Zoneminder Newest VERs easy to install and setup

[river100]

I've been using Zoneminder since 2005. And as most people will tell you it has not been "Plug&Play"
I've been updating a few of my Zoneminder systems to the latest stable VERs.
It was so easy I thought I'd do a post on it.
The 1.34.xx vers really surprised me with the very low CPU usage and WAY better
storage options. Record the cam stream direct to disk works great.

You still need to install a Linux Distro, Ubuntu server is the easiest.
And still need to do some copy-past command line at a putty terminal.
But, the actual install, which was a PIA, can be done with a script that gets you to a working Zoneminder.
After installing Zoneminder you may have to set a timezone but that's in the Web Ui.

If you google this you should get the wiki that has the script for Zoneminder 1.34.xx
I'm running 1.34.20 as of last week.
Install Zoneminder 1.34.x on Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04 with shell script

the link below.

ZoneMinder Wiki - Wiki - Ubuntu Server or Desktop Zoneminder 1.34.x

wiki.zoneminder.com

 

[Kenneth Anderson]

What turned me off about Zoneminder about 5 years ago was the windowed/slotted detection settings. When I was most interested in retrieving the video of something that triggered a detection, the intruder never got recorded. My guess is that the ratio of changes was higher than the high limit detection setting, but even that still doesn't make sense to me. I gave up on Zoneminder after that and never looked back, I was so ticked off. Do you use Zoneminder's high ratio limits in detection settings to any advantage? Can you install so the default detection ratio is unlimited universally on the high side whenever a new camera is added to the system? And I would rather stick with nginx instead of apache

 

[river100]

Zoneminder uses percentages or pixel count for zone settings. This can screw you if you have min/max settings like 15% min 75% max and someone opens a door that lets in light that goes over 75% Zoneminder will not record that event.
I've had that happen on a cpl of occasions in the past so I try to take issues like that in consideration when I setup alarm zones. No doubt setting up alarm zones is the key to a good Zoneminder install. If you setting up an inside zone you might want to leave the max setting blank I'm not familiar with other NVR software but you will probably get more false alarms with an outside cam with any NVR software because of clouds and other issues when skipping the max setting.
Using the default Zoneminder zone settings is always risky. You could blank out the max settings when adding a camera and go from there.

 

[spuls]

Zoneminder works with most NAS systems (Freenas, Synology,..) as docker/jail container. you may run into cpu/memory limitations on the cheaper devices - but it should be good enough for a simple tes.t

for advanced users i would recommend a deep look into the zoneminder eventserver (ai detection,..). i run it since the first version in 2018 or so, since 3.0 it´s rockstable => Installation of the Event Server (ES) — Event Notification Server documentation

 

[Kenneth Anderson]

You could blank out the max settings when adding

Sure. But in the learning, the end user has far more likely lost what was important than had the opposite approach been used by Zoneminder developers - have the default settings tend to produce false alarms rather than croak completely.

 

[brianegge]

The problem with the ZM design is it depends on ZM to detect motion in an image instead of running the AI first and then seeing if any objects are moving. The latter approach requires a GPU running continuously but is bale to detect small objects like a raccoon running across the lawn.

 

[kevins]

I use zoneminder at my business. I use 24hr recording, and have the motion detection set quite sensitive. This causes lots of activations, but they are just passed on to the object detection system. This decides if there is any person present and a confidence value. This is then picked up by node-red, and then sends notifications based on presence by WiFi from unifi. This way we don't get any alerts when we are in the building, but when none of us are there I get notified of anyone. Works like an alarm that auto sets and unsets and is very reliable. I tried it for a few weeks with not everyone on the allowed list and it always picked up when someone was there.

It also turns on the outside lights if a person is seen between dusk and dawn to give a better picture of them.

Bit of a learning curve, but I had never used Linux until I tried zoneminder.

 

[Pentagano]

I use zoneminder at my business. I use 24hr recording, and have the motion detection set quite sensitive. This causes lots of activations, but they are just passed on to the object detection system. This decides if there is any person present and a confidence value. This is then picked up by node-red, and then sends notifications based on presence by WiFi from unifi. This way we don't get any alerts when we are in the building, but when none of us are there I get notified of anyone. Works like an alarm that auto sets and unsets and is very reliable. I tried it for a few weeks with not everyone on the allowed list and it always picked up when someone was there.

It also turns on the outside lights if a person is seen between dusk and dawn to give a better picture of them.

Bit of a learning curve, but I had never used Linux until I tried zoneminder.

I'm pulling my hair out with zm. How on earth do you get object detection working on it? I seem to have followed all the steps. all the config ini files set up. etc. but still no object detection, only the blob motion detection.