Setup help required; SMS/MMS, and streaming

[Chrisblob]

Hi there,

I had an old laptop lying around, so put it to use a few months ago as a DLNA media server on my simple home LAN - the laptop runs openSUSE 13.1 LXDE edition. A few weeks ago I decided to setup ZM as well, as my suburb is a high crime area, so installed 1.26.4 from the openSUSE repos, and using a cheap 1280x720 webcam I managed to setup a monitor. There is no trouble viewing/editing via the ZM console and watching the monitor over the LAN on the laptops IP...

That is as far as I have progressed, and I got a bit lost in the documentation and stopped setting it up a few weeks ago - today unfortunately I got burgled. The perps used a metal shelving unit that was sitting behind a neighbors shed to climb up and enter via an open upstairs window in my 2 storey apartment, and since my alarm covers the downstairs and stairwell only they managed to pick off quite a few smaller items upstairs before venturing into the top landing of the stairwell where a wireless PIR got them. I'm going to install security devices on the upstairs windows to stop them opening fully, and move one of the wireless PIR's in my alarm to cover the stairwell and both upstairs bedrooms instead of just the stairwell, but I'd like to be able to record footage of any attempts so that I have footage for the police, and also instant notification via SMS/MMS that an intruder has been detected - I work only a few minutes from home, and I could have the PIR alarm off but have ZM notify me - the perps will probably not vanish too fast if an audible alarm doesn't trigger, which might give me long enough to get there before they scarper - there would be fireworks if that happened, I might get to enjoy ripping someones arm out if its socket...

So I'd like to configure ZM so I can receive SMS/MMS notification of modect events, and stream my monitor (and future monitors) over the internet (also so I can enable/disable alarms from my mobile or from work). I've had a good read of the docs on the wiki tonite, but have got a bit lost in seeing what needs to be done to get this working. If someone could assist in giving some advice that would be hugely appreciated.

Regards,

Chris, NZ.

[pyroman]

I do not have experience with sms or email yet ( I had a problem getting that working), but I have no problem accessing zm console from outside my home.

You need to setup http port forwarding on your router to forward port 80 to the host machine running zm. Also you need a network url. I use dyndns.org to register a system name and run ddclient daemon in the host machine to keep it updated. There are other dynamic dns services you can use.

Once you're setup, you access your system using http://your_system.dyndns.org/zm

[linuxsense]

I would suggest using 'ssmtp' to deliver email notifications as its easy to configure and works well with services like Google. If you use Google for email let me know and I can provide you with the appropriate ssmtp configuration that uses SSL to send to Googles SMTP server. As for SMS notices...the easiest way to go on that is to use an email to text gateway, many cell providers provide this service so check and see if yours does. If it does, ssmtp will be all you need.

For viewing live streams on iOS or Android devices I prefer "IP Cam Viewer Pro" over the other offerings. Getting it configured is a simple matter of setting up your router with the appropriate port forwarding so your ZM box can be reached from the outside world. You will need to enable authentication and SSL to do this properly but you can skip SSL if you like to live dangerously. Using the same technique it is also easy to access your main ZM interface via a browser at another location. Let me know if you need any help getting that going.

[Chrisblob]

Hi there,

I would suggest using 'ssmtp' to deliver email notifications as its easy to configure and works well with services like Google. If you use Google for email let me know and I can provide you with the appropriate ssmtp configuration that uses SSL to send to Googles SMTP server. As for SMS notices...the easiest way to go on that is to use an email to text gateway, many cell providers provide this service so check and see if yours does. If it does, ssmtp will be all you need.

For viewing live streams on iOS or Android devices I prefer "IP Cam Viewer Pro" over the other offerings. Getting it configured is a simple matter of setting up your router with the appropriate port forwarding so your ZM box can be reached from the outside world. You will need to enable authentication and SSL to do this properly but you can skip SSL if you like to live dangerously. Using the same technique it is also easy to access your main ZM interface via a browser at another location. Let me know if you need any help getting that going.

Thanks for advice - more pressing setup issues first, my camera is a 720p (1280x720) and while the monitor works at 720p just fine, the default zone for modect was only 320x240 and at the top left of the 1280x720 window, so I deleted that and tried to add a new modect zone covering the whole window, selecting "best, high sensitivity" preset, but I get this SQL error, and no zone is created...

Code: Select all

SQL-ERR 'Incorrect integer value: '' for column 'MaxPixelThreshold' at row 1', statement was 'insert into Zones set MonitorId = '3', NumCoords = '4', Coords = '0,0 1279,0 1279,719 0,719', Area = '921600', AlarmRGB = '16711680', Name = 'New', Type = 'Active', Units = 'Percent', CheckMethod = 'Blobs', MinPixelThreshold = '20', MaxPixelThreshold = '', FilterX = '3', FilterY = '3', MinAlarmPixels = '73728', MaxAlarmPixels = '0', MinFilterPixels = '55296', MaxFilterPixels = '0', MinBlobPixels = '46080', MaxBlobPixels = '0', MinBlobs = '1', MaxBlobs = '', OverloadFrames = '0''

If someone could help me decipher what is going wrong with that it would be much appreciated...

Best regards,
Chris W, Christchurch, NZ

[Chrisblob]

...my camera is a 720p (1280x720) and while the monitor works at 720p just fine, the default zone for modect was only 320x240 and at the top left of the 1280x720 window, so I deleted that and tried to add a new modect zone covering the whole window, selecting "best, high sensitivity" preset, but I get this SQL error, and no zone is created...

Code: Select all

SQL-ERR 'Incorrect integer value: '' for column 'MaxPixelThreshold' at row 1', statement was 'insert into Zones set MonitorId = '3', NumCoords = '4', Coords = '0,0 1279,0 1279,719 0,719', Area = '921600', AlarmRGB = '16711680', Name = 'New', Type = 'Active', Units = 'Percent', CheckMethod = 'Blobs', MinPixelThreshold = '20', MaxPixelThreshold = '', FilterX = '3', FilterY = '3', MinAlarmPixels = '73728', MaxAlarmPixels = '0', MinFilterPixels = '55296', MaxFilterPixels = '0', MinBlobPixels = '46080', MaxBlobPixels = '0', MinBlobs = '1', MaxBlobs = '', OverloadFrames = '0''

So I solved my zone issue by deleting the monitor and setting one up from the beginning at the correct resolution, so now I have one zone covering the entire 720p window, but I cannot make *any* changes to its settings without causing an SQL-ERR as above, even just choosing presets will give that error. It seems to modect me quite well, including outside the house through the windows (which I want it to do), but I want to lower the sensitivity so it doesn't catch movement of small plants in my garden due to wind - any setting change causes the SQL-ERR error.

I'm still trying setup remote access to the ZM console. I have a free account on dynu, and have setup dynu to use port 8080. I have allowed port forwarding on my ADSL router on port 8080 to my server/laptops internal LAN IP address, but when I try to browse it seems to time out. Browsing to ZM console from anywhere on the LAN works fine. Is there anything that my router could be doing, or my ISP, or openSUSE 13.1 (firewall is not running), that would time out my request? I'd like to take a look at my ddclient conf, as I'm not sure if its setup correctly to work with dynu....

Chris.
Christchurch, NZ.

[linuxsense]

I would guess your port forwarding is not correct. Does your router run anything on port 8080? Perhaps your ISP blocks some ports? Hard to say without looking but I would suggest trying to forward 8443 from the router to 443 on your server (assuming ssl) or something like 8444 to port 80 if regular http just to see if that makes a difference. Also make sure that your are forwarding TCP and not just UDP. To cut a variable out of the equation I would also suggest testing outside access using your routers current IP and not using a hostname.