Very New,need some strategy advice & UK Based Cam Recomm

maciekc · Post by **maciekc** » Thu May 18, 2006 7:20 pm

Sorry for telling that g450 is one of good cards for my viewer.
I tried it only with tvtime - it was better than tnt1 as I said.
Today I tried with my viewer xlib_shm and it doesn't work - RGB xvideo is not supported. I will try to make a conversion of rgb to yuw and see how it works, but currently it is not working.

I will let you know in few days, if it is possible to get it work, maybe yuw format would be better even for other cards that have rgb32 support.

Mark Ward · Post by **Mark Ward** » Thu May 18, 2006 7:36 pm

maciekc wrote:Sorry for telling that g450 is one of good cards for my viewer.
I tried it only with tvtime - it was better than tnt1 as I said.
Today I tried with my viewer xlib_shm and it doesn't work - RGB xvideo is not supported. I will try to make a conversion of rgb to yuw and see how it works, but currently it is not working.

I will let you know in few days, if it is possible to get it work, maybe yuw format would be better even for other cards that have rgb32 support.

No problems, I only just placed the order for some bits and have yet to order a Graphics Card.

Do you know what would be a current "Good Card"? Would My Radeon 9200 or 9500 work ok?

Many thanks,

Mark.

maciekc · Post by **maciekc** » Fri May 19, 2006 8:50 am

No problems, I only just placed the order for some bits and have yet to order a Graphics Card.

Do you know what would be a current "Good Card"? Would My Radeon 9200 or 9500 work ok?

Many thanks,

Mark.

Simply check if it is working. Probably it will be OK.
The graphics card is not so important in zoneminder.
ZM doesn't use graphics card, you could even don't have any card if you will be using it remotely.
Only my viewer use some power of graphics card - currently it needs to have support for xvideo rgb32.

Mark Ward · Post by **Mark Ward** » Sat May 20, 2006 4:06 pm

Finally built the ZM PC from spare bits and am now in the process of learning how to configure and use it

In the end I went for

Asus A7N8X-Deluxe Mobo
Athlon 3200+ CPU
512MB Ram
60gb IDE rive (was spare and not SATA whilst testing. I'll get a bigger one soon).
LifeView Flyvideo2000 TV card (has 1 x composite in that seem ok under XawTV)
Philips PCVC680K Webcam (was in the cupboard)

I went for Suse in the end because of the very clear step-by-step guide in the Hints & Tips section. That guy (dgsconseil) deserves a medal for making this so straight forward.

I've a lot of bits I still need to work out, but I'm sure that's the case with 100% of the users on day 1 of trying ZM.

I still need to buy a proper capture card or 2 and some cameras but I'm hoping I have enough here to help me work out how it all functions. I'm using a VCR video source to test the composite input, I take it that's not going to cause any problems is it?

Mark.

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Sat May 20, 2006 5:55 pm

no anything with composite video will do, camcorder, vcr xbox etc

Flash_ · Post by **Flash_** » Sun May 21, 2006 8:17 am

Going back to the SATA - no problems with a modern Asus motherboard and a recent linux kernel, even though linux couldn't run its onboard NIC without problems, the SATAs (I have four - and three IDE drives) are fine.

Generally I prefer to have the boot and OS on an IDE because it can be fiddly to get an os to boot on sata's sometimes, but once up they mount fine and absolutely no problem with speed. (I have what I think is a bad sata controller in another PC which has suddenly started hanging when accessing disks > 150gb, but thats XP!). I'd leave your 60gb in as boot/os and mount a large sata purely for zoneminder. Makes things much easier in estimating usage.

Another point - number plate recognition. Essential.

In daylight, 3-5 fps at 640x480 is generally ok, though crank it up to 10+ if there is likelyhood of the vehicle going fast.

In the dark (I have no experience of infra-red cams) - I tie each camera to a normal 150watt PIR security light. These lights are useless for security on their own and usually safely ignored by the chavs, but they can be positioned to highlight detail and ALSO reliably trigger ZM's motion detection even when vehicle is running without lights. (Angle the PIR to cover the engine bay - if mounted too high can overshoot and fail to register). Some risk of cat-triggers but not much you can do about that.
PIR-lights are less than £8 each and easy to add almost anywhere there's power. Do plenty of tweaking at night to ensure you get a clear picture of plates.

If no power is available - maybe a power-over-ethernet (PoE) Ip camera with its own infra-red bulbs might work. I have two PoE cams which have saved me the hassle of bringing in an electrician on contract to legally add mains power to some areas.

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Sun May 21, 2006 12:41 pm

on the anpr i have looked at it. I couldnt add it to zm but i thought about adding it to zm4ms. Its is a huge project. Even if you forget the actual processing to reead the plate getting the system to see where the plate is before passing it to the ocr engine is hard enough. I think if anpr is essential you need to find a system that has a sdk so we can link zm and whatever system you choose.