zoneminder / zmninja

High performance, cross platform ionic app for Home/Commerical Security Surveillance using ZoneMinder

Project Adoption 2022

After 6+ years of developing zmNinja + ES + ML, Pliable Pixels no longer had the time to maintain the project. ZoneMinder development team will take on the support of zmNinja and provision of notification services going forward. This may necessitate new app names due to some app store policies.

zmNinja website

zmNinja is a multi platform (iOS, Android, Windows Desktop, Mac Desktop, Linux Desktop) client for ZoneMinder users. ZoneMinder is an incredible open source camera monitoring system and is used by many for home and commercial security monitoring.

Help

• Official documents are here
• If you are looking for the Machine Learning powered Event Server companion, docs are here
• Post in the ZoneMinder Mobile App forum or find me on ZoneMinder's slack channel (you can join here)
• If you believe you've discovered a bug, please create a GitHub issue

Before you ask for help

• Make sure you have read the FAQ
• Make sure you have validated that your APIs are working (if not, its a ZM issue, please post in ZM forums)
• Please don't ask me for help with source compilation if you are not familiar with coding mobile apps - you should try and solve your own problems

Video Demo

Check out a video demo of zmNinja here

Mobile Platforms

zmNinja is stable as of today and runs on a variety of Android and iOS platforms. See links above to get them on play store (Android) and app store (iOS)

It also runs on the desktop (see below)

Desktop Platforms

Please download binaries from here.

Key Features

• Push Notifications Object detection/face recognition for alarms (Needs the eventserver to be set up)
• Multiple languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, and more)
• H264 video support
• live views of monitors
• Montage view (with multiple montage profile settings/sizes)
• Events history and list
• Timeline view
• Camera pan/tilt/zoom (needs to have ZM support it first)
• 24hr review

Key Limitations

• Client certificates are not supported
• If you use self signed certificates, you will likely have to install them in your phone (especially Android)
• If you use Basic Authentication, you'll have to go through additional setup (see FAQ)

Thanks

To Pliable Pixels for his fantastic contributions to the ZoneMinder community in building this application.

Important Notes

• zmNinja needs APIs enabled in ZoneMinder. See this for instructions on how to make sure your APIs are working. If they are not working, zmNinja will not work.

Screenshots:

zmninja's Issues

Latest Events panel doesn't initialize correctly on first use.

When I bring up the yellow slider for "latest events" I tap on one of the 4 choices (1 hour summary, 1 day summary, 1 week summary or 1 month summary) and nothing happens.
I then tried the '...'->filter by date-> reset and now am presented with camera names under each of the aforementioned summary groups.

make sure image works if an autologin happens in the background

I think I may need to refresh the image if an autologin happens in the background or image may freeze

zmNinja should give a useful warning when the API is non-functional

I tried pointing zmNinja at my default installation of Zoneminder. Everything appeared to work, but all the screens were blank and no monitors appeared. Using the instructions in the wiki, I checked to see if the API was working, which obviously it was not. This error should be detected by zmNinja so the user knows that he has work to do.

Check multiple web sockets created in android -- seems old web sockets don't get deleted

settings UI - keep hints always on top

ability to restrict monitors in all views - depending on some global selection

Montage view: swipe shows deselected monitors (and should not).

When images are loaded over a slow connection, there is a white screen till it loads

When images are loaded over a slow connection, there is a white screen till it loads --> on tracing logs it seems that nph-zms sends a blank HTTP 200 OK immediately and then transmits the image. Switching to just zms (as suggested by @knnniggett) alleviates this issue. The next issue to tackle is the delay in loading of the image - if its a large image, it still takes 4-5 seconds at times, depending on network and zms performance

how to install your application?

please write to the setup instructions from source.

app gets into weird state that prevents timeline from populating and syslog goes nuts from montage

Here is a 1 second sample of syslog when this is happening:

Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6011]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 1 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6012]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 2 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6010]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6009]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 3 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12519 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12524 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12515 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12516 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12521 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12523 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6004]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6005]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6006]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 3 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12529 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12526 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6010]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 4 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12517 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12522 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6005]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 4 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6004]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 2 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12520 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12527 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12525 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12528 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6014]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 2 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6013]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 1 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12531 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12533 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12530 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12532 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6015]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 3 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12534 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12535 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6016]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 4 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12536 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12537 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6018]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 4 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12538 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12542 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6020]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 1 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6019]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 2 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor zms[6022]: FAT [Unable to load monitor id 2 for streaming]
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12539 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12540 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12545 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12548 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12541 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)
Aug 26 17:28:18 myZoneMonitor mysqld: 150826 17:28:18 [Warning] Aborted connection 12546 to db: 'zm' user: 'zmuser' host: 'localhost' (Unknown error)

test product on Android - make sure all plugins work etc.

Montage re-order does not work with large list of monitors

specifically it does not scroll down

Background mode: Popover menus stick around

Make sure we remove popovers before going to background

evaluate what it takes to implement client certificates

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radial menu is broken

come up with a clean input box to make sure I account for various API/base path install combos

pinch zoom on monitor too sensitive, detects false swipes

When viewing a monitor, using pinch zoom usually results in selecting the next monitor, as if I had swiped left or right.

we are only retrieving the first page of events - need to fix it to get all

Not a good idea to grab all. I've got to implement some pagination logic

custom range dates shown even if pullup overwrites them

select custom range, then do pullup, events show as per pullup but tapping on filter shows original custom range

In playback mode, add the ability to swipe to the next event of whichever monitor has the next event and/or initiate gapless playback of same.

This will let the user to follow an intruder as he moves from one camera to another without having to navigate in and out of different monitor or timeline views to see all the action contiguously.

Swiping to the left should reveal next monitor, not prev monitor (seen on iOS 9)

Observed on iOS 9: Swiping is backwards. It should work the same as in Safari, iBooks etc. where swiping to the left should reveal the next page, and vice versa.

Restarting ZM in state control results in client freezing

When moving montage monitors around, remember to move the size

As of today, the size stays put

make it optional to swipe between live view of monitors

tapping on events before they complete causes issues

i think the right way to handle this is no wait till events are fully recorded before we allow folks to interact

Add random string recalc every 1 sec to monitor view

monitor buttons to navigate can overlap exit,zoom,refresh buttons

In 0.79 both buttons in the monitor view can be expanded at the same time, and they overlap.
I would expect the other to collapse, to prevent the overlap.

Add destroy to each view and cancel all view timers again there just to make sure

Long press on android to increase individual montage size does not work

investigate how to use a pinch zoom instead

apk Download of zmNinja

Hi,
sorry me for opening an issue, but I have not another way to contact you.
I would like to install zmNinja to my Android Tablet and Phone, but I cannot find the apk.
I'm not able to compile my version at this point, I need to invest lot of effort to prepare the enviroment to compile.
Is there a repository where Can I download the apk?

Thanks

Implement a way to do a sanity check on the input and inform the user if the paths are wrong

My thought is to do an API check and if it returns success, then all is good. Probably same logic with the portal - do a POST login

customize screen to load on push notification tap

either events, or monitor (if single event) or montage (if multiple events)

rev 0.83, event icon is a solid block

Also the counter badge for the icon has gone away. See image:

investigate when timeline barfs with a "no parent" error

resulting in no timeline.....

Monitor change makes enabled 0

review security approach - switch to auth token instead of passing u+p in url

skip disabled monitors in montage view

Android client: System Status view returns HTTP error

@alager reports that when viewing the "System Status" screen, the HTTP APIs return an "error" like ZM returned nothing. However, he looked at logs of ZM and the request does not get there.

My hypothesis is this:
Chrome has a limit of 6 concurrent connections to one domain - when you view System Status, it shoots off 4 APIs in parallel (4 HTTP connections). In the event there are other HTTP connections that have not yet terminated in zmNinja, this may be resulting in a hang state.

In the past I've observed when you hit this limit, Chrome (the web view the client is using) does not recover well from this. In addition, I make HTTP timeouts for the system status requests long. I don't know if this adds to the issue.

This issue will track this problem as I take @alager's help to characterize this better

Implement event filtering for graph generation - last hr/week/month

app causes ZM crash/bad behavior after it's been asleep for a while

This issue is much better now ( it only puts about 1 error message every second or 2 ), but still occurs on a regular bases when I lock my phone while zmNinja is running. Now I have to wait a longer time it seems, but the errors still show up in syslog when I unlock my phone and view the montage. This one even caused a back trace to occur:

Sep 16 15:49:05 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14021]: ERR [Can't insert log entry: MySQL server has gone away]
Sep 16 15:49:05 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14021]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:05 myZoneMonitor zms[14018]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14040]: ERR [Can't insert log entry: Lost connection to MySQL server during query]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14040]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14041]: ERR [Can't insert log entry: MySQL server has gone away]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Can't insert log entry: MySQL server has gone away]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Got signal 6 (Aborted), crashing]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Signal address is 0x21000036dc, from 0x7fbee34e4cc9]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 0: /usr/lib/zoneminder/cgi-bin/nph-zms(_Z14zm_die_handleriP9siginfo_tPv+0x72) [0x7fbee70b5e72]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 1: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0(+0x10340) [0x7fbee5f1c340]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 2: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(gsignal+0x39) [0x7fbee34e4cc9]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 3: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(abort+0x148) [0x7fbee34e80d8]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 4: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x73394) [0x7fbee3521394]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 5: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x7f66e) [0x7fbee352d66e]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 6: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmysqlclient.so.18(end_server+0x35) [0x7fbee57c8c75]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 7: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmysqlclient.so.18(mysql_close+0x61) [0x7fbee57cab81]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 8: /usr/lib/zoneminder/cgi-bin/nph-zms(_ZN6Logger9terminateEv+0x79) [0x7fbee7030af9]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 9: /usr/lib/zoneminder/cgi-bin/nph-zms(_ZN6LoggerD1Ev+0x10) [0x7fbee7030e20]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 10: /usr/lib/zoneminder/cgi-bin/nph-zms(_Z7logTermv+0x15) [0x7fbee7031035]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 11: /usr/lib/zoneminder/cgi-bin/nph-zms(main+0x7a9) [0x7fbee7020c49]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 12: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf5) [0x7fbee34cfec5]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: ERR [Backtrace 13: /usr/lib/zoneminder/cgi-bin/nph-zms(+0x1fb37) [0x7fbee7021b37]]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: INF [Backtrace complete, please execute the following command for more information]
Sep 16 15:49:07 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14044]: INF [addr2line -e /usr/lib/zoneminder/cgi-bin/nph-zms 0x7fbee70b5e72 0x7fbee5f1c340 0x7fbee34e4cc9 0x7fbee34e80d8 0x7fbee3521394 0x7fbee352d66e 0x7fbee5
7c8c75 0x7fbee57cab81 0x7fbee7030af9 0x7fbee7030e20 0x7fbee7031035 0x7fbee7020c49 0x7fbee34cfec5 0x7fbee7021b37]
Sep 16 15:49:09 myZoneMonitor zms[14074]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:11 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14098]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:15 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14142]: ERR [Can't insert log entry: MySQL server has gone away]
Sep 16 15:49:15 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14142]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:15 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14148]: ERR [Can't insert log entry: MySQL server has gone away]
Sep 16 15:49:15 myZoneMonitor zms[14143]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:15 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14154]: ERR [Can't insert log entry: MySQL server has gone away]
Sep 16 15:49:15 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14154]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:17 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14183]: ERR [Can't insert log entry: MySQL server has gone away]
Sep 16 15:49:17 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14183]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:17 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14187]: ERR [Can't insert log entry: MySQL server has gone away]
Sep 16 15:49:17 myZoneMonitor nph-zms[14187]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:19 myZoneMonitor zms[14222]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:21 myZoneMonitor zms[14252]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:21 myZoneMonitor zms[14256]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
Sep 16 15:49:23 myZoneMonitor zms[14287]: INF [Got signal 15 (Terminated), exiting]
S

if apis can't be reached the app assumes version is 0.0.0 and moves app to low version screen

Android: Http problem

I'm facing an odd problem - after a while ,http requests don't seem to be reaching my server when using the only Android device I have - Galaxy S3. I have no idea if this is a crosswalk issue or not - need to investigate.

white screen on idle during playback

When playing back events or live feed, and you are not in "always awake", switch off and resume results in white stuck screen

In playback mode, add the ability to swipe to the next event of the same monitor and/or initiate gapless playback.

Android: Montage screen - scaling is not correct

Image goes out of box - likely some CSS or device width dpi issue. TBD

Ssl toggle and https in login

manually entering https urls and not enabling SSL toggle causes issues

handle situations when zms does not respond to your commands for a while

To avoid an avalanche of http requests by irate user display some sort of acknowledgement message asking them to hold off

Timeline more menu bonked again

Monitor view: events not showing for deselected monitors (and should since the goal in monitor view is to see all monitors which would include their events).

tapping on graphs should show a nice event list - current doesn't do anything useful

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