Lee Sharp wrote:We tried... Zoneminder needs quite a bit of babysitting.
1) Table Frames is corrupted... This happens every reboot, it seams. All the time anyway, and it needs intervention to fix.
2) Config is non-trivial.
3) There is no automatic screen. Customers want to turn it on and see pictures without doing anything. We hacked something up with xlib-shm, but it would freeze occasionally, then the customer would reboot it, and go to point 1...
4) No sound, no click on a screen in montage to zoom, and "How does this search work again?" round out the objections.
That all said, this could be done. The inodedb patch could fix problem 1, which is huge! Skins might fix number 2. Xlib-shm kinda works, and could be made more stable. And if not, reboots no longer cause 1...
In other words, it is doable, and if you are interested, PM me. I still do not like our current (closed source) solution, (Which has changed twice in the last 6 months) but the non-techs do.
These concerns along with Zoneminder not having a (easily accessible) support solution is the main problems for selling Zoneminder boxes.
If you plan to do installations and sell a surveillance system you really are going to have to find a commercially supported package. Zoneminder is great for home use or as a tinker toy box, but there's too many things that can go wrong outside of Zoneminder's direct control (an upgrade to a library could kill Zoneminder's ability to record, mysql could put the tables into a crash state).
A GUI interface, audio support and support are really what customers want, at least that's what I hear all day long.
Then I priced out a PC that can run 2x4 port capture card 60 fps but still how much do you need. So I came to a grand total with shipping at $260. + time so lets say its a $300 dvr pc.
