IP Surveillance the Open Source Way

Enterprises today are fighting with two major problems: the global economic
slowdown, which is getting severe day by day and a fear of repeat terrorist
attacks. Due to this, many enterprises are planning to increase their security
budget. But how much does a commercial IP camera management software cost?

The answer lies in open source security solutions. These solutions are of
enterprise grade and at the same time very soft on the pocket. Let's start with
a remote IP Camera monitoring system which can manage all your IP cameras across
different locations and can set different alerts and triggers on them depending
on your requirements.

The free software works with most wired and wireless IP cameras, and is
pretty simple to configure as well. We installed the software called ZoneMinder
on a Fedora 10 machine and the installation was a breeze.

Installation

To begin with, you have to check if MySQL and Apache are installed on your
machine by running the following commands:

#rpm -qa | grep mysql

#rpm -qa | grep httpd.

If the output is blank, then these are not installed. To install these
packages, check if you are connected to the Internet and then run the following
commands:

#yum install mysql-server

#yum install httpd.

Once done, you have to install the ZoneMinder rpms and their dependencies.
Again, the easiest approach is to do a yum install for it. After installing
ZoneMinder, you also have to install ffmpeg and ffmpeg-devel packages. Some of
these rpms are not available with the standard Fedora package list. You have to
install the RPM fusion package list for yum. You can do so by running the
following commands:

su -c 'rpm -Uvh
http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'

Once done, install ZoneMinder and ffmpeg packages by running the following
commands:

#yum install zoneminder

#yum install ffmpeg

#yum install ffmpeg-devel

Configuring ZoneMinder

First create the ZoneMinder database by running the following command.

#mysql -p -u root mysql < /usr/share/zoneminder/db/zm_create.sql

# mysqladmin -p -u root reload > /usr/share/zoneminder/db/zm_create.sql

The commands listed on the ZoneMinder website for the same task is meant for
Fedora 8 or older versions and doesn't work with Fedora 10. So if you are
installing it on a Fedora 10 machine like we did, use the commands mentioned
above and not the one mentioned on ZoneMinder's website. Now open the file
called zoneminder.config/etc/ httpd/conf.d and go to the line that says 'Deny
form all'. Comment out this line by putting a '#;' before it. Restart your MySQL
and Apache by running the following commands:

#service mysqld restart

#service httpd restart

When you click on the zone name in the main page of ZoneMinder, you will see a window with the live feed from that zone and the list of events occured in that zone.

Adding Zones

From now, the entire configuration is going to be web based and graphical. So
you don't need to toggle around multiple terminal Windows. To start with, open
the web based management interface of ZoneMinder from http://localhost/zm. In
this window, you have to start adding different zones and cameras. There are
three types of cameras which you can add in here. One is the local cam, which
means any USB web camera connected to the machine where you have installed
ZoneMinder. Other is a remote IP camera and the third is the file option, where
you can poll images periodically from any server. This option is used to monitor
and analyze images generated and gathered on any other camera management
application. The names for the three

options are Local, Remote and File, respectively.

Clicking on an event will show you captured /2009/images/video, and the details about the event, such as time, date, etc.

We tried this application by adding a couple of remote IP cameras. We used a
D-Link wireless camera called SecureCAM. Once the camera is connected on the
same network or with a public IP, to add it to ZoneMinder, click on the “Add New
Monitor” button on the front page of the ZM web page. In the general tab, give a
name to the Zone, select the Source Type from the drop down menu (local, remote
or file). Now select the function which will be performed on the stream. The
options are Monitor (for just streaming the feed), Modect (or Motion detect,
which will capture a series of still images. If motion is detected , it will
raise an alarm), Record (for continuous recording of the feed), Mocord (for
recoding video in case of Motion), and Nodect (for no motion detection). This
will only raise an alarm if any filter other than motion has happened), and the
default option None (which means, the zone is disabled). Select the appropriate
Function you want in this zone and click on the 'Enabled' option to enable the
zone. Now set the Max and Alarm FPS for the data stream. In this case, the
system will generate an alarm if the number of fps increases beyond the defined
limit.

Now click on the 'Source Tab' and depending on what you have selected in
“Source Type” option in General Tab, a window will open. Here if you have
selected “Remote”, you have to fill in the IP address or the FQDN ( Fully
Qualified Domains Name) of the camera in the first field that says “Remote Host
name”. Fill that in and make sure you don't add http or '/' or anything else in
this field. In the next field, add the port. If it's default (80), then don't
change anything in this field. Now in the third field, which says 'Remote Host
Path', type in the path of the stream. For instance, if the camera feed is
coming from http://192.168.4.220/ imagejpg, the /image.jpg, will go in this
field and 192,168.4,220 will go in the first field. Now set the width and height
in pixels and select the orientation of the stream and you are done. You can do
more customization depending on your requirements using the other tabs. Now save
the changes and exit from this window. One key thing which you should notice
here is that, there is no separate place to add the authentication details of
the camera. So the details (if any) will go in the “Remote Host Name” field
only. Let's say, the username for your camera is admin and password is
'password' and the IP of the camera is 192.168.4.220, then you will enter
admin:password@192.1 68.4. 220 in the “Remote Host Name” field.

Now, you will see a new entry with the name of the zone you have created in
the main page of ZoneMinder. If the configuration is correct and ZoneMinder is
able to detect and connect with the camera, the IP/FQDN of the camera will show
in green, else in red color. Once it is green, click on the name of the Zone and
a new window will open with the stream of camera.

Plus, if any event or alarm occurs, you will be able to see them in the
bottom of this window. If you want to open an event, just click on its name and
you will be able to see the recorded Image/Video and other details of that
event. The system will also highlight the motions it has detected in red so that
you can spot them easily.