Foscam FI8918W

This article assumes you have a basic understanding of Zone Minder. Fields that are up to the user to decide on are not listed.

The camera used in the screenshots has a hostname of "Monoculous-1", which is also the friendly name used in ZoneMinder. Hopefully you're a little creative and will have your own naming convention for your cameras, so you may have different names.

Camera configuration

1. Your camera should NOT be exposed to the Internet. There is no need for it, and it just poses the risk that others will do nasty things with it. Make sure your camera is on a local network only, and that it is pingable and accessible from your machine hosting your ZoneMinder installation. Instructions on doing this are out of the scope of this article.
2. It can make your life simpler to have your camera registered with your local DNS server. Doing this is out of the scope of this article.
3. The firmware utilized in this is the latest at time of writing, 11.22.2.38, with Web UI 2.4.18.17. This can be upgraded by downloading the firmware and following the instruction on Foscam's website[1].
4. It is recommended that you configure your camera with a separate visitor, operator, and admin password. This is done through the camera's web interface.

Monitor configuration

This article assumes you have a basic understanding of Zone Minder. Fields that are up to the user to decide on are not listed. These settings are a starting point if you wish to tweak further.

The camera used in the screenshots has a hostname of "Monoculous-1", which is also the friendly name used in ZoneMinder. Your configuration will likely be different.

General tab

• Source type: Remote

Source tab

• Remote Protocol: HTTP
• Remote Method: Simple
• Remote Host Name: Use the resolveable hostname or IP address of the camera
• Remote Host Port: 80 is default, change this if you have modified the camera's settings
• Remote Host Path: /videostream.cgi?user=visitor&pwd=visitor This builds the URL used to access the camera, so it needs to have the proper visitor username and password as specified in camera configuration above. If you decide to not follow security best practices, any user with "visitor" permissions or above on the camera would be fine.
• Remote Image Colors: 24 bit color
• Capture Width (pixels): 640 If your camera is mounted sideways, switch the capture width and height.
• Capture Height (pixels): 480
• Orientation: Normal If your camera is mounted sideways, you can change this to reflect that, but you may need to transpose the capture height and width as well

Control

• Controllable: Yes
• Control Type: Foscam FI8918W This option may need to be added by clicking "Edit" and adding a new control as described in the "New Control Type" section below.
• Control Device: user=operator&pwd=operator This is a field passed to the control script, which in this case needs to be the authentication portion of the control URL. The account specified on the camera needs to have operator privileges or above.
• Control Address: In all imaginable cases, this will be the same as the hostname/IP of the camera, the "Remote Hostname" from the source tab.
• Track Motion: No This camera does not support absolute movement, so motion tracking is not possible.
• Return Location: Preset 1. Preset 1 is generally used as the home position.
• Return Delay: 30 'This setting likely has no effect since Track Motion is off.

New Control Type

Unless this is included in future versions, you will have to create a new control type for the camera. This can be done by clicking "Edit" on the "Control" tab of the monitor, and "Add new monitor".

Main

• Name: Foscam FI8918W This can be anything you want, but why change it.
• Type: Remote
• Protocol: This must be the name of the script provided in the "New Control Protocol Script" section.
• Can Wake: Yes The wake control is used to turn the IR on.
• Can Sleep: Yes The sleep control is used to turn the IR off.
• Can Reset: Yes The reset control is used to reboot the camera.

Move

• Can Move: Yes
• Can Move Diagonally: Yes
• Can Move Mapped: No
• Can Move Absolute: No
• Can Move Relative: No
• Can Move Continuous: Yes

Pan

• Can Pan: Yes
• Min Pan Range: 0
• Max Pan Range: 0
• Min Pan Step: 0
• Max Pan Step: 0
• Has Pan Speed: No
• Min Pan Speed: 0
• Max Pan Speed: 0
• Has Turbo Pan: No
• Turbo Pan Speed: No

Tilt

• Can Tilt: Yes
• Min Tilt Range: 0
• Max Tilt Range: 0
• Min Tilt Step: 0
• Max Tilt Step: 0
• Has Tilt Speed: No
• Min Tilt Speed: 0
• Max Tilt Speed: 0
• Has Tilt Pan: No
• Turbo Tilt Speed: No

Zoom

Device can not zoom

Focus

Device can not focus

White

No support yet in script for white balance changes

Iris

Device has no iris controls

Presets

• Has Presets: Yes
• Num Presets: 8
• Has Home Preset: Yes
• Can Set Presets: Yes

New Control Protocol Script

1. Find the location of the ZoneMinder control script Perl modules on your server:
   1. From a command shell, issue the following command which will search all directories under / for the PanasonicIP.pm control file which is included with ZoneMinder: find / | grep 'PanasonicIP.pm'
   2. You should receive output similar to this: /usr/share/perl5/ZoneMinder/Control/PanasonicIP.pm
2. Copy [[2] [script] to the Zone Minder control script folder
3. Rename the control script to FoscamFI8918W.pm
4. Make sure all users have read access to FoscamFI8918W.pm. chmod a+r FoscamFI8918W.pm