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.