How to make Zoneminder not record during the night?

[mhstar89]

For virtually all my outdoor cameras, I'm getting so many extra events from spiderwebs swaying in the wind / dust blowing around, that I can't really record during night (lest I fill up my disk too quickly). So, what I would like to do is do Modect only during day, and Nodect during the night (possibly with external triggers, or maybe with different sensitivity settings - though a white spiderweb would likely trigger no matter what).

How do I accomplish that? Now hear me out - I know about zonestates, and switching with "/usr/bin/zmpkg.pl Daytime". The problem with these is that they're a performance disaster - they seem to shut down Zoneminder and restart it, with all the cameras disconnecting / reconnecting, resulting in the script taking ~30 seconds, and just as many events being missed.

While I'll probably be all right, in times where people pride themselves with high availability, turning yourself blind for 30 seconds feels like a messy solution. Is there a better way than zonestates? What if I edit things directly in the database - will zoneminder pick it up?

Thanks in advance!
~ Michael

[bbunge]

Set the current Run State for Day. Create another Run State for Night and configure your cameras for Nodect or whatever.

Create a cron job to switch from Day to Night run state.
Command: /usr/bin/zmpkg.pl Day or /usr/bin/zmpkg.pl Night