add per monitor 'alarmed' status indicator to montage view

[segordon]

Alarm status is indicated on zoneminders' default montage view, via flashing colors and monitor image expansion.

Some sort of alarm status indication would be fantastic in zmNinja's montage view.

The stand-alone zmNinja desktop client performs better than a variety of browsers I have tested with zoneminders default js montage view implementation in both memory and cpu usage; this feature is the only thing I have discovered so far that keeps me from making the jump to using zmNinja as a full-featured montage 'head' rather than a browser+zoneminder montage view (a huge resource hog).

I experimented with using a green/red alarmed/normal list of monitors on a local server that hosts a page with monitor streams and interfaced with zmeventserver to achieve this functionality; but it's a big hacky mess, and it's not terribly attention grabbing. I'm sure someone with a better design aesthetic than I can come up with something that looks nice and eye-catching.

[pliablepixels]

@segordon when you are in montage view, and an alarm occurs a 'wobbling bell' with an alarm count is displayed on the nav bar as well as a banner that displays the alarm name - it goes away after a few seconds but the alarm bell remains (and if you are in full screen mode it displays at the bottom). Are you referring to an additional indication?

[segordon]

@pliablepixels something monitor specific would be fantastic. I know the wobbling bell well, but when you're watching a high number of monitors that may have multiple alarms at one time, it's difficult to track. The behavior in the JS montage view in the zm web client is nice because it draws your eye to the specific alarmed monitor without the need to reference a list.

note: I would also like to mention that the monitor expansion in the zm montage view is a detriment to having many monitors. it effectively blinds the viewer to the other alarms. the red blinking frames are the helpful bit.

[pliablepixels]

Yup gotcha. It's been in my list of things I wanted to do for a while.

[pliablepixels]

Thinking aloud about the UI a bit. Let's assume I flash the monitor that has an alarmed. How long should it flash? Keep flashing till you tap on something? If so, tap on what?

[segordon]

Probably an adjustable timer that'd flash for a duration after triggering,
or just a few seconds after the event. We already have the wobble bell to
indicate an event has happened in the past; this is just to bring your eyes
to that event during the triggering.

On November 12, 2015 1:04:06 PM Pliable Pixels [email protected]
wrote:

Thinking aloud about the UI a bit. Let's assume I flash the monitor that
has an alarmed. How long should it flash? Keep flashing till you tap on
something? If so, tap on what?

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/pliablepixels/zmNinja/issues/82#issuecomment-156233194

[pliablepixels]

@segordon grab the latest version 0.86.1D

[pliablepixels]

Please upgrade Event Server to 0.5 as well

[segordon]

Fantastic progress.

Some notes:

1. this feature should probably be optional. ( i'd hate this if I were an epileptic.. )
2. the blinking video frame sometimes hinders identifying the alarm cause. It may be better to implement in such a way that does not fade the actual feed out of view

Great work. Exactly what I was asking for. Thanks so much for the efforts!

[pliablepixels]

@segordon - that's exactly what I feel too - interference with identifying the cause. I started off trying to just flash the header but couldn't figure out how to do it in the full screen view. But I figured it out. Please give the new version a try - it should only flash the header in normal montage view and in full screen view, it should overlay a 5px high red bar on the image (no header in full screen view)

I've also reduced the flashing intensity to a slower pulse.

With respect to it being optional - I think I need to walk a line between too many options and too few - for now, lets see if this is acceptable as a non-option setting. If I hear that this is also too distracting, I'll put it as a toggle in developer settings.