ZoneMinder Remote Camera Viewer for Android Phones

[Mad Professor]

Good Day All.

Can anyone here please tell me if there are any app's for android phones, that are compatible with ZoneMinder so that I can remote view cameras on my system?

Thanks for your time.

Best Regards.

[BlankMan]

I'm using tinyCam Monitor tinycammonitor.com which is ZoneMinder aware.

[Mad Professor]

Thanks for that, working a treat!

[linuxsense]

IMO the one to use is "IP Cam Viewer Pro". I have been using it for quite a long time and it works very well with ZM. A free version is available but you cant go wrong for $3.99 for the Pro version. Me and my wife both have it on our phones and we use it all the time.

https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... Paid&hl=en

No affiliation, just a happy user.

[BlankMan]

IMO the one to use is "IP Cam Viewer Pro". I have been using it for quite a long time and it works very well with ZM. A free version is available but you cant go wrong for $3.99 for the Pro version. Me and my wife both have it on our phones and we use it all the time.

https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... Paid&hl=en

No affiliation, just a happy user.

How's it compare to tinyCam Monitor?

[linuxsense]

IMO the one to use is "IP Cam Viewer Pro". I have been using it for quite a long time and it works very well with ZM. A free version is available but you cant go wrong for $3.99 for the Pro version. Me and my wife both have it on our phones and we use it all the time.

https://market.android.com/details?id=c ... Paid&hl=en

No affiliation, just a happy user.

How's it compare to tinyCam Monitor?

I cant honestly say as its been a long time since I have looked at Tinycam, I looked at its website after posting here earlier and it looks much improved over what I remember. I'll probably give it a try.

[linuxsense]

OK, I have both IP Cam Viewer and Tinycam setup and they both are good. Tinycam has some nice layout modes that IP Cam does not have but IP Cam has better performance when viewing multiple cams.

Tough call but for my setup I think IP Cam works better. I will keep playing with Tinycam, perhaps it will grow on me.

[BlankMan]

I'd be interested in hearing what you find as the pros/cons while comparing them.

I've using the free version and has all the functionality I need. The only limitation of the free version is streaming 4 cameras simultaneously verses 16 but hey 4 cameras at one time on a smart phone display is about enough. Any more and you need a magnifying glass anyway.

I got 4G and I don't know if it's tinyCam or the wireless that is limiting the performance. When using it with 2 or 4 cameras up and watching ZM's logs I see ZM scaling back the frame rate. But even 1 fps for 4 cameras at once I feel is pretty good especially when all my cams are 640x480 or better.

[Kogashuko]

So how are you all setting it up. It has an option to add camera but obviusly http://192.168.1.x/zm is not the url for the individual camera stream? Also does this work with a AVI or mpeg stream or does it have to be jpeg which looks awful and slow on my home pc web browsers? Thanks.

[BlankMan]

So how are you all setting it up. It has an option to add camera but obviusly http://192.168.1.x/zm is not the url for the individual camera stream? Also does this work with a AVI or mpeg stream or does it have to be jpeg which looks awful and slow on my home pc web browsers? Thanks.

If you're referring to tinyCam: You're right, the IP has to be accessible from the Internet but if your router/gateway to the Internet can port forward you can forward http traffic to 192.168.x.x. I used to do that myself when my web server was 192.168.20.100.

You point it at the web server, tell it it's Zoneminder, set the username and password, and the monitor ID number. I far as I can tell you don't need /zm in the URL at least I don't have it in there and it works. It tries to connect to /zm/index.php but but I don't use the default location so it doesn't find it and moves along and uses nph-zms directly with the proper params.

Looks like it's using mjpeg but you can use jpeg also. Can't see any other choices in the free version.

[Kogashuko]

I will try yet again...

[alexvas]

A new version of tinyCam Monitor has an ability to load custom HTTP GET requests for ZoneMinder. So you can specify your own requests if have installed ZM not in default http://ip:port/zm directory. Please read here for more info and XML template. This template has a full request list used currently by the app to work with ZM.

For instance you can define the following XML script:

Code: Select all

<vendors>
    <vendor name="ZoneMinder Custom">
        <model name="Generic">
            <request name="Login">/zm/index.php?view=watch&mid=%CAMERANO%&username=%USERNAME%&password=%PASSWORD%&action=login</request>
            <request name="MJPEG">/cgi-bin/nph-zms?mode=jpeg&monitor=%CAMERANO%&user=%USERNAME%&pass=%PASSWORD%</request>
            <request name="MJPEG2">/cgi-bin/nph-zms?mode=jpeg&monitor=%CAMERANO%&user=%USERNAME%&pass=%PASSWORD%&maxfps=1</request>
            <!-- More requests here, see custom_vendors.xml template -->
    </vendor>
</vendors>

There is also a big performance optimization in latest tinyCam Monitor versions. You can check this video for your reference.

[linuxsense]

Since I switched to a new phone I decided to try both apps and I still find IP Cam Viewer to be much faster...no comparison.

[alexvas]

Since I switched to a new phone I decided to try both apps and I still find IP Came Viewer to be much faster...no comparison.

What do you mean by "faster"? Do you see UI lags in tinyCam or do you get more FPS watching ZM?

tinyCam Monitor is not limiting frame size. Maybe that is the case. This is an xml file with all HTTP requests being sent to ZM. You can change it and upload to your phone for better performance.

[linuxsense]

Since I switched to a new phone I decided to try both apps and I still find IP Came Viewer to be much faster...no comparison.

What do you mean by "faster"? Do you see UI lags in tinyCam or do you get more FPS watching ZM?

tinyCam Monitor is not limiting frame size. Maybe that is the case. This is an xml file with all HTTP requests being sent to ZM. You can change it and upload to your phone for better performance.

The time between starting the application and viewing live images from my 6 cam ZM server is far shorter with IP cam viewer, almost instant, TinyCam takes much longer. Since I often need to quickly see my feeds that is the major factor in using IP cam viewer over TinyCam. TinyCam also shows lower FPS in comparison to IP cam but that is not that big of a deal, its the start-up time.