ZoneMinder - state-of-the-art video surveillance software system

[humptydumpty]

One last bump before I commit to Blue Iris. I'd rather have the money go to the project and having ZM packaged on CR!

[girish]

@humptydumpty is Blue Iris also a web app?

[humptydumpty]

Mainly, it's a Windows desktop app only. I don't think it can be self-hosted. It does have a web portal to view your cams that can be activated in the settings. I installed the demo on a SFF PC and set up an Amcrest camera on it. It works well and I'm blown away by the amount of available options. For instance, when it detects a motion, it emails me 4 low resolution images, sends a second email with higher res images. I can also have it send the videos to an FTP server. It has an iOS app ($9.99 one-time purchase) that I should be able to view my cams and arm/disarm the system remotely. BI is $40 for a one cam system and $80 for up to 64 cams. I'd rather spend this money on an open-source/self-hosted app like ZM if possible. I do need to get this going soon though, so let me know if anyone is interested. Let's do this!

[humptydumpty]

reviving!

[timconsidine]

@humptydumpty what is your deployment plan ?
are your cameras on the same network as where the Cloudron where you would install ZoneMinder ?

[humptydumpty]

@timconsidine Yes, they would be. Currently, I'm using BlueIris. But, that means I'm running a dedicated device just for that. It barely uses any resources so it would be ideal to have CCTV app on my Cloudron servers instead.

[timconsidine]

@humptydumpty
I was worried about cameras on remote networks.
I will see if I can do ZM for Cloudron.

[humptydumpty]

@timconsidine that would be great! thank you!

[timconsidine]

@humptydumpty some - as in partial - good news

I have an initial package of Zoneminder for Cloudron
Distinctly ALPHA
There are some issues

• CSS / skins rendering
• managing complex Zoneminder configs
• authentication (ZM auth does not work currently, interim Cloudron proxyAuth being used)

Biggest issue for me : I know nothing about Zoneminder !
But I can see it would be useful for my network, so am delving into it.

If you want to be bleeding edge, and don't mind issues, I can share but you probably want to wait a bit, as I can't provide support while I am getting it at least to BETA.
Help testing it at that point would be great.

I am away for a week shortly, so may have to pick this up after return.

EDIT #1 : cloudron proxyAuth implemented as temporary measure

EDIT #2 : more errors than I saw initially - maybe it's pre-alpha

[humptydumpty]

@timconsidine This is going faster than I expected I would love to test it, but I don't know how to install custom apps on my Cloudron.

[timconsidine]

@humptydumpty let me get it to beta, and I will show you easy way

Solved a lot of issues this morning but still working on some more

[timconsidine]

Update on packaging :

• got a camera mostly working
• but some fairly fundamental issues about how Zoneminder handles runtime issues with hardcoding to read-only locations
• working to resolve them

[humptydumpty]

@timconsidine I bought an additional cam to play with so I'm ready for testing when you are!

[Teiluj]

without hijacking the thread, I recently came accross this which I think could be considered as a potential alternative: https://www.scrypted.app/ and though it might be worth mentioning. while the core app is open-source and dockerizable, the NVR plug-in is not and subject to a subscription, as far as I can see.

Possibly this could make for another app in the wishlist, should there be interest.

[humptydumpty]

@Neiluj it looks pretty cool especially if you're into home automation - it's worthy to be added on the wishlist! Go for it! I didn't see any pricing info though. Are you sure the NVR feature is sub-based? NVM. Scrypted NVR License $ 40 per year

[humptydumpty]

@timconsidine any progress on this?

[timconsidine]

@humptydumpty I’ve been ill last 3 months so not really any progress, sorry. Slowly improving, so I will try to pick it up again.
Would like it for my own deployment so have not abandoned it

[humptydumpty]

@timconsidine Ah, same here although not as long as you. I hope you feel better. I thought I'd tackle some of the things that were on the backburner during the holidays but nope, life has other plans indeed

[timconsidine]

I'm picking Zoneminder back up today to try to overcome the last packaging issues.

[timconsidine]

whoop whoop
@humptydumpty Resolved the deployment issues

Got a camera working
After struggling with firewall config/networking, I have even got Zoneminder ("ZM") running on my Cloudron VPS (in cloud naturally) but viewing a camera installed at the office behind the firewall.

More testing and config exploration needed : I am no ZM expert.

Be prepared for head-scratching on camera configs if you don't know them.

Be ready to deal with ZM filling your cloudron free disk space, and ensuring you prevent that, not just recover from it.

Git repo : https://git.cloudron.io/timconsidine/cloudron-zoneminder
Docker image : tcmbp132021/cloudron-zoneminder:v2.0.4 (being uploaded)
Custom app installer ccai.appx.uk updated

Last deployment had an ALPHA warning. This is now well above BETA, maybe even a release candidate.