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ZoneMinder vs motionEye
March 06, 2025 | Author: Michael Stromann
13★
Full-featured, open source, state-of-the-art video surveillance software system. Monitor your office using off the shelf hardware with any camera, you can design a system as large or as small as you need. Supports motion detection and event-triggered recording.
7★
motionEye is a web-based frontend for Motion - highly configurable program that monitors video signals from many types of cameras and depending upon how they are configured, perform actions when movement is detected.
ZoneMinder and motionEye are both cunningly designed to keep an eye on things you might otherwise forget to watch, like your front door, your cat or that one neighbor who definitely isn’t up to anything but still makes you wonder. They are both open-source, which means they are free in both the “free beer” and “free to break if you tinker too much” sense. They work with various cameras, detect motion in a manner that occasionally mistakes a passing cloud for an intruder and allow you to check in from a web browser, usually when you should be doing something else.
ZoneMinder, hailing from the UK since 2002, is the more serious, heavyweight contender, designed for people who use words like "enterprise-grade" and think a "dedicated surveillance server" sounds like a fun weekend project. It devours system resources with the enthusiasm of a starved goat and comes packed with event filtering, zoned motion detection and deep integrations that require a PhD or a really good tutorial to understand. If you want a security system that can integrate with AI, Home Assistant and possibly predict the stock market (it can’t, but it feels like it should), this is the one for you.
motionEye, by contrast, was born in Poland in 2014 and is more like a friendly pet than a surveillance behemoth. It’s for DIY enthusiasts, Raspberry Pi tinkerers and people who like things to just work without needing a manual the size of a small novel. It’s lightweight, easy to install and lacks the corporate-grade ambition of its elder cousin, but it makes up for that by actually being usable without summoning a tech priest. If ZoneMinder is a security fortress, motionEye is the helpful robot sidekick that keeps an eye on your garage while you pretend to fix the car.
See also: Top 10 Video Surveillance Systems
ZoneMinder, hailing from the UK since 2002, is the more serious, heavyweight contender, designed for people who use words like "enterprise-grade" and think a "dedicated surveillance server" sounds like a fun weekend project. It devours system resources with the enthusiasm of a starved goat and comes packed with event filtering, zoned motion detection and deep integrations that require a PhD or a really good tutorial to understand. If you want a security system that can integrate with AI, Home Assistant and possibly predict the stock market (it can’t, but it feels like it should), this is the one for you.
motionEye, by contrast, was born in Poland in 2014 and is more like a friendly pet than a surveillance behemoth. It’s for DIY enthusiasts, Raspberry Pi tinkerers and people who like things to just work without needing a manual the size of a small novel. It’s lightweight, easy to install and lacks the corporate-grade ambition of its elder cousin, but it makes up for that by actually being usable without summoning a tech priest. If ZoneMinder is a security fortress, motionEye is the helpful robot sidekick that keeps an eye on your garage while you pretend to fix the car.
See also: Top 10 Video Surveillance Systems
