Joe Barr Gives ZoneMinder A Thumbs-Up

I've been interested in the Free software home-security software called ZoneMinder for a while, but strictly as a lurker, checking out the project's site whenever I noticed it crawl down the Freshmeat home page. Joe Barr of NewsForge, though, recently had reason to install the software, which manages one or more home security cameras (which can be any Linux compatible camera -- he used some common D-Link wireless ones), watches for movement (generating alarms based on user configuration), and lets the camera output be streamed elsewhere, so a thief can't usefully just rip out the recording system. (NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

Comments

Cool idea

[TiggertheMad]

One thing I wonder about, though. The Screenshot in the article showed the driveway from a fairly long shot. Are the cameras good enough to read a liscence plate at that distance? And what about lighting? It might be hard to read a plate at night, although a motion detector on an external light might solve that problem.

Getting pictures of theives is a good thing, making sure that they are good enought to ID someone is even better.

Can't Tell You

[techsoldaten]

Cannot tell you the number of times I have thought about implementing the exact same application. The idea of wireless streaming means the storage device can be kept off-site or in a very discreet location within the premises.

One question I have is about the detection analysis, and how the threshold for analysis is set. For instance, there are a number of trees beside my front driveway and they sway and shake a lot. How does one go about making sure Zoneminder does not record the trees continuously?

M

Re:Can't Tell You

[slashdot.org]

The idea of wireless streaming means the storage device can be kept off-site or in a very discreet location within the premises.

Of course it also means that the edjumicated thief can easily disable your cameras while still being relatively far from the premises. Jamming 802.11 is not terribly hard. (unfortunately my phone is the ultimate proof; it destroys any 802.11 connection while it's in use, regardless of channel)

Re:I'm going to try this..

[TykeClone]

I was thinking more like setting it up near the local meth house and publishing license plates to the web.

Re:IP address...

[Supp0rtLinux]

So... kids... what have we learned today?

A) before attempting to burgle a house, do some wardriving first and avoid any house with WEP. If there is no WEP and you can see the stream... and you're in the stream... run like hell!

B) after some wardriving, and assuming you still want to break into a house with a WEP protected *cough* AP, first, find the external D-marc and unplug all RJ-11 and coax cables. Of course, if you're really kewl and don't care about noise while commiting your crime, just do an "albino in Die Hard" and take a circular saw to the pipes coming out of the D-marc access panel.

Cool applications

[pdx_joe]

I wonder what other applications this could be used for. Maybe I'm wrong, but alot of people do NOT need this intense of security. They may want it, but a deadbolt would be sufficient. If someone does break into my apartment, the most the can take are a couple of computers, the cost of setting up this system would be as much as what I'd be securing. Perhaps it could be low-cost/opensource security solution for school computer labs. With that said, what else could this be used for? Besides the normal childish pron/watching your babysitters jokes. How about Environmental monitoring?

Re:Cool applications

[Ramses0]

Bzzt. Try again. I did not RTFA, but I've had a BT848 Hauppauge WinTV card in my linux box for 5+ years now. Works great, compatible with anything that goes to composite video in (old video cameras, cheezeball "spy" cameras, CCD's, etc), or get yourself a $19.99 webcam that's linux compatible.

Go here: http://www.compgeeks.com/products.asp?cat=VID for all the equipment you'd need to set something like this up, for under $50. I played with motion (motion.sf.net) about 2-3 years ago. Didn't ever do anything useful with it, but it was fun to play with, I can only imagine that it (and others) have gotten better in the 3+ years since I've used it.

If you already have a PC running linux and a compatible webcam (esp. in a shared / dorm environment) there's no reason not to have something like this set up. *That's* the beauty of it. Of course it's possible, but now it's *cheap* and possible, plus you can hack the source to make it do what you want, or script on top of it. :^)

--Robert

Mind your own business

[nurb432]

Not your job to play vigilante..

Be sure to post your address too so they can burn your house down for sticking your nose into other peoples affairs.

Re:Mind your own business

[renehollan]

"could have" "might have" are not good excuses to step outside the boundries

So, you'd be O.K. with someone having 1000 lbs. of flash powder on the lot beside yours, stored halphazarly?

M'k.

Re:What about stream security?

[losycompresion]

The link you provided shows that the camera is wep enabled not sure about wpa..but its a start. I mean when people drive around its alot less time to just drive to the next house and peek around their wide open wireless network than break the wep plus mac filtering on a geeks network. (note: don't say it, mac filtering doesn't do to much for intercepting the stream, and wep is not unbreakable)

Re:Useless if ISP prohibits servers

[exhilaration]

I ran an FTP server on the standard port (21) for years on OptimumOnline, as well as a web server on a non-standard port (actually, I used SSL, so https://myhome.dyndns.org -> port 443) and it worked perfectly. SSH worked perfectly too, so did Windows Terminal Server. Sure they "prohibit" servers and block some ports, but they don't enforce the rule for low-bandwidth home users.

I moved a few months ago.