I’ve finally gotten around to rewriting my old Trendnet PTZ controller for Zoneminder 1.22.x to support the new API for Zoneminder 1.23.x. It includes all the old features (moving the camera in horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and going to preset and home position) as well as a new bonus feature: move the camera simply by clicking a point in the live video that you want the camera to recenter on. This is not extremely accurate, but good enough for most uses, and faster than having to click an arrow 20 times.

Here’s the basic steps on how to get this Trendnet TV-IP400 / IV-IP400W driver to work in ZoneMinder:

  • Make sure you have indeed version 1.23.x. You can see this in the title of the main console window. If you are still using version 1.22.x, either upgrade your ZoneMinder or use my old driver.
    • Download the driver file here, and store it in the right directory. For me (having compiled Zoneminder from source on ubuntu) that location is /usr/local/perl/5.8.8/ZoneMinder/control. If that location doesn’t exist on your system, you can do a search for another camera driver such as Visca.pm and store the TVIP400.pm file in the same location.
    • Create a new camera for your TV-IP400 if you haven’t already done so. The source tab looks something like this:


    Make sure you change the IP address and port number if necessary. You will need to make sure that access control is turned off by the way.

    If you had enabled the ZM_OPT_CONTROL setting in the system options screen, you will also see a control tab in the camera config window. This tab should look like this:

    Again, make sure you set the correct IP address (the same as what you set in the source tab). You won’t have a TV-IP400 option yet in the Control Type dropdown, so click on ‘edit’ there and let’s create one.

    In the Control Capabilities window, click ‘Add New Control’. Then set the settings in the Main and Move tabs as follows:

    In the Pan tab, only check the ‘Can Pan’ option and leave the rest blank.
    In the Tilt tab, only check the ‘Can Tilt’ option.

    All options in the Zoom, Focus, White and Iris tabs can be left blank since none of these features are supported.

    The Presets tab should be set as follows:

    Though you can’t actually set presets through ZoneMinder, you can move the camera to presets that you’ve configured through the Trendnet web interface. I’m only using 5 presets but I believe you could access all 24 presets that the Trendnet supports.

    That’s all! Save the configuration, and give your new controllable camera a spin in ZoneMinder. Let me know how you like it.

    Thanks to Armando Oritz for his help in testing this driver.