Various ZM thoughts

This page contain's various learnings related to ZoneMinder 1.28.1 as I got it to install (easy) and work well (not so easy) on a Ubuntu Server distribution. I'll be adding many sub pages for various tips and tricks. Hope toy find it useful. You can contact me by searching for user 'asker' on the ZoneMinder forums. I don't claim to be a ZM expert, so feel free to correct my observations. A lot of these tips come from other Zoneminder forum members. I'll attribute credits where I remember.

Note that I am not putting this under the "distribution specific guides" as a lot of what I will document don't only map to Ubuntu.

<Contents

Contact Me

This section is maintained by user Asker in the ZM forums (Arjun, actually. Don't ask me why I chose asker - I guess when I joined, I had a lot of questions...). If you want to contact me via email, click here: [1]

Topics

Understanding ZoneMinder's Zoning system for Dummies (Illustrated)

Ubuntu Server or Ubuntu Desktop?

How to get ssmtp working with Zoneminder

Doing your best to get rid of smudging in FFMPEG transcoding of RTSP streams

How to use your external camera's motion detection with ZM (and a basic explanation of ZM's trigger architecture)

Math for Memory - knowing how much memory you need and how to optimize

Estimating how much HDD space you need for recording

How to control your Foscam HD cameras - PTZ (I don't recommend this, but if you must)

Using your iPhone's location to start ZM recording

Modifying ZoneMinder to remember run state names (and why that is very useful)

How to use ZoneMinder with cameras it may not directly support (but you have some way to extract images from it)

Mobile companion apps

Exporting images to Video