TrendNet TV-IP322P and ZoneMinder

A continuation of our homebrew security project, we visit enabling the camera in ZoneMinder. After a harrowing experience with compiling and installing Zoneminder (I'd almost go with the Linux "motion" application instead), I have the TrendNet TV-IP322P cameras working in ZoneMinder. Once Zoneminder is compiled and running, the next thing is to get the settings right to allow Zoneminder to watch the camera and record events.

This required the following settings for these cameras :

• General Tab/Name: the name you wish Zoneminder to have for the camera
• General Tab/Source Type: Remote
• General Tab/Function: Modetect - this is to allow it to detect motion
• Source Tab/Remote Protocol: HTTP
• Source Tab/Remote Method: Simple
• Source Tab/Remote Host Name: admin:password@ipaddress (example : "admin:mypass@192.168.1.23"
• Source Tab/Remote Host Port: 80 (unless you've changed the setting in the camera)
• Source Tab/Remote Host Path: /cgi/jpg/image.cgi
• Source Tab/Capture Width: 1280
• Source Tab/Capture Height: 1024

Verifying brought success :

id	event	monitor	cause	time	duration	frames	alarm frames	total score	avg score	max score
1	NorthWest-1	NorthWest Motion	07/25 12:46:42	13.24 50		30	206	6	11
2	NorthWest-2	NorthWest	Motion	07/25 12:47:04	6.76	24	4	9	2	3
3	NorthWest-3	NorthWest	Motion	07/25 12:47:23	11.43	44	24	226	9	16

However, after attempting to get ZoneMinder to send immediate notifications to Nagios, and also after finding I was getting 3fps out of ZoneMinder, I opted to try a different method, Linux motion. That was simpler to set up, but two downsides :

• ZoneMinder allows multiple "zones" or "sensitive areas" on an image stream, motion only allows one (but it can be more complex than the four sides of ZoneMinders).
• motion doesn't work with multiple cameras very well - you'll have to set up separate motion instances with separate motion.conf files for each one.

So, next up : Linux motion.