ZoneMinder on debian with a DVR card using techwell chipset

1- Installed the debian base system, debian wheezy (7) (But should work with debian squeeze (6))
2- apt-get install ssh openssh-server fail2ban
3- INSTALLED THE HARDWARE 8 CAMERA DVR CARD into the PCI slot
4- Modified the network interfaces to use a static IP, and pointed the DMZ of the router to that IP
5- installed some software (Even though some of them would have been installed anyway when i install zoneminder), but i do it anyway just in case they are optional in zoneminder

apt-get update
apt-get install apache2 php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server
apt-get install ffmpeg libarchive-tar-perl libarchive-zip-perl libdate-manip-perl libdevice-serialport-perl
apt-get install libjpeg62 libmime-perl libstdc++6 libwww-perl zlib1g
apt-get install zoneminder

I can see close to the end of operation

ZoneMinder is stopped
invoke-rc.d: initscript zoneminder, action “status” failed.
Starting ZoneMinder: success

I hope it’s nothing too serious

Now, check if your card is supported, you issue lspci -v as root… Since my 8 port card is supported, i see eight stanzas of this

I got eight of the following labeled 03:02.0 03:02.1 03:02.2 03:02.3 03:02.4 03:02.5 03:02.6 03:02.7

03:02.2 Multimedia video controller: Techwell Inc. TW6816 multimedia video controller (rev 10)
Subsystem: Techwell Inc. TW6816 multimedia video controller
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 3
Memory at febfe800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

If you dont see your card’s devices, well, your out of luck, maybe you should try a newer kernel, i am using 3.2 from debian wheezy (7)

Now, to the second test

ls -ls /dev/video*

NO love, nothing, If i were lucky, i would get something like

ls -ls /dev/video*
0 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81,  0 30. Jul 15:18 /dev/video0
0 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81,  2 30. Jul 15:18 /dev/video1
0 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81,  4 30. Jul 15:43 /dev/video2
0 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81,  6 30. Jul 15:43 /dev/video3
0 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81,  8 30. Jul 15:17 /dev/video4
0 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 10 30. Jul 15:17 /dev/video5
0 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 12 30. Jul 15:17 /dev/video6
0 crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 14 30. Jul 15:17 /dev/video7

But i did not, so i need the driver to my techwell card.

Simple, there is a nice person who made a driver already, let’s see how we can install it

First, we need GIT so that we can download the driver

apt-get install git
apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
apt-get install make sudo

(without installing sudo, the compile gives the error /bin/sh: 1: sudo: not found which is because the guy probably wrote the driver with ubuntu in mind)

git clone git://gitorious.org/tw68/tw68-v2.git
cd tw68-v2
make
make install

So, i was expecting 8 cameras, i got the following

ls -ls /dev/video*
0 crw-rw---T 1 root video 81, 0 May 12 23:12 /dev/video0
0 crw-rw---T 1 root video 81, 2 May 12 23:12 /dev/video1
0 crw-rw---T 1 root video 81, 4 May 12 23:12 /dev/video2
0 crw-rw---T 1 root video 81, 6 May 12 23:12 /dev/video3

probably a driver issue, oh well, lets see what we can do with 4 then i will see about this issue once i have 4 working:D

ln -s /etc/zm/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/zoneminder.conf

adduser www-data video

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now, visiting 192.168.2.101/zm/ allows me to add cameras, the matter is very intuitive from that point on, all you need is a browser, remember you will need to password protect things too :D so that people from the outside can not look at your cameras.