Re: [PLUG] ZoneMinder / Alternatives

[Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 3:05 PM Keith via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> On 1/12/21 1:59 PM, Rich Freeman via plug wrote:
> > Can it alert me in realtime when there is motion in a monitored zone,
> > both on my phone and on Google Home?  Ie, somebody walks up to the
> > front door, and a chime sounds throughout the house or something like
> > that.  It can't happen 20 minutes later.
>
> Yes to all your questions though I can't talk about Google Home. Alerts
> to your "phone"... that's a bit ambiguous.  You can get those emailed /
> texted to you but they may be other options.

Text would work especially if it can hyperlink to playback the event
or otherwise get me there fast, and if delivery is near-realtime.  I
guess any kind of app monitoring is going to be more
resource-intensive on the phone side, so text might be a good option.
I think there are android front-ends, and if the text message could
integrate with that to quickly pull it up that would be nice.

I'll have to look into sounding chimes/alerts on Google Home.

>
> > Can it record both events and continuous footage?  Ie can I have just
> > a loop of continuous footage that maybe lasts a few days, and then
> > have events with motion/etc tagged and retained for longer?  That way
> > if motion is missed I can still review the footage while not letting
> > storage get too out of hand?
> Yes to both and I do both type of events.  You can archive events too so
> that they are not deleted but I haven't done that yet.  If you have the
> space, I say use it.  YMMV of course, since it depends on you are trying
> to do in your environment.  My ZM runs on my LizardFS cluster and right
> now is still in a 1Tb container since I haven't need to expand it yet
> but I'm sure I will.

Good to hear.  I'll probably also use lizardfs so space really isn't
much of a concern, though bandwidth could be since my nodes are
lower-power.  But video isn't that bad if you're just streaming it and
not seeking a lot.

> > For footage does it use anything reasonable codec-wise?  I wouldn't
> > want something super-inefficient like rtjpeg or whatever if I'm going
> > to record days of full-frame video.
> >
> > I'm sure I can go ask on one of their forums but I figured I'd start
> > here and see if anybody is actually using it and what they think...
>
> Typical codecs... ZM isn't doing x265 yet but it does does x264 pass
> through which is what I'm using.  Many cams offer MJPEG primary or sub
> streams but I don't use them.

Ok, yeah, if ZM is doing its own encoding I could see that getting
CPU-expensive.

> I will say this...  I'm running it as a VM and I started out with 2
> cores / 4Gb RAM and now I'm up to 8 cores with 8Gb RAM.  I have a 720p
> door intercom and 2 4k color night vision cams so far. Long story
> short.  ZM need a a good amount of resources.  The busier your system is
> the more you would probably need, especially if you are running
> continuous, are normally reviewing events or monitoring the system live.

Yeah, that is sounding like more than what I usually do with
containers.  I guess I could just get one camera and play with it and
see how it goes.  I'd be using containers which are more lightweight
than VMs, but if it really needs multiple GB of RAM that is something
I'd have to plan for.

I actually have my old gaming PC sitting around mining ETH right now
since I'm not sure what I want to do with it.  That is a little dated
and suboptimal, but probably plenty for this sort of thing, especially
if it can do NVIDIA GPU encoding.

>
> I would say, compared to the mainstream offerings out there, ZM offers
> the same functionality and can do that across a wide array of cameras.
> Most security device companies are talking the cloud route and it the
> implementations are not going well for a myriad of reasons.

Yeah, for one device the ease of use for the average consumer is going
to be a selling point, but I have these concerns with most of the
options:

1.  Expensive up-front.  They're getting you on the blades AND the
razor it seems.
2.  Ongoing subscription.  Now, cloud-based is actually good for
security since they can't steal your footage, but you're paying a lot
of money for often not much data retention.
3.  Limited quality usually - I doubt the cloud services want to be
storing high-quality 4k footage for a month or whatever.  That gets
expensive.
4.  Bandwidth use.  Multiple cameras + cloud either means they're only
storing data in the cloud for events, or your internet connection is
sending a ton of data 24x7.  If those cameras use your WiFi that is
also a significant load.
5.  Lock-in.  Those cameras are paperweights if you decide to stop
using that vendor's service, usually.
6.  LImited options.  You might have a few camera options from any of
the consumer-oriented vendors.  With ZM you can mix/match which means
that you can pick the right solution for each location.

There are hybrid solutions like UniFi Protect which stores the data on
your drives and I don't think it has any subscription, but it does
provide remote access via an app/etc.  Those might make sense for
power-users who don't want to deal with full DIY.  However, these
usually don't support stuff like NAS/RAID/etc so storage is going to
be limited and failure-prone.

Thanks for the tips!  That, and the vote of confidence for ZM.

-- 
Rich
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