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';
             'show' updates the auxiliary text represented by the %Q
             placeholder, which can optionally be added to the affected monitor's
             timestamp label format.

             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'.