Zoneminder New Install Issues

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vMAC
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Zoneminder New Install Issues

Post by vMAC »

I am a newbie to Zoneminder.
I have Zoneminder 1.30.0-nt2 installed on my ReadyNAS 3138. It is a week old install of the NAS and about 3 days on Zoneminder.

I followed tthe Quick Start guide https://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/st ... arted.html to get setup with my current install. I enabled authentication, changed the admin password (which interestingly isn't in the quick start guide). I then proceeded to add monitors (6) to Zoneminder and after determining that it doesn't like special characters in the RTSP authorization for Host Path. This is where I am currently.

I have setup all my cameras (Hikvision 2732s) in Zoneminder. And the following are the issues that I have encountered that I would really appreciate some help on:
  1. Zoneminder was orginally showing me a load of 7.34. After following this guide https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Hikvision_DS_2CD2732FIS which I was hoping to significantly drop this, I am currently at 5.89.
  • I currently have all the cameras configured exactly the same in settings, and new zoneminder username/password created for each camera. However two of my cameras are having issues.
  • I have provided a pastbin http://pastebin.com/c9YrW1hH, and as you can see it is very noisy with lots of different errors. Would love to know what's causing these issues.
Thank you for reviewing this post and helping me to solve my issues.
bbunge
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Re: Zoneminder New Install Issues

Post by bbunge »

You may be stressing out the Atom Quad Core Processor and you may not have enough RAM to run the cameras at high resolution. Drop the cameras to 320x240 and 5 FPS to see if the load goes down. You are brave to use a NAS to run Zominder.
vMAC
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Re: Zoneminder New Install Issues

Post by vMAC »

Interesting, I was under the impression this could handle the workload.
What would be the appropriate level (if possible) of RAM? 320x240 would not be worth the cost put into this system.
I was enticed to go this route, with the NAS and the cameras due to ReadyNAS Surveillance. After reading some forums while looking for someone to sell me the licenses needed for the 6 cameras it was suggested that I try this software as it would be better. That is why I am trying to get this up and running as my trial only has 26 days left. Due you see an inherent risk to the NAS? To the cameras? Any insights you can give me would be beneficial.

Thank you.
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iconnor
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Re: Zoneminder New Install Issues

Post by iconnor »

The only problems I see in that log is user authentication problems.

There is no risk of damage to your nas or cameras. You are probably asking it to do more than it was designed to do. You don't have to drop to 320x240, but you may need to drop to something lower than the full capabilities of the cameras, or get really complex like doing the motion detection on a lower resolution stream, and just recording from the high res stream.

Point is, if you want to get under-powered hardware to do complex things, you will need to really play around with it/tweak it to the max.
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knight-of-ni
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Re: Zoneminder New Install Issues

Post by knight-of-ni »

We are no longer maintaining the Remote -> RTSP method. Try switching to ffmpeg or libvlc.

http://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/lat ... tml#remote

http://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/lat ... tml#ffmpeg

This is known to make all those incomplete and partial frame messages go away and make your logs easier to read. It should also perform better too.

Since your server has 4 cores, your goal should be to get the load to no more than 3. You have to leave wiggle room for normal processes to run or your system will crash over time. Do this by doing what bbunge said. I recommend you start by dropping your frame rates to 5, in the camera, not in zonemidner. Yes, 5 is perfectly normal for a surveillance system and will record movement just fine.
Visit my blog for ZoneMinder related projects using the Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Odroid, and the ESP8266
All of these can be found at https://zoneminder.blogspot.com/
vMAC
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Re: Zoneminder New Install Issues

Post by vMAC »

I will consider those changes. I don't need the high FPS unless there is an event. So although the program allows me to set an alert FPS, if u have set it to 5 in the camera that filed won't matter?

To be clear the only thing that is going to be recorded is motion, none of the cameras are going to record full time.

Can anyone tell me if 4gigs of RAM is enough or should I upgrade it to 16?

Lastly, I am positive that the username/password are correct as put in Zoneminder and in the camera as I created new users specifically for this program. Four of the six cameras work, why would these last two that I put in not work?
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knight-of-ni
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Re: Zoneminder New Install Issues

Post by knight-of-ni »

vMAC wrote:I will consider those changes. I don't need the high FPS unless there is an event. So although the program allows me to set an alert FPS, if u have set it to 5 in the camera that filed won't matter?
No, zoneminder does not support changing the fps during an alert when ip streaming. Click on one of the max fps fields in the monitor config, read the red warning that appears and also the help text which the warning encourages you to read. This is important, and many ignore the warning then wonder why they run into problems.

What information you've shown tells us that you aren't going to get those 6 cameras to work w/o making compromises to the frame rate, resolution, motion detection, etc.
vMAC wrote: To be clear the only thing that is going to be recorded is motion, none of the cameras are going to record full time.

Can anyone tell me if 4gigs of RAM is enough or should I upgrade it to 16?
You are the best person to do this as we can only hand wave and guess. Uncheck enabled and set the function to none for all but one camera. With just one camera running, observe the amount of ramdisk (/dev/shm) space consumed and the % cpu consumed foe the camera's zm* processes. This is your baseline. With all 6 cameras running, your goal is a cpu load of 3 and at ~250MB free /dev/shm space available. Recall it is critically important to leave sufficient wiggle room otherwise your system will crash over time.
vMAC wrote: Lastly, I am positive that the username/password are correct as put in Zoneminder and in the camera as I created new users specifically for this program. Four of the six cameras work, why would these last two that I put in not work?
That is a symptom of running out of ramdisk, /dev/shm
Visit my blog for ZoneMinder related projects using the Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Odroid, and the ESP8266
All of these can be found at https://zoneminder.blogspot.com/
vMAC
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Re: Zoneminder New Install Issues

Post by vMAC »

I appreciate everyone's suggestions.
I will go down to one camera and lower frame rate to 720p.
FPS to 5, and see what happens.
I'll also move it to ffmpeg.
I'll report back with the what I see.

Is there a thread or a type of calculator that has been created by zoneminder or others that would give a baseline of the processing power needed at a specific frame rate, FPS, motion detection? I thought I had done a good amount of research prior to getting going this all purchased and plugged in.

Thank you again.
vMAC
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Joined: Sat Jan 07, 2017 5:25 pm

Re: Zoneminder New Install Issues

Post by vMAC »

I guess the other question I have is if the camera is actually doing the motion detection, (which is why it must be turned on in the camera), then does it actually take extra processing for zoneminder to have motion detection on? What actually is zoneminder doing to the stream besides flagging the event and storing the stream in a file?

Disclaimer - this is not meant to be read the wrong way. I fully recognize that I am completely incompetent on the inner workings or understanding on what is going on in CCTV or Zoneminder.
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knight-of-ni
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Re: Zoneminder New Install Issues

Post by knight-of-ni »

There are some niche cases where someone has managed to take advantage of api capabilities of a particular make/model of camera, and there are some indirect ways through zmtrigger to trigger events via external i/o... but other than that there is no general support for camera based motion detection. In the general case, zoneminder receives the RTSP stream from the camera, analyzes the pixels of each frame to determine motion, and then stores the images to disk as a series of jpegs.
Visit my blog for ZoneMinder related projects using the Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Odroid, and the ESP8266
All of these can be found at https://zoneminder.blogspot.com/
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