Beaglebone Black

Materials:

Beaglebone Black Industrial

Logitech C545 webcam

Steps:

Installed Debian Jessie via a netinstall from Elinux.org BeagleBoardDebian. Used serial port. Migrated to Devuan. Installed Zoneminder using jessie-backports according to official install guide.

Industrial BBB was chosen, in the hopes of using it as a dashcam under winter conditions.

Camera works plugged into USB. Logitech camera works under the following settings

Zoneminder settings:

• Source: Local
• Maximum FPS: 3
• Device Path: /dev/video0
• Capture Method: Video for Linux 2
• Device Format: PAL
• Capture Palette: *MJPEG
• Capture Width (pixels): 960
• Capture Height (pixels): 720

Total load with camera, gets about 960x720 3FPS, with .7 load on the server, in monitor mode. Making this a potential external ZM server.

YUYV works with resolution of 320x240, but no higher. MJPG is able to get 320x240, 640x480, and 960x720. I put the wrong resolution in during MJPEG mode, but the ZM logs happily told me that the 'correct' resolution available was 960x720, so I used that, and all worked.

This being an SBC, there is a additional interfaces, expansions (I2C, GPIO) to use in addition to the camera itself. Sensors can be added easily.

Notes:

• I ran into problems using this BBB with a long (>25 ft) ethernet cable. Network functions were slow, or failing. This could be a problem if you were to use these as substitutes for cameras. It may have been my particular model (BBB Element14 industrial). A shorter cable resolved all issues.