NAME

       zmtrigger.pl - ZoneMinder External Trigger Script

DESCRIPTION

       This script is used to trigger and cancel alarms from external connections using an
       arbitrary text based format.

       This script offers generic solution to external triggering of alarms. It can handle
       external connections via either internet socket, unix socket or file/device interfaces.
       You can either use it 'as is' if you can interface with the existing format, or override
       connections and channels to customise it to your needs.

       If enabled by the OPT_TRIGGERS option, Zoneminder service start zmtrigger.pl which listens
       for control messages on TCP port 6802.

TRIGGER MESSAGE FORMAT

       id|action|score|cause|text|showtext

       id
             is the id number or name of the ZM monitor.

       action
             Valid actions are 'on', 'off', 'cancel' or 'show' where
             'on' forces an alarm condition on;
             'off' forces an alarm condition off;
             'cancel' negates the previous 'on' or 'off'.

             The 'show' action merely updates some auxiliary text which can optionally
             be displayed in the images captured by the monitor. Ordinarily you would
             use 'on' and 'cancel', 'off' would tend to be used to suppress motion
             based events. Additionally 'on' and 'off' can take an additional time
             offset, e.g. on+20 which automatically 'cancel's the previous action
             after that number of seconds.

       score
             is the score given to the alarm, usually to indicate it's
             importance. For 'on' triggers it should be non-zero, otherwise it should
             be zero.

       cause
             is a 32 char max string indicating the reason for, or source of
             the alarm e.g. 'Relay 1 open'. This is saved in the 'Cause' field of the
             event. Ignored for 'off' or 'cancel' messages.

       text
             is a 256 char max additional info field, which is saved in the
             'Description' field of an event. Ignored for 'off' or 'cancel' messages.

       showtext
             is up to 32 characters of text that can be displayed in the
             timestamp that is added to images. The 'show' action is designed to
             update this text without affecting alarms but the text is updated, if
             present, for any of the actions. This is designed to allow external input
             to appear on the images captured, for instance temperature or personnel
             identity etc.

       Note that multiple messages can be sent at once and should be LF or CRLF delimited. This
       script is not necessarily intended to be a solution in itself, but is intended to be used
       as 'glue' to help ZoneMinder interface with other systems. It will almost certainly
       require some customisation before you can make any use of it. If all you want to do is
       generate alarms from external sources then using the ZoneMinder::SharedMem perl module is
       likely to be easier.

EXAMPLES

         3|on+10|1|motion|text|showtext

       Triggers "alarm" on camera #3 for 10 seconds with score=1, cause="motion".