Provided by: zoneminder_1.29.0+dfsg-1ubuntu2_amd64 
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".