ONVIF and ZoneMinder

Enters ZoneMinder

I decided to use ZoneMinder as the native linux app to connect to my ip camera. Actually this is much more than an app. It is a complete suite of video surveillance programs. From my furtive glance at their site I got the impression that this system could just as easily control all the cameras in you average shopping mall as provide a static look-out at my coffee machine.

ONVIF specification

A further perusal of the ONVIF specifications showed that the complete interface consisted of Web Services. Seeing this I decided that it would be easier to generate proxies for these Web Services than adapt the existing onvifdm .NET code.

ONVIF for Linux – 2

I was going to build the onvifdm libraries on Fedora and then build a small sample application to test my ip camera.

First I downloaded the source code from the onvifdm project on Sourceforge:

svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/onvifdm/code/trunk onvifdm

I tried to build on Fedora so I got the necessary mono compilers. Directions by the F# Software Foundation were not immediately applicable to Fedora and Fedora 20 did not pack the necessary versions (>= 3.0).

ONVIF for Linux

I wanted to use my Trendnet OUTDOOR POE 3MP DOME DAY/NIGHT (TV-IP311PI) ip camera with linux.

The camera came with only Windows software. The manual promised support for “ONVIF 2.1” though.

A quick research showed that ONVIF is both an industry consortium and a family of specifications. They try to standardize access to ip cameras and other security devices.

I thought with a standardized interface it should be possible to connect this camera to some existing linux software.