PIII w/512MB for zoneminder?

[tucansam]

Have an old Dell C800 PIII-1.0G with 1/2GB RAM and a pair of 7200rpm disks that I'd like to use for ubuntu/zoneminder. Will primarily run the video software, but will probably also do some light file serving/ftp/web/email duties. Anyone see a problem with those specs and my desired uses?

Thanks.

[timcraig]

It depends on what you plan to do with zoneminder?

• * How many cameras?
  * What type of cameras? (analog CCTV or IP cameras)
  * What capture size? (320x240, 640x480, or higher)
  * Do you plan to use Zonemindersmotion detection on some or all of the cameras?
  * What frame rates do you plan to record at?

[tucansam]

At least four cameras, probably six to eight eventually.

IP cameras, POE and perhaps one or two wireless.

Would like to use motion capture on some or all cameras, depending on time of day, depending on how well it works (ie will the cameras react to trees blowing in the wind, a car driving by, etc)

Highest resolution possible.

Frame rates would be low, but fast enough to capture faces, vehicle descriptions, etc. Probably faster frame rates on indoor cameras near entrance ways so subject identification would be more probable should a violation occur.

[zendev]

Have an old Dell C800 PIII-1.0G with 1/2GB RAM and a pair of 7200rpm disks that I'd like to use for ubuntu/zoneminder. Will primarily run the video software, but will probably also do some light file serving/ftp/web/email duties. Anyone see a problem with those specs and my desired uses?

At least four cameras, probably six to eight eventually. IP cameras, POE and perhaps one or two wireless.

Would like to use motion capture on some or all cameras, depending on time of day, depending on how well it works (ie will the cameras react to trees blowing in the wind, a car driving by, etc)

Highest resolution possible. Frame rates would be low, but fast enough to capture faces, vehicle descriptions, etc. Probably faster frame rates on indoor cameras near entrance ways so subject identification would be more probable should a violation occur.

From my experience, any time you put IP cams and motion detection on ZM you'd better throw some hardware at it (not the fault of ZM, it's the nature of the beast). Bare minimum I'd attempt to do 6-8 IP cams and motion detection with is a 2Gig core 2 duo and 4GB of ram. You can pick up a system like that fairly cheap on ebay or local craigslist ads if you have any.

There are some IP cams which have built in motion detection (like Axis) which I have been able to offload that to the cameras and that has saved a tremendous amount of CPU on my servers.

Here is a quick breakdown for the largest IP cam system I've setup to help gauge requirements:

Currently capturing 32 IP cams at 15 fps, 30fps on alarm (4 are 1.3 mega pixel too) and in January I will be adding an additional 10 cameras. Primary capture server is a 4 CPU with quad 3Gig cores, the second server is a 2 CPU with quad 2Gig cores and they were running at fairly high CPU loads.

I scoured the forum and documents looking for anything to improve the performance on the servers and I tried a lot of tweaks but but they didn't bring the CPU load down enough to accommodate 10 additional cameras I need to add to the system. Once I found the article explaining how to offload the motion detection to the cameras and got that working properly my CPU load dropped by 1/3rd.

I also figured out a trick to offload more CPU in my setup because I had originally configured ZM4MS to connect to the capture server to view the streams but I turned my second smaller server into a simple router to connect through to access the IP cams directly. I had to set up the cameras on their own network segment for security/policy requirements but once I properly locked down the route it was working like a charm.

Ryan

[tucansam]

Awesome, thanks so much for the reply!!!

I have seen (and used) Axis cameras in the past, however they are a bit out of my price range at the moment. I am looking to get started with a basic setup initially while I play with configurations and learn the software.

Has anyone ever run this system in a virtual linux machine, using VMWare? I am building a media and file server which will stay on 24/7 (had planned on it being a Windows system), and could configure a linux machine to run on top... I had planned on using an older dual-core CPU that I have laying around, but could easily move my current desktop (quad-core, 8gb RAM) to that duty and build a new desktop.

Other option would be a cheap, low-power Atom-based system with a pair of 1TB disks in RAID, but the media server is going to run a 6TB RAID 5 array so I could map a drive to the linux VM and have it store all data there.

Ideally I'd like to hang a pair of LCD monitors alongside an LCD flatscreen; the media server would deliver content to the TV while the linux system would direct camera views to the LCDs (which would be touchscreen). Could this work from a single system, or am I asking too much?

Thanks again!

[zendev]

Awesome, thanks so much for the reply!!!

I have seen (and used) Axis cameras in the past, however they are a bit out of my price range at the moment. I am looking to get started with a basic setup initially while I play with configurations and learn the software.

While they are spendy, I can honestly say that they have by far been the best cameras I've used and have held off purchasing anything else until I could afford to buy them.

Has anyone ever run this system in a virtual linux machine, using VMWare? I am building a media and file server which will stay on 24/7 (had planned on it being a Windows system), and could configure a linux machine to run on top... I had planned on using an older dual-core CPU that I have laying around, but could easily move my current desktop (quad-core, 8gb RAM) to that duty and build a new desktop.

I have actually adopted to installing all of my servers with a base OS then install Xen and run the "server" from a virtual. This has greatly improved my management and disaster recovery times because I keep spare hardware laying around that have nothing but a base OS and Xen installed and should hardware fail I can be back up an running in a matter of minutes rather than hours (or days).

Other option would be a cheap, low-power Atom-based system with a pair of 1TB disks in RAID, but the media server is going to run a 6TB RAID 5 array so I could map a drive to the linux VM and have it store all data there.

Ideally I'd like to hang a pair of LCD monitors alongside an LCD flatscreen; the media server would deliver content to the TV while the linux system would direct camera views to the LCDs (which would be touchscreen). Could this work from a single system, or am I asking too much?

Thanks again!

I think you're asking an awful lot of a little media server like that, I'm not saying it isn't possible but you'd better put decent video cards and plenty of RAM into it for displaying the streams. I'd also highly recommend at least gigibit ethernet to handle that much data being piped through your network as 100mb would likely be saturated.

Ryan

[DaveQB]

Once I found the article explaining how to offload the motion detection to the cameras and got that working properly my CPU load dropped by 1/3rd.

Any links on this?
Thanks.

[zendev]

Any links on this?
Thanks.

Here you go http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.ph ... nDetection

[DaveQB]

Thanks mate.