ZoneMinder is a set of applications, which support capture, analysis, recording, and monitoring of video data coming from cameras attached to a Linux system. Its Web interface lets users view, archive, review, and delete images and movies. The image analysis system provided by ZoneMinder is highly configurable: users can retain specific events while eliminating false positives.

ZoneMinder is designed to run on kernels that support the Video For Linux (V4L) interface and has been tested with cameras attached to BTTV cards, various USB cameras and IP network cameras. The software is designed to support as many cameras as you can attach to your computer without too much degradation of performance. ZoneMinder also requires MySQL and PHP, as well as a webserver such as Apache.

ZoneMinder is contains a number of components and comprises of both the back-end daemons that do the actual image capture and analysis and a user friendly front end enabling you to both monitor the current situation and view and organize historical events that have taken place.

The front-end of ZoneMinder is web based allowing you to check and control your ZoneMinder installation from any other machine.

ZoneMinder defines a set of individual 'zones' of varying sensitivity and functionality for each camera. Certain regions can be eliminated, and certain areas can be defined in such a way that they will alarm if thresholds are exceeded in conjunction with other zones.

ZoneMinder is licensed under the GNU General Public License, Version 2. It has been programmed in PHP and C++.