Its open source, easy to setup (when you know how!) and with the right hardware can be quite cheap.
Here is how I did it.
Hardware
We run VMware V-sphere so the zoneminder system I created was just a virtual machine with a bit of allocated disk space.
Panasonic BLc-101 which is an excellent cheap POE camera.
The Install
Firstly I installed Ubuntu 9.10 Server from here.
You can burn it to a DVD if you are using a real machine but the ISO was good enough for my vm to boot from.
Installed ubuntu with standard settings.
Made sure I installed the apache and SSH servers.
Once the system is up and running then ssh in and install zoneminder
apt-get inst
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneminder /var/www/zm
/etc/init.d/zoneminder restart
point your browser to
http://yourmachineip/zm
you should see the landing page.
Securing ZoneMinder
Its a good idea to secure zoneminder.
From the landing page note the options button in the top right hand side.
click it.
look for OPT_USE_AUTH on the page, place a tick in the box.
Do not click save yet.
Before we lock ourselves out of zoneminder and undo all our hard work lets create a user for us to get back in with.
go to the users tab and click add new user.
I used zm_admin.
Now click save.
Its a good idea to test your new login before going any further.
Logout of zoneminder , (to do this click the admin link at the top where it says "logged in as admin").
Try your new user if you can't get back in the standard setup is
username admin
password admin
Provided you can get back in then you can change the password on the admin user.
Now to setup the cameras.
Click "add new monitor" setup the first page like this.
And the second
The text i used for Remote Host Path is
SnapshotJPEG?Resolution=320x240&Quality=Standard
Securing the camera's
Now you may want to secure your cameras.
log into each camera and set an admin password.
You will have to allow guest access which is on the same page.
If you have done it all right then the camera's IP should come up green in the main window.
Click on the name of the camera and it will pop a new window and you can view the camera.
If you are running in modetect mode like I am then leave the camera for a while and send someone to wander round the room to get ZM to detect motion and start recording.
You shold see some events appearing after next to the camera's IP on the main page.
Click on the number of events and then click timeline.
this is my favourite view as you can quickly see the activity. As you move the mouse over the red bars you will see the image change, click a red bar and the event pops up and plays.
Well this was just a quick look at zoneminder with ubuntu Karmic Koala adn some panasonic blc-101's.
I have only just got it working myself so I may revisit this how-to when i get some more content.
