ZoneMinder Forums

I wanted a way to be able to power-cycle my cameras remotely when once in a while they go off into la-la land and need to be restarted. I looked around and found a place that sells these wonderful little USB relay boards. 10 amp, 220V (waaaay more stout that you need for a few cameras), and various numbers of relays. USB interface, command line controllable. http://denkovi.com/usb-relay-boards

It would be easy to use these for example to let a Zoneminder event turn on some lights, or something like that. With a wee bit of PHP or other CGI scripting, one can have a web tool to turn various things on and off. I can power-cycle my cameras one at a time via a web radio button interface. The boards seem very well made, and their software seems to work well. The whole approach is much more lightweight than, for example, some Z-wave devices and a whole openhab install, and it seems to require no interaction with the cloud as something like Alexa does.

I hope this is helpful to someone else.....

Arduino Uno and a relay board would accomplish the same thing. Even better, a POE Uno, using existing cat5 for power and comms (these retail for at least $40). But arguably these USB relay boards are cheaper, and easier to deploy, if you have no experience. Though more limited. Thanks for the link.