Hey all!

Just wanted to put a notice out there that D-Link has changed their DCS-900 product to a Revision B. In short...it is not that great. In the past I have used the Revision A DCS-900 and got a solid 10FPS using the path of /video.cgi. Well, the path of video.cgi on the Rev B camera will get you no where so you resort to /image.jpg which will only produce 3FPS no matter what settings you throw at either zoneminder or the camera itself.

Personally, I am really getting sick of Dlink and I am about to convert to recommending only Axis from now on.

I am going to miss my little Rev A DCS-900 cams...they were an inexpensive solution for some of the non-profits that I deal with.

Later,

Mike

Strange that a revised firmware should break performance so much. Does it do anything else extra to make up for it?

Might not just be the firmware - I know Linksys sometimes change everything between versions on some of their products, including processor, embedded OS etc.

My guess is that they've found a cheaper way of producing the product using cheaper or fewer components and either the initial firmware is full of bugs, or they've cynically accepted that the revised hardware is "Good enough for some".

The lower cost IP cams I've tried (except gadspot) seem to be marketted as "remote low-res webcams" instead of what we here expect, something capable of capturing a moving image and being able to make out a face. I suspect the manufacturers are relying heavily on the novelty value to a market that doesn't really need them or who don't know better - Geeky Gizmos.

This issue IS a bug in the firmware (a change in the jpeg stream that is sent).

To work around, use the URL /mjpeg.cgi and turn OFF regex matching.

I'm seeing up to 30fps using a DCS-900.

I'll update/create a wiki page here shortly.

Knobee

30 fps with DCS-900 A or B?
Yesterday, I installed D-Link DCS-900 rev B2, but I'm getting 5fps at average. Load of the system is about 2.


Have you got some suggestions, how to improve these bad results?

(it's running on P166, 64MB RAM, debian linux)

edit:

Ok. So I went and bought a D-Link DCS-900 Rev B2.

The camera is working fine through web and java.

I have configured the camera in Zone minder like this:

Source Type: Remote

Function: Monitor

Enable: mark

Remote host name: user:password@192.168.1.xxx

Remote host port: 80 (the wiki sais its the default port and I havent change it).

Remote Host path: I have tried everyting: -still.jpg
-/still.jpg
-/mjpeg.cgi
-mjpeg.cgi
-video.cgi
-/video.cgi
-/image.jpg
-image.jpg

And nothing works. I have tried as well with regex matching off and on. Nothing

What am I doing wrong?. I can use the camera through its web interface but I cant get it working with zone minder.

Thanks

Hugo

PD: Also I get a 1 or 2 seconds lag when I see the image no matter how much compresion I use. Guess thats normal for that cam. Its not problem of the lan cause I have connected the camera to a Gig swight and from there to the computer through a Gig ethernet card. Can someon confirm that the 1 or 2 second la is normal?

Please, can someone help? I cant get it working with zm.

Hugo

i think i rember dlinks being poorly supported on linux. But have you checked you matched your monitor settings to the cam image, and what is in your logs

Thanks for the reply I have been three days trying to get the camera working and looking over the internet but I just can get my mind on what it is.

The camera works fine if I acces direcly through firefox so I guess its no a linux problem.

The log I get in zmwatch.log is this:

04/12/07 19:49:20.799929 zmwatch[5135].ERR [Can't get shared memory id '7a6d2001', 1: No such file or directory]
04/12/07 19:49:20.800145 zmwatch[5135].INF [Restarting capture daemon for Cam1, shared memory not valid]
04/12/07 19:49:20.927068 zmwatch[5135].INF ['zmc -m 1' starting at 07/04/12 19:49:20, pid = 26280]

zmaudit.log:

04/12/07 19:40:44.594279 zmaudit[5133].DBG [Found database monitor '1']
04/12/07 19:40:44.594701 zmaudit[5133].DBG [Got 0 events]
04/12/07 19:40:44.594829 zmaudit[5133].DBG [Found filesystem monitor '1']
04/12/07 19:40:44.609522 zmaudit[5133].DBG [Got 0 events]

Its just keeps on repeating that again and again. I am guessing is something to do with linux users rights, but I just dont know what to do.

Any help?

Thanks

Hugo

i doubt it, can you wget an image from it using the command line?

Thanks for the quick reply. If I have tried different combinations for wget:

jo@Aquest:~$ wget http://192.168.1.100:100/still.jpg
--22:17:00-- http://192.168.1.100:100/still.jpg
=> `still.jpg'
S'està connectant a 192.168.1.100:100... conectat.
HTTP: Petició enviada, esperant resposta... 404 File Not Found
22:17:00 ERROR 404 File Not Found.

jo@Aquest:~$ wget http://192.168.1.100/still.jpg
--22:17:06-- http://192.168.1.100/still.jpg
=> `still.jpg'
S'està connectant a 192.168.1.100:80... conectat.
HTTP: Petició enviada, esperant resposta... 404 File Not Found
22:17:06 ERROR 404 File Not Found.

jo@Aquest:~$ wget 192.168.1.100/still.jpg
--22:17:16-- http://192.168.1.100/still.jpg
=> `still.jpg'
S'està connectant a 192.168.1.100:80... conectat.
HTTP: Petició enviada, esperant resposta... 404 File Not Found
22:17:16 ERROR 404 File Not Found.

jo@Aquest:~$ wget user:password@192.168.1.100/still.jpg
--22:17:38-- ftp://user/password@192.168.1.100/still.jpg
=> `still.jpg'
Resolent jo... Fallat: Name or service not known.
jo@Aquest:~$ wget user:password@192.168.1.100:100/still.jpg
--22:17:47-- ftp://user/password@192.168.1.100:100/still.jpg
=> `still.jpg'
Resolent jo... 1.0.0.0
S'està connectant a jo|1.0.0.0|:21...

After this it just gives time out and tries again until I stop it. If I use image.jpg instead of still.jpg it sais: Name or service not known. , whatever way I try to get the image.

So it seems like the camera is not giving the image, the weird thing is that through Firefox I can see the picture and I can use the Java button to see the video as well.

I am using the port 100 for sure because I have forced it now to be that port to see if it was any problem with the port 80 (default), but the results are the same.

Hugo

well if wget wont do it zm has no chance
If you want to continue with this cam, then try and get a url that wget can use

Personally id bin anything made by d-link lol

Thanks for the help.

Anyone using this camera can tell me something?

Hugo

Can you put the camera out in a "wild" internet for a while? I coud give it a try.

Have you tried this path at all?
The other option is to put the cam in the wild Like W. suggested and someone from the forum can have a go at it.
The big thing is you got to get around the 404 error Which suggests that you are talking to the cam but it is either rejecting the request because your not authorized or the path is not valid.