Monitor mode not working

JRoque · Post by **JRoque** » Tue Nov 30, 2010 1:13 am

Hi. I'm a newbie to Zoneminder but already near a boiling point with it since it's been a gripe at every step.

I finally got my Foscam FI8918W IP cam setup in ZM to where I can see the monitor line elements all showing 'green'. That was not easy, btw.

Set to motion detection, it will capture video once an event is triggered. It won't stop recording after that, but I have that issue posted elsewhere on this forum. My main problem is that if I switch the mode to 'monitor' the components will all turn orange and naturally, it won't show anything on the screen.

I can't find any useful information on the logs, even when enabling debug but it could be I'm not looking in the right place. I've allocate 132 Mb of shared memory already so hopefully that's not it. The camera works fine and I can stream via it's own webserver, VLC and others so that's not the issue either.

My setup: ZM v1.24.2 runs on Ubuntu 10.04, along with MythTV server (0.24). There's also 3 guests on VirtualBox.

Any tips/hints are appreciated.

Thanks,
JR

jdhar · Post by **jdhar** » Tue Nov 30, 2010 2:15 am

So the cam captures in modect mode, but doesn't show anything in monitor mode? Btw, Orange in Monitor mode is fine. Green means the capture daemons are active, which they aren't in Monitor-only mode.

When you are in modect mode and it captures, does the video it captures show good video? If you try to view the live-feed in Modect mode, does that show video, and only show nothing in Monitor mode? If you force a capture and stop it manually, does that work? When you enable debugging, are you looking in /tmp/zm*.log and /var/log/messages? I've never seen a case where you enable debug output, turn up the debug level and still don't see any useful information.

Also, just to be thorough, did you try different browsers when trying toview your feed? Any difference?

dvarapala · Post by **dvarapala** » Tue Nov 30, 2010 7:18 am

Must be a full moon out tonight or something - I just finished struggling with a very similar problem.

I just reinstalled Linux and ZM on a machine where everything was working fine before (long story, but I needed to rearrange the partitioning so that the /var partition would have more space for storing ZM events). Dunno what I screwed up during my reinstall, but like the OP I was getting no live feeds on any of the monitors, even though everything was green in Modect mode. I noticed that if I went to edit the zones that a still picture would show up; clearly the capture was working correctly behind the scenes. So I switched the monitors to Mocord mode, and events started showing up in the list. After playing back an event, the live feed started working.

Anyway, I don't claim to understand what went wrong or how it got fixed, but hopefully this will help the OP.

JRoque · Post by **JRoque** » Tue Nov 30, 2010 8:18 pm

Hello and thanks for your responses.

So the cam captures in modect mode, but doesn't show anything in monitor mode?

Correct.

When you are in modect mode and it captures, does the video it captures show good video?

Yes, perfect.

If you try to view the live-feed in Modect mode, does that show video, and only show nothing in Monitor mode?

Nothing "live" seems to work but see my response below to your browser suggestion.

If you force a capture and stop it manually, does that work?

Yes, setting it to 'record' and then disabling it seems to work. I then have to generate a video to see it.

When you enable debugging, are you looking in /tmp/zm*.log and /var/log/messages? I've never seen a case where you enable debug output, turn up the debug level and still don't see any useful information.

Right if I enable debug I see the debug files created there. It's probably due to my inexperience with the product but nothing jumps at me as being wrong in the debug. Perhaps I should turn that on again and post the results here.

Also, just to be thorough, did you try different browsers when trying toview your feed? Any difference?

Good thought indeed! I use Firefox and nothing shows in the monitor pop up window. I then tried IE on a different machine and did get a page error:

Code: Select all

Message: 'null' is null or not an object
Line: 713
Char: 9
Code: 0
URI: http://192.168.0.5/zm/skins/classic/views/js/watch.js


Message: Object doesn't support this property or method
Line: 2830
Char: 3
Code: 0
URI: http://192.168.0.5/zm/tools/mootools/mootools-1.2.1-core-nc.js

With IE I can at least see a black box where the video feed is suppose to go.

I tried setting my monitor to mocord and other modes but had similar results. I suspect the browser error above will lead me to solve it. Does the error say anything to anyone?

Thanks,
JR

JRoque · Post by **JRoque** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 2:17 am

Hi. Ok, this is weird. I still can't see the "monitor" feed on any browser I've tried but if I go through Mythminder - the MythTV plugin for ZM - I can see the live feed fine. Go figure.

I'd like to get this resolved so I can monitor from ZM's own console but at this point, I got what I needed immediately which is monitoring my cameras from my TVs. I can also connect to the cameras directly using their own facility so that's good too.

Thanks everyone for your effort.

JR

jdhar · Post by **jdhar** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 6:26 am

Your browser error has me thinking... it is complaining about mootools, which isn't good.

Would you be able to install the XML Plugin I have published (http://www.eyezm.com). It's easy to install (you don't need the iphone app), but I'm curious if using the XML Plugin, it will work since it uses a different method for streaming. Just a test...

If you can install it, use the following URL:

http://<zm>/<path>/index.php?skin=xml&action=login&username=<user>&password=<pass>

..then to bring up the feed in your browser...

http://<zm>/<path>/index.php?skin=xml&action=feed&monitor=<id>&vcodec=mjpeg

Try that and see if you see an output in either monitor or modect modes.