You have the option
to change from one to the other (if available) at the centre of
the top heading.
The image should be self-explanatory but if it looks like garbage
it is possible that the video configuration is wrong so look in
your system error log and check for or report anything unusual.
The centre of the window will have a tiny frame that just contains
a status; this will be 'Idle', 'Alarm' or 'Alert' depending on the
function of the Monitor and what's going on in the field of view.
Idle means nothing is happening, Alarm means there is an alarm in
progress and Alert means that an alarm has happened and the
monitor is cooling down, if another alarm is generated in this
time it will just become part of the same event. These indicators
are colour coded in green, red and amber.
By default if you have minimised this window or opened other
windows in front it will pop up to the front if it goes to Alarm
state. This behaviour can be turned off in configuration if
required. You can also specify a sound file in the configuration,
which will be played when an alarm occurs to alert you to the fact
if you are not in front of your computer. This should be a short
sound of only a couple of seconds ideally. Note that as the status
is refreshed every few seconds it is possible for this not to
alert you to every event that takes place, so you shouldn't rely
on it for this purpose if you expect very brief events.
Alternatively you can decrease the refresh interval for this
window in the configuration though having too frequently
refreshing may impact on performance.
Below the status is a list of recent events that have occurred, by
default this is a listing of just the last 10 but clicking on
'All' will give you a full list and 'Archive' will take you to
the event archive for this monitor, more on this later. Clicking
on any of the column headings will sort the events appropriately.
From here you can also delete events if you wish. The events
themselves are listed with the event id, and event name (which you
can change), the time that the event occurred, the length of the
event including any preamble and postamble frames, the number of
frames comprising the event with the number that actually contain
an alarm in brackets and finally a score. This column lists the
average score per alarm frame as well as the maximum score that
any alarm frame had.
The score is an arbitrary value that essentially represents the
percentage of pixels in the zone that are in blobs divided by the
square root of the number of blobs and then divided by the size of
the zone. This gives a nominal maximum of 100 for a zone and the
totals for each zone are added together, Active zones scores are
added unchanged, Inclusive zones are halved first and Exclusive
zones are doubled. In reality values are likely to be much less
than 100 but it does give a simple indication of how major the
event was.
5.4. Filtering Events
The other columns on the main console window contain various event
totals for your monitor over the last hour, day, week and month as
well as a grand total and a total for events that you may have
archived for safekeeping. Clicking on one of these totals or on
the 'All' or 'Archive' links from the monitor window described
above will present you with a new display. This is the full event
window and contains a list of events selected according to a
filter which will also pop up in its own window. Thus if you
clicked on a 'day' total the filter will indicate that this is the
period for which events are being filtered. The event listing
window contains a similar listing to the recent events in the
monitor window. The primary differences are that the frames and
alarm frames and the score and maximum score are now broken out
into their own columns, all of which can be sorted by clicking on
the heading. Also this window will not refresh automatically,
rather only on request. Other than that, you can choose to view
events here or delete them as before.
The other window that appeared is a filter window. You can use
this window to create your own filters or to modify existing ones.
You can even save your favourite filters to re-use at a future
date. Filtering itself is fairly simple; you first choose how many
expressions you'd like your filter to contain. Changing this value
will cause the window to redraw with a corresponding row for each
expression. You then select what you want to filter on and how the
expressions relate by choosing whether they are 'and' or 'or'
relationships. For filters comprised of many expressions you will
also get the option to bracket parts of the filter to ensure you
can express it as desired.
There are several different elements to an event that you can
filter on, some of which require further explanation. These are as
follows, 'Date/Time' which must evaluate to a date and a time
together, 'Date' and 'Time' which are variants which may only
contain the relevant subsets of this, 'Weekday' which as expected
is a day of the week. All of the preceding elements take a very
flexible free format of dates and time based on the PHP strtotime
function (http://www.zend.com/manual/function.strtotime.php). This
allows values such as 'last Wednesday' etc to be entered. I
recommend acquainting yourself with this function to see what the
allowed formats are.
The other elements you can filter on are all fairly self
explanatory except perhaps for 'Archived' which you can use to
include or exclude Archived events. In general you'll probably do
most filtering on un-archived events. Once your filter is
specified, clicking 'submit' will filter the events according to
your specification. If you have created a filter you want to keep,
you can name it and save it by clicking 'Save'.
If you do this then the subsequent dialog will also allow you
specify whether you want this filter automatically applied in
order to delete events or upload events via ftp to another server
and mail notifications of events to one or more email accounts. In
most cases you can specify your preferences for upload formats and
email content during configuration time (make sure you type '?' to
get help on options). Emails and messages (essentially small
emails intended for mobile phones or pagers) have a variety of
tokens that can be substituted for various details of the event
that caused them. This includes links to the event view or the
filter as well as the option of attaching images or videos to the
email itself. See the included templates zmconfig_eml.txt and
zmconfig_msg.txt for a fuller explanation of the availability and
meaning of these tokens.
Filtering is a powerful mechanism you can use to eliminate events
that fit a certain pattern however in many cases modifying the
zone settings will better address this. Where it really comes into
its own is generally in applying time filters, so for instance
events that happen during weekdays or at certain times of the day
are highlighted, uploaded or deleted.
5.5. Viewing Events
From the monitor or filtered events listing you can now click on
an event to view it in more detail. If you have streaming
capability you will see a series of images that make up the event.
You will also see a link to allow you to view the still images
themselves. If you don't have streaming then you will be taken
directly to this page. The images themselves are thumbnail size
and depending on the configuration and bandwidth you have chosen
will either be the full images scaled in your browser of actual
scaled images. If it is the latter, if you have low bandwidth for
example, it may take a few seconds to generate the images. If
thumbnail images are required to be generated, they will be kept
and not re-generated in future. Once the images appear you can
mouse over them to get the image sequence number and the image
score.
You will notice for the first time that alarm images now contain
an overlay outlining the blobs that represent the alarmed area.
This outline is in the colour defined for that zone and lets you
see what it was that caused the alarm. Clicking on one of the
thumbnails will take you to a full size window where you can see
the image in all its detail and scroll through the various images
that make up the event. If you have the ZM_RECORD_EVENT_STATS
option on, you will be able to click the 'Stats' link here and get
some analysis of the cause of the event. Should you determine that
you don't wish to keep the event, clicking on Delete will erase it
from the database and file system. Returning to the event window,
other options here are renaming the event to something more
meaningful, refreshing the window to replay the event stream,
deleting the event, switching between streamed and still versions
of the event (if supported) and generating an MPEG video of the
event (if supported).
These last two options require further explanation. Archiving an
event means that it is kept to one side and not displayed in the
normal event listings unless you specifically ask to view the
archived events. This is useful for keeping events that you think
may be important or just wish to protect. Once an event is
archived it can be deleted or unarchived but you cannot
accidentally delete it when viewing normal unarchived events.
The final option of generating an MPEG video is still somewhat
experimental and it's usefulness may vary. It can use either the
Berkeley MPEG encoder or the faster and new ffmpeg encoder. Either
of these will generate a short video, which will be downloaded to
your browsing machine to view. Due to the relatively slow frame
rate that ZoneMinder will capture at and the high minimum frame
rate that the Berkeley encoder uses videos created by this method
will be very quick. However when using the ffmpeg encoder,
ZoneMinder will attempt to match the duration of the video with
the duration of the event. This has the useful effect of making
the video watchable and not too quick while having the unfortunate
side effect of increasing file size and generation time. Ffmpeg in
particular has a particularly rich set of options and you can
specify during configuration which additional options you may wish
to include to suit your preferences.
Building an MPEG video, especially for a large event, can take
some time and should not be undertaken lightly as the effect on
your host box of many CPU intensive encoders will not be good.
However once a video has been created for an event it will be kept
so subsequent viewing will not incur the generation overhead. I
will be the first to admit that this area of the package is not
particularly well implemented and needs work, and probably a
better encoder. Videos can also be included in notification emails
however care should be taken when using this option as for many
frequent events the penalty in CPU and disk space can quickly
mount up.
That pretty much is it for the tour. You should experiment with
the various setting to get the results you think are right for
your. Naturally letting thousands of events build up is not good
for the database or your file system so you should endeavour to
either prevent spurious events from being generated in the first
place or ensure that you housekeep them strictly.
Have fun, please report any bugs or features you'd like to see and
hopefully ZoneMinder can be your camera monitoring friend!
Philip Coombes (philip.coombes@zoneminder.com) - April 2003
6. Troubleshooting
Life eh? Nothing ever works first time does it? In case you are
having problems here are some things to try. If these don't work
then feel free to get in touch and I'll see if I can suggest
something else. The best places to look for errors are in your
system error log (probably /var/log/messages on RedHat) and your
web server log (/var/log/httpd/error_log). There should be
something in one of those that gives you some kind of tip off.
Some things to check.
o Device configuration. If you can't get your cameras to work
in ZoneMinder, firstly make sure that you have the correct
settings. Use xawtv or something like that to check for settings
that work and then run zmu -d <device_no> -q -v to get the
settings. If you can't get them to work with that then the
likelihood is they won't work with ZoneMinder. Also check the
system logs (usually /var/log/messages) for any video
configuration errors. If you get some and you're sure they're not
a problem then switch off ZM_STRICT_VIDEO_CONFIG in zmconfig.pl
and recompile and reinstall.
o Start simple. Begin with a single monitor and single zone.
You can run the zmc capture daemon from the command line as 'zmc -
-device 0' (or whatever your video device is). If it returns
immediately there's a problem so check the logs, if it stays up
then your video configuration is probably ok. To get more
information out of it use debug as specified below. Also check
that the shared memory segment has been created by doing 'ipcs -
m'. Finally, beware of doing tests as root and then trying to run
as another user as some files may not be accessible. If you're
checking things as root make sure that you clean up afterwards!
o Web server. Ensure that your web server can serve PHP files.
It's also possible that your php.ini file may have some settings
which break ZoneMinder, I'm not a PHP guru but setting safe mode
may prevent your PHP files from running certain programs. You may
have to set configuration to allow this. Also since the daemons
are started by your web server, if it dies or is shut down then
the daemons may disappear. In this version the daemons are run
under the control of a script which should trap expected signals
but it is possible this doesn't cover all circumstances.
o One of the more common errors you can see in the log files is
of the form 'Can't shmget: Invalid argument'. Generally speaking
this is caused by an attempt to allocate an amount of shared
memory greater than your system can handle. The size it requests
is base on the following formula, ring buffer size x image width x
image height x 3 (for 24 bits images) + a bit of overhead. So if
for instance you were using 24bit 640x480 then this would come to
about 92Mb if you are using the default buffer size of 100. If
this is too large then you can either reduce the image or buffer
sizes or increase the maximum amount of shared memory available.
If you are using RedHat then you can get details on how to change
these settings at
o http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/database/RHDB-2.1-
Manual/admin_user/kernel-resources.html
o You should be able to use a similar process with other
distributions to modify the shared memory pool without kernel
recompilations though in some cases this may be necessary. Note,
this error also sometime occurs if you have an old shared memory
segment lying around from a previous run that is too small. Use
the ipcs and ipcrm commands to check and remove it if necessary.
o If you get odd javascript errors and your web console or
other screens come up with bits missing then it's possible that
there is a problem with the PHP configuration. Since version 0.9.8
ZoneMinder has used short PHP open tags to output information, so
instead of something like this '<?php echo $value ?>', it will be
something like this '<?= $value ?>' which is easier and quicker to
write as well as being neater. More information about this
directive can be seen at the following location,
http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.directives.php#ini.shor
t-open-tag. However although by default most PHP installations
support this form, some will need to have it switched on
explicitly. To do this you will first need to find your php.ini
file (do a 'locate php.ini' or 'find / -name php.ini'. Be aware
however that sometimes you might find more than one, so ensure you
identify the one that is actually being used. You will then need
to find the line that starts 'short_open_tag = ' and change the
Off value to On. This wil correct the problem. However in some
cases you may have explicitly switched it off, so that XML
compliant documents can be more easily served, or you may even not
have permission to edit the file. In this case you can go into the
web directory of ZoneMinder and run 'sh retag.sh' which will
replace all the short open tags in the files themselves with the
longer variant. You will obviously have to remember to do this for
each subsequent version of ZoneMinder that you install as well.
o Use debug. ZoneMinder has various debug in it that by default
will go into your system log (via syslog). These will be of the
form of
"Sep 14 14:50:11 localhost zma-0[1975]: INF [Front: 221000 -
Processing at 4.26 fps ]"
where the zma-0 part identifies the daemon and the device it
is running on. Entries with INF in are informational and not
an error, if you see ERR then it is one, though not all are
fatal. You can prevent this information from being emitted by
setting the DLVL_zmc environment variable to -1 or less once
things are working. If you want to run any of the daemons
from the command line to test, setting DBG_PRINT to 1 will
output the debug on the console and setting DLVL_zmc (or
DLVL_zma etc) to a number between 0 and 9 will emit
progressively more debug though there's not a lot in there at
present.
o 6. Paths. I admit it, the various paths in ZoneMinder are a
bit of a nightmare. Make sure that they are all correct and that
permissions are such that the various parts of ZoneMinder can
actually run.
o Missing perl modules. There are various perl modules used by
the various scripts. If you get errors about missing ones, the
easiest way to install them is to type the following (you will
probably need to be root),
perl -MCPAN -eshell
this will then (eventually, after some configuration if it's
your first time) present you with a prompt. From there you
can type install module, e.g. Term::ReadKey and the rest
should be more or less automatic as it will chase any
dependencies for you. There may be some initial configuration
questions it might ask you on startup if you've never run it
before and to speed things up I would not install a new
Bundle at this point (it can end up building you a whole new
perl if you're not careful) if it asks you but everything
else should be quite straightforward.
o Unsupported palettes. ZoneMinder currently is designed to use
the simple palettes of greyscale and 24 bit as well as now the
YUV420P palette. This should cover most cameras but it's possible
that there are ones out there that might want to use more esoteric
formats that ZoneMinder doesn't support. This will often show up
as the capture daemon being unable to set picture attributes. If
this occurs try using different palettes starting with greyscale
and if you can't get anything to work let me know and I'll try and
add it.
o USB bus problems. If you have multiple USB cameras on one bus
then it can appear as if ZoneMinder is causing your cameras to
fail. This is because the bandwidth available to cameras is
limited by the fairly low USB speed. In order to use more than one
USB camera with ZoneMinder (or any application) you will need to
inform the driver that there are other cameras requiring
bandwidth. This is usually done with a simple module option.
Examples are usb_alt=<n> for the OV511 driver and cams=<n> for
CPIA etc. Check your driver documentation for more details. Be
aware however that sharing cameras in this way on one bus will
also limit the capture rate due to the reduced bandwidth.
Also, if you are using IE under Windows and get lots of annoying
clicks when various windows refresh then you'll need to edit your
registry and remove the value for
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\Explorer\Navigating\.curr
ent or download the registry script to do it for you from
http://www.zoneminder.com/downloads/noIEClick.reg
7. Change Log
7.1. Release 0.9.11
Various new features and fixes.
o Added stats view - If you have the RECORD_EVENT_STATS
directive set and are viewing a still image from an event you can
now view the statistics recorded for that frame. This tells you
why that frame triggered or participated in an alarm. This can be
useful in tuning the various motion detection parameters and
seeing why events occurred.
o Tabulated events - The main events view is now tabulated to
look a bit nicer.
o New video palette support - As well as the existing greyscale
and 24 bit RGB palettes, you can now choose YUV420P and RGB565.
Rewrote the palette/colours area a bit to enable support for other
palettes in the future if requested. Bear in mind though that YUV
palettes are converted into RGB internally so if you have the
choice RGB24 may be faster as it's the 'native' format used
within.
o Added preclusive zones - Added a new zone type, the
preclusive zone. For full details see the relevant section above
but in brief this is a zone type that if alarmed will actually
prevent an alarm. This completes the pantheon of zone types I
think.
o Fixed Mozilla JavaScript - Various JavaScript functionality
did not function on Mozilla, Netscape and other browsers. This is
now (hopefully) fixed.
o Allow image and mpegs to be attached to emails - Added new
tokens (%EI1%, %EIM% and %EV%) to the filter emails. This allows
the first alarm image, most highly scored alarm image and an alarm
MPEG to be attached to alarm notification emails. Use %EV%
especially with care!
o Fixed possible motion detection bug - I found a few double
declared local variables left over from the rewrite. This may have
affected the motion detection algorithm. Fixed now anyway.
o Modified scoring - Alarm scoring has been modified to give
more granularity for smaller events. This will have the effect of
raising the scores for small events while large ones will still be
about the same.
o Fixed /cgi-bin path problem - Previously you could specify
the real path to you cgi-bin directory if you have one but not the
web path. You can now do both.
o Improved video handling in browser - The MPEG/video area of
the web GUI had been a bit neglected and looked somewhat ugly.
This has now been improved to a degree and looks a bit nicer.
o Added ffmpeg support - Historically ZoneMinder has only
supported the Berkeley mpeg encoder which was slow and rather
limited. ZoneMinder now supports the ffmpeg encoder as well which
is much much faster and makes generation of MPEG videos at
realistic frame rates more of a reality. As ffmpeg has so many
options and everyone will probably want a different emphasis you
can now also specify additional ffmpeg options via zmconfig.pl.
o Colourise greyscale image files - In past versions, captured
greyscale images were stored as JPEG files with a corresponding
greyscale colourspace. This saved a small amount of space but
meant that mpeg_encode had to do a conversion to encode them, and
ffmpeg just fell in a heap. Now you can optionally opt to have
greyscale images saved as full 24 bit colourspace images (they
still look the same) at the price of a small penalty in CPU and
disk but allowing you to easily and quickly create MPEG files.
This option is one by default but can be switched off if you do
not require any MPEG encoding.
o Fast RGB diffs - Previously ZoneMinder used quite a loose
method for calculating the differences between two colour images.
This was basically averaging the differences between each of the
RGB components to get an overall difference. This is still the
default but by setting ZM_FAST_RGB_DIFFS to 'no' you can now make
it calculate the Y (or brightness value) of the pixels and use the
difference between those instead. This will be more accurate and
responsive to changes but is may be slower especially on old
machines. There is a slight double whammy here if you have a YUV
palette for capture and set this option off as the image will be
converted to RGB and then partially converted back to get the Y
value. This is currently very inefficient and needs to be
optimised.
o Fixed STRICT_VIDEO_CONFIG - Previously this actually behaved
the opposite of what it was supposed to, ie. if you wanted it
strict it wasn't and vice versa. Thanks to Dan Merillat for
pointing this one out.
o Web colour change - I thought the old red, green and amber
text colours were just a bit too gaudy so I've toned them down a
bit. Hope you like them!
7.2. Release 0.9.10
Many bug-fixes and major feature enhancements.
o Configure 'round' bug - Fixed a problem with the configure
script that didn't detect if the 'round' function was already
declared before try to do it itself.
o Low event id bug - Fixed bug where events with an id of <
1000 were being cleaned up by zmaudit.pl by mistake.
o Source file restructuring - The source files have been broken
up and renamed extensively to support the first stage of the code
being straightened out. Likewise the class structure has been
rationalised somewhat. The php file names have also changed in
some cases so it might be best to delete all your php and css
files from the zone minder install directory first as the old ones
won't be overwritten and will be left behind.
o Streamed cycle view - The monitor cycle view (the one where
each monitor is displayed sequentially) now supports streams as
well as stills.
o New 'montage' view - Added a montage view showing all your
cameras simultaneously either streaming or stills. The width of
this window (in terms of number of monitors) is a configuration
option.
o Network camera support - A major change in this version is
support for remote or network cameras. This is currently
implemented as series of http grabs of stills rather than being
able to break up motion jpeg streams. However frame rates of from
2-10 should be achievable depending on your network proximity to
the cameras.
o Option BGR->RGB swap - Added the option to switch on or off
the inversion of RGB to BGR for local cameras. It is on by default
to maintain compatibility with previous releases.
o zmu suspend alarm option - Added new -n option to zmu to
effectively suspend alarm detection for a monitor. This is
intended for short term use and to support PTZ cameras where alarm
detection is desired to be suspended while the camera changes
orientation or zoom level.
o FPS limiting - Added a new option to monitors to add a
maximum capture rate. This allows you to limit the amount of hits
a network camera gets or to reduce the system load with many
cameras. It also works with multi-port cards and limiting the
capture rate on one camera allows the spare FPS to be allocated to
other devices. For instance with two cameras and no throttle, I
get about 4FPS each. Throttling one to 2FPS allows the other to
operate at 6FPS so you can allocate your capture resources
accordingly. This limiting can be disabled while alarms are
occurring as a global option in zmconfig.pl.
o Alarm reference update - Added option to not blend alarmed
images into the reference image. See the help in zmconfig.pl for
caveats.
o Disappearing monitors - Fixed the disappearing monitor
problem in the console view where monitors with no events were
randomly not being shown.
o Clean and tidy - Cleaned up a load of compiler warnings and
miscellanea to ensure a cleaner happier build.
o Streamed image headers - Made all headers in streamed images
have full CRLF termination which will hopefully now prevent the
problems with broken streams that had existed mostly with Mozilla
(and hopefully won't break anything else).
o Expire streams - Added expiry headers to streamed images so
they will always display fully.
o Event navigation - Added next, prev, delete & next, delete &
prev navigation to events to allow you to quickly review events in
sequence as had been requested by a number of people.
o USR blocking - The debug USR signals were not being blocked
properly leading to nasty effects in zmc mostly.
o zmfilter execution - Previously zmfilter execution was not
synchronised with the monitor state or the analysis daemon leading
to it sometimes being run unnecessarily. From now on the zmfilter
process will only run when a monitor is active and so actually
potentially generating alarms.
o zmdc short statuses - Removed the logging of the short status
values that zmdc.pl returns to it's clients which had been
clogging up the log file.
o Bugs and pieces - Fixed various bug(ettes) that I came across
that that I don't think had been reported or noticed so I don't
think we need to talk about them here do we.
7.3. Release 0.9.9
Mainly bug-fixes and minor feature enhancements.
o Added zmu -q/--query option - There is now a new query option
for zmu. When combined with -d it gives the config of the device
and when used with -m it dumps the current settings for the
monitor and zones. Mostly useful for bug reporting. The previous
version of zmu used with just -d gave this information for a video
device by default. This now requires the -q option also to bring
into line with it's -m equivalent.
o Added creation of events directory - Previously the 'events'
directory was not created on install, this has been fixed.
o Can now retag PHP files if necessary - Version 0.9.8 was the
first version to use short_open_tags in the PHP files. This caused
grief to some people so this script will put them back to the long
verion.
o Frame and event lengths fractional - A new field has been
added to the Frames table. This is 'Delta' and is a fractional
number of seconds relative to the event start time. This is
intended to support the real-time playback of events rather than
just 'as fast as possible' or with a configured delay as at
present. The event length is now also fractional.
o Corrected extraneous Width to be Height - The last version of
zmu included a Width comment which should have been height.
o Changed colour depth to bits - Having colour depths expressed
in bytes has caused no end of problems. This is now changed to be
bits and can be changed via a dropdown to limit what can be
entered. Don't forget to run the zmalter script to update your DB.
o Renamed terminate to zm_terminate - The use of 'terminate' in
zmc.cpp caused a conflict on some systems so renamed it to
something more specific.
o Zone deletion problem - A problem was found such that when
deleting zones the appropriate daemons were not being asked to
restart daemons correctly.
o Console changes - The current version number is now displayed
in the console. A refresh button has also been added along with a
minor reorg.
o Added delete button enable to checkAll - Using the 'Check
All' button in the main monitor window previously did not enable
the delete button. This is now fixed.
o Reload on click - In previous versions the console window
would reload if a monitor window for example was clicked. Thsi was
removed in the last version which meant that sometimes the console
never go refreshed as it's timing loop was broken. This
functionality has now been reinstated.
7.4. Release 0.9.8
Several new features and bug-fixes
o Upgrade note - If you have installed 0.9.7 and wish to save
your configuration then copy your existing zmconfig.txt file over
to your 0.9.8 directory and before running zmconfig.pl.
o Added multiple options to zmu - You can now give multiple
options to zmu and get all the responses at once. However this is
currently in a deterministic order and not related to the order
you give them.
o Added -v/--verbose option to zmu - Zmu has been made more
human friendly though it still remains primarily for daemon use.
Giving the -v or --verbose option prints out a bit more as a
response to each command.
o Add -d/--device to zmu - This option is designed to allow you
to get your video device working with another application such as
xawtv and then use zmu -d to print out the settings it's using
o (especially with the -v option). These options can then be
used as a starting point for your ZoneMinder configuration.
o Added FPS in status field - The status field in the web
monitor views now contains an FPS setting as well as the status.
o Zmconfig changes - zmconfig handles missing options better
and rewrites config file even in non-interactive mode.
o Fixed config problems in zmcfg.h - Some config was not being
set up correctly in zmcfg.h.
o Zmwatch now works on image delay and not fps - Previously the
zmwatch daemon detected capture daemon failure by trying to use
the FPS setting. This was imprecise and prone to false readings.
It now uses the time delay since the last captured image.
o Added zmpkg.pl and zm scripts - There are now two new
scripts. zmpkg.pl is in charge of starting and stopping ZoneMinder
as a whole package and zm is designed to be (optionally) installed
into your init.d directory to use ZoneMinder as a service.
o Fixed bug in Scan mode - The monitor cycle or scan mode had
stopped working properly due to images not being generated. This
is now fixed.
o Revamped the console window slightly - The console window has
now been reformatted slightly to give more and better information
including server load.
o Added email and messaging to filters - Filters now allow you
to send emails or messages (basically just short emails intended
for mobile devices) on alarms. The format and possible content for
these emails is in zmconfig_eml.txt and zmconfig_msg.txt.
o Made zmdc more aggresive in killing old processes - The
zmdc.pl daeamon will now kill any ZoneMinder processes it finds on
startup or shutdown to prevent orphans from being left around.
o Configuration changes - Previously there were a lot of files
generated by configure. Now only zmconfig.pl is generated this way
and all the other configuration files are created by zmconfig.pl
(from .z files) to centralise configuration more.
o Fixed cambolzola opt bug - There was a bug in the Cambozola
options, I can't remember what it was but it's fixed!
o Retaint arguments in zmdc.pl - In some installations zmdc was
complaining about tainted arguments from the socket. These are now
detainted prior to sending and after receiving.
o Forced alarms - You can now force alarms when looking at the
monitor window should anything catch your attention. You have to
remember to switch them off as well though.
o Looser video configuration - Some video configuration errors
can now be ignored via the STRICT_VIDEO_CONFIG option.
o Monitor window refresh on alarm - When the monitor window is
active and an alarm has occurred the most recent alarms list is
immediately refreshed to show it.
7.5. Release 0.9.7
Yes, a big jump in release number but a lot of changes too. Now
somewhat more mature, not really an alpha any more, and a lot of
bugs fixed too.
o Added zmconfig.pl script to help with configuration.
o Revamped to work better with configure scripts
o Monitors now have more configuration options, including some
that were statically defined before such as location and format of
the image timestamps.
o Removed Alarms table from schema as not required, never was
actually...
o Added a number of new scripts, see the scripts directory
o Added Fast delete to PHP files. This allows the web interface
to only delete the event entries themselves for speed and then
have the zmaudit script periodically tidy up the rest.
o Added event filter to enable bulk viewing, upload or deletion
of events according to various attributes. Filter can be saved and
edited.
o Added last event id to shared memory for auto-filtering etc.
o Changed zmu -i option to write to monitor named image file.
o Made shared memory management somewhat more sensible.
o Now stores DB times as localtime rather than UTC avoiding
daylight saving related bugs.
o Fixed bug with inactive zones and added more debug.
o Changed main functions to return int.
o Added help and usage to zmu.
o Fixed browser acceptance problem, more easily defaults to
HTML.
o Split out the PHP files into a bunch with specific functions
rather than one monolithic one.
o Fixed NetPBM paths and changed _SERVER to HTTP_SERVER_VARS.
o Added HUP signal on zone deletion.
o Added NETPBM_DIR and conditional netpbm stuff.
o Removed hard coded window sizes, all popup window dimensions
can be specified in zmconfig.php
o Changed form methods to 'get' from 'post' to avoid resubmit
warnings all the time.
o Added conditional sound to alarm on web interface.
o Fixed syntax error when adding default monitor.
o Some of the web views have changed slightly to accommodate
the separate events view.
o And much much more, probably...
7.6. Release 0.0.1
Initial release, therefore nothing new.
8. To Do
Seeing as ZoneMinder is so young and has kind of evolved rather
than being planned there are a bunch of improvements and
enhancements still to do, here is just a sample.
o Perhaps split out devices - I think devices should probably
be a separate table and class from monitors. Not critical but
would represent a better model.
o Comments - Needs many more, but that's just me I'm hopeless
at commenting things out. I'll get round to it soon though honest!
You're lucky to even get this document.
o Optimised zones - The zones could do with being sorted out a
bit to optimise the processing of overlapping ones, at the moment
you can waste resource unless your zones are kept very tidy.
o Create zones using server side image maps - This would make
it easier to precisely define and see where your zone is going to
go. Not critical but handy but a bugger to do.
o Zone Definitions - Allow zones to be defined according to a
colour coded bitmap or as polygons. Currently all zones are
rectangular this would add a bit of flexibility. Would need a bit
of a rewrite though. This will incur a slight penalty on startup
and a very slight one on processing for all reasonably shaped
zones.
o Security - I think I need to give the php file a bit of a
good going over as I'm sure it's not done in the most secure way
regarding passing things onto command line, exposing file paths
and other stuff. I'm a bit of a PHP novice, as I'm sure you can
tell so might need help here. I should have done it in perl!
o Mouseover help - A bit more help popping up when you
mouseover things would be handy. A bit more help full stop
actually.
o WAP interface - A bit of a crusade of mine I'm afraid. I'd
like to put a WML interface on to allow you to view event listing
and perhaps the most significant image from each event on your
phone. Also simple management. From version 0.9.7 there is a very
basic crude initial version that probably won't work with your
phone but its there as a testbed.
o Automatic device configuration - Video 4 Linux supports
various device queries, it should be possible to get most of the
device capability information from the device itself. The zmu
utility does this now but it's not yet integrated into the web
pages.
o Extend the API. Well ok it's not really got an API yet but
the image data is held in shared memory in a very simple format.
In theory you could use the capture daemon to gab the images and
other things could read them from memory or the analysis daemon
could read images from elsewhere. Either way this should be done
through an API, and would need a library I think. Also the zmu
utility could probably do a whole lot more to enable other things
to manage when the daemons become active etc.
o Access control should probably be built in rather than
relying on .htaccess etc. This is a frequently requested feature
(FRF) and must be done soon.
o Create .rpm packages (as there can be several dependencies)
and maybe other types of packages also, e.g. for Debian
distributions.
o Allow ZoneMinder to 'train' itself by allowing the user to
select events that are considered important and to discard those
that should be ignored. ZoneMinder will interpolate, add a bit of
magic, and recommend settings that will support this selection
automatically thereafter. The hooks for this are already in to
some extent.
o Add quotes to all PHP array references. I should have done it
in the first place but I'm a perl person really and it kind of
bugs me that you have to.
o Add sound support to allow a captured audio channel to be
associated with a video device.
9. Bugs
o I'm not sure if this is a bug or by design but the timestamp
is added to the image by the capture daemon. I _think_ this isn't
necessary as it may contribute to alarms, plus the time is
associated with the image anyway. So I think this should be moved
to the analysis daemon.
o I suspect there may be a bug in zmaudit.pl if your monitor
names have spaces in them. I've not been able to reproduce it but
to be on the safe side don't put spaces in your Monitor names.
o When opening a link to an event etc from a notification email
the window that is opened is just a regular browser window and not
in the context of a proper ZoneMinder web interface. Thus it comes
up too big usually (not a major issue) and also things like
'Delete' don't work as it wants to do things to its parent (which
is more of a major issue).
o The .sock files used by the *nix sockets I suspect may have
the odd permission issue now and again. I think everything
recovers from it but it needs checking out.
Probably bucket loads more, just fire them at me.
10. Non-Bugs
o Yes, those are tabs in the indents; I like tabs so don't go
changing them to spaces or else. Also yes I also like my opening
braces on their own line most of the time, what's the point of
brackets that don't line up?
Everything else that isn't definitely broken is probably
deliberate, or was once anyway.
11. License
ZoneMinder is released under the GPL, see below.
ZoneMinder README, $Date$, $Revision$
Copyright (C) 2003 Philip Coombes
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-
1307, USA.
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