Zoneminder Camera Setup Examples

Zoneminder

Three Examples of Camera Configuration for Zoneminder

My first camera I bought for surveillance was an Edimax IC-520 from memory, a network camera with a resolution of 640x480px, it also has the great fisheye lens feature, I now believe a fisheye lens is an absolute must after using non fisheye lens cameras for Zoneminder. The Edimax sure is a reliable camera and definitely good enough for a surveillance camera.

Edimax IC-1520DP Network Camera Zoneminder Setup

There won't be a lot of text in this post, screenshots taken from the camera setup should be more than sufficient.

Edimax camera setup "General" tab

Name: Anything

Source Type: Remote

Function: Choose from - Monitor, Modect

Enabled: Checked

Maximum FPS: As low as reasonable, start with 5.00

Alarm Maximum FPS: I usually set double Max FPS

Reference Image Blend %ge: 7 though never tried changing this number, works fine!

Edimax camera setup "Source" tab

Remote Protocol: HTTP

Remote Method: Simple

Remote Hostname: admin:1234@192.168.xxx.xxx

Remote Host Port: 80

Remote Host Path: /jpg/image.jpg

Remote Image Colours: 24 bit colour

Capture Width: 640

Capture Height: 480

Preserve Aspect Ratio: Unchecked

Orientation: Adjust to suit if necessary

Logitech C270 HD USB Webcam Zoneminder Setup

Logitech USB Camera Setup "General" tab

Logitech USB Camera Setup "Source" tab

Brickcom CB100A HD Camera Zoneminder Setup

Brickcom CB100A HD Camera Setup "General" tab

Brickcom CB100A HD Camera Setup "Source" tab

External Drive for the Raspberry Pi

The external USB storage drive is the only thing that gives me bother with the pi, originally I had an external IDE hard drive in my external case. It started out working fine and I'm sure it did so the whole time. The Raspberry Pi seemed to lose connection to the drive, it messed with Torrents and NZB's, SabNZBD and Transmission daemon were and still are the only extra packages I have installed of course along with their dependencies.

If you had both running you needed to download at about 250KB/s, more,  the RPI seemed to bog down the higher speed you downloaded at. It's still a damn handy always on Torrent client and NZB downloader that is on 24/7, 365 days a year.

I decided to rearrange my drives, I purchased two 2.5 hard drive enclosures and one 2.5 WD 300GB hard drive disk. I have a decent four port hub that should power it no problems, hopefully... So far so good, the new disk is working admirably, there was a few hiccups on the whole install process, but lots of searching on Google and forums had me finding the answers no worries.

I also thought it about time I bought a USB SATA dock used for inserting sata hard drives so they can be plugged in to a USB port on your computer, no screws just plug in a drive and go, start accessing your hard drive contents right away! The two external hard drive enclosures I bought are nice and slim and just small in general, dinky little cases really but will do their intended job just fine.