A Zoneminder viewer for Raspberrypi with Adafruit PiTFT display

https://youtu.be/njlV0YKWJrI

Ensure you Zoneminder service has Groups API support ZM Applet now uses the Zoneminder rest API to get monitor and group information. Groups support in the Zoneminder API has been added since version 1.30.2.

Setup your RaspberryPi+PiTFT with Raspbian

• Follow instructions on this link https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pitft-28-inch-resistive-touchscreen-display-raspberry-pi
  • Be sure to enable the X server at startup

Install zm-applet

• Clone the repo.
• In the repo, copy the file zm_applet.cfg as a hidden file in the root folder sudo cp zm_applet.cfg /root/.zm_applet.cfg
  • If you are not going to run the app as root then copy the file to your home folder instead
• Change the SERVER_HOST,SERVER_PORT,ZM_WEB_PATH items in the .zm_applet.cfg file to point to your Zoneminder server

Setup Raspbian to start zm-applet

• Have the Raspbian set to boot to the desktop via raspi-config.
• We now want to set Raspbian to boot to zm-applet instead of the full desktop (this saves CPU and memory usage)
• Create the file /home/pi/.xinitrc with the follow line
  • @exec sudo XAUTHORITY=$HOME/.Xauthority python /<path you cloned this repository in>/zm_applet.py
    • We are running as root because it's the only way to access the GPIO ports, if you are not going to use the GPIO ports you can run this as a normal user instead.

• Version 1.1.0 (03/17/2018):
  • Major refactoring
    • Moved multi-treading work to multi-process
    • Streaming no longer lags behind
  • Moved from old XML skin to Zoneminder API for fetching monitor and group information
• Version 1.1.1 (4/14/2018)
  • Fixed bug were you couldn't change monitors when currently on a non-working monitor
  • Message views will find best fitting font size
• Version 1.1.2 (1/25/2019)
  • Catch scenarios the http library hangs
  • Added on-screen menu buttons and clock display in monitor stream view
• Version 1.1.3 (3/30/2019)
  • Fixed streaming issue when using user authentication in Zoneminder (still on old version of API authentication, will move to newer version)
• Version 1.1.4 (9/21/2019)
  • Fixed bug were zo-applet fails to load when Zoneminder api returns empty groups