{"id":4801,"date":"2013-06-25T05:49:41","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T05:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/178.62.14.192\/?p=4801"},"modified":"2013-06-25T05:49:41","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T05:49:41","slug":"use-zoneminder-on-the-raspberrypi-with-the-camera-module","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.recantha.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4801","title":{"rendered":"Use Zoneminder on the #RaspberryPi with the camera module"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Over on the Foundation forum<\/a>, a chap called ‘jimmyst’ has been working on getting Linux-based security surveillance software\u00a0Zoneminder <\/a>to work with the Raspberry Pi camera module. Here’s what he wrote<\/a>…<\/p>\n

\n

Here is some progress I made on using Raspberry Pi camera as an IP camera for Zoneminder. I decided to try mjpg-streamer (<\/span>http:\/\/sourceforge.net\/projects\/mjpg-streame<\/a>). You can also check this blog\u00a0<\/span>http:\/\/www.phillips321.co.uk\/2012\/11\/05 … ream-cctv\/<\/a>\u00a0on very similar topic but utilizing USB camera, thanks phillips321.<\/span>

Here are the steps of what I did:<\/span>

1. Get the source code for the mjpg-streamer and build it. I did that on the rpi itself in the home folder (\/home\/pi). Feel free to use any place you find appropriate for your experiments<\/span>

<\/p>\n

\n
CODE:\u00a0SELECT ALL<\/a><\/dt>\n
svn co https:\/\/mjpg-streamer.svn.sourceforge.net\/svnroot\/mjpg-streamer mjpg-streamer
\ncd mjpg-streamer\/mjpg-streamer
\nmake USE_LIBV4L2=false clean all
\nsudo make DESTDIR=\/usr install
\n<\/code><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n


NOTE: the subversion (svn) is not installed by default in raspbian, so if you did not installed it already you will need to do:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
CODE:\u00a0SELECT ALL<\/a><\/dt>\n
sudo apt-get install subversion
\n<\/code><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n


or whatever the name of the package is in debian\/raspbian. Alternatively you can fetch the code on your host machine and then scp it to raspberry pi. Honestly this is what I did. If you decide to go that route one more word of caution:\u00a0<\/span>make sure the rpi clock is properly ntp synced and there is no difference between the time on the host machine and the rpi.<\/span>\u00a0Otherwise the copy may get time in the future related to the rpi clock which will cause issues building the code.<\/span>

2. It is time to start the raspberry pi camera. I use the following command:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
CODE:\u00a0SELECT ALL<\/a><\/dt>\n
raspistill -w 640 -h 480 -q 80 -e jpg -n -o \/tmp\/rpi-img.jpg -tl 500 -t 999999999 &
\n<\/code><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n


Which takes still pictures every 500ms (two in a second) and store them in the \/tmp folder under the file name rpi-img.jpg. I believe for security monitoring more than VGA resolution would be overkill this is why I use 640×480 capture and 2 frames per second I believe are quite enough to capture any bad happenings.\u00a0<\/span>\";)\"\u00a0That is my opinion, please feel free to play with that command and adjust it to your liking. Just keep in mind that every still is written to the file system (\/tmp folder) which, if I am not wrong, appears on raspbian is configured to be on the sd card. Writing to the flash is not the fastest operation, so it very likely will be the bottle neck and if the resolution is higher that will increase the toll. Also the flash memory has relatively low number of writes limit and regardless the all great effort to improve it and implement sophisticated ware-leveling algorithms, still writing too often large file to the SD card would eventually fry it. You were warned!\u00a0<\/span>

NOTE: One improvement on that approach would be to use RAM based filing system as destination for the image file. This will definitely mitigate any flash wearing concerns but also will improve the performance. If somebody knows how to create file system in RAM for that purpose please post instructions. I do not plan to look further on that because have different plans (see bottom of this post).<\/span>

3. Now let’s fire up the mjpg-streamer and see how good we are doing:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
CODE:\u00a0SELECT ALL<\/a><\/dt>\n
mjpg_streamer -b -i \"input_file.so -f \/tmp -n rpi-img.jpg -d 200\" -o \"output_http.so -w \/usr\/www -p 8090\"
\n<\/code><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n


This will start the streamer instructing it to check every 200ms for new image being written to our image file \/tmp\/rpi-img.jpg and steam it in mjpeg format on port 8090. Again feel free to experiment with that and tweak it to your liking.<\/span>

4. Let’s test the streaming before going to the Zoneminder:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
CODE:\u00a0SELECT ALL<\/a><\/dt>\n
http:\/\/<RPI_IP_ADDRESS>:8090\/?action=stream
\n<\/code><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n


Type the above into your favorite browser on the host machine and in few seconds you should see on the browser screen what the rpi camera see.<\/span>

5. Now is time for the ultimate step: configure the Zoneminder to use our Raspberry Pi camera to make us safer.\u00a0<\/span>\";)\"\u00a0Assuming you have running and properly configured Zoneminder here is how to add the streaming rpi as a monitor:<\/span><\/p>\n