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

[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.

[humptydumpty]

@timconsidine said in ZoneMinder - state-of-the-art video surveillance software system:

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

Congrats on the breakthrough! Currently, I'm using BlueIris (Windows based app) and it also has too many options. IIRC, it took me a full working day to get it set up properly. As for backups and disk space, I'm definitely not ready for that yet. I'll need to add a new backup destination to an external drive to replace my S3 BackBlaze since it fails to upload almost every other day. Speaking of local storage, I wonder if I can add more than one and have one dedicated to ZM so it doesn't kill the server.

[timconsidine]

@humptydumpty I have some notes that I put in QUICKSTART.md in /app/code.

It's not a complete guide, just a quick start for basic config. But it does have some links to other proper guides.

Storage : yep, I need to make a strategy. Currently my cameras back up via their NVR to a large Hetzner Storage Box. I am thinking to add some scripts to do similar, automatically moving ZM files off to Hetzner Storage Box based on time or size. And first step, find out what ZM provides to manage all this.

Will update on my approach/experience as it builds.

[timconsidine]

Once you have one camera working, it is easy to clone and adjust settings.

screenshot shrunk for forum upload max image size

[humptydumpty]

Is the disk space filling up because you’re recording 24/7 or is it a ZM misconfiguration thing?

[timconsidine]

@humptydumpty errr, I'm surprised it is not filling up more !

root@cac0ee46-aded-4b89-9498-d0c84f06018d:/# du -hs /app/data
1002M   /app/data

I have left it running overnight with 2 cameras and added 2 more this morning.

I need to check what is actually being recorded, and whether it is configured correctly.
It may just be in Monitor mode - displaying feed but not saving.

[timconsidine]

update on disk used
it's definitely recording (can do playback on a camera)

Now has 5 cameras using 'Modect' (motion detect / record)

Terminal shows :

root@cac0ee46-aded-4b89-9498-d0c84f06018d:/# du -sh /app/data
2.0G    /app/data

so ~1Gb increase in 4 hours but it's an office so quite busy coming and going

ZM browser shows 472 events using 1.77Gb

[humptydumpty]

@timconsidine Not bad! What cams/resolution you running?

[timconsidine]

@humptydumpty I am using Reolink cameras currently. Total of 12.

I need to play with resolutions.
The Reolink cameras and apps support 2k-4k.
For testing, I have only set the cameras up as 640x360, which explains why they are grainy in screenshots (and maybe why storage space is not increasing fast).

One motivation of getting Zoneminder working is freedom from the Reolink environment, and the ability to support more (cheaper/better) cameras without being tied to Reolink.