Blue Iris?

Posted on
Sat Jan 05, 2019 12:51 am
DPattee offline
Posts: 453
Joined: Jan 14, 2004
Location: Redmond, WA

Blue Iris?

I finally have to move away from Evocam. I've stuck with it for years without update, but my legacy mac mini running a legacy version of OS X has got to go - literally the only thing it does anymore is host 4 analog surveillance cameras. I've got a dozen modern high res IP cameras and there's no way that old mini can manage them - not to mention the general badness of having to keep an out of date OS + app running.

Security Spy looks great, it is still missing a bunch of features that EvoCam had but I can work around most of them... oh, wait, it will be over $600 by the time I get all my cameras deployed.

EvoCam was like $100, and Blue Iris is around $50... I can literally buy an entirely new Windows PC + software for less than the Security Spy license.

I'm loathe to run Windows at home, but....

So, anyone using that app? Any caveats / warnings / tips / suggestions on hardware?

Posted on
Sat Jan 05, 2019 4:03 am
neilk offline
Posts: 714
Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

Re: Blue Iris?

Blue Iris combined with Glenn’s awesome plugin works incredibly well. In my case I picked up a refurb ex corporate Small Format Factor Dell with an i7 and 8Gb ram. I junked the HDD and added an SSD for Windows and a big drive for the video. I run it headless (with teamviewer) in my loft attached to a UPS and it works really well.

If like me you have been away from Windows a few years (but are not religious on the matter) Win 10 is a bit fragmented in terms of setup (it is still has some legacy and some modern setup aspects) then it runs well.

It is highly stable and I consider it as a black box and my Indigo Mini needs rebooting more than the PC, but I do dedicate it to the single purpose.

Only issue I get occasionally is the need to restart the SSL which is an open source add in that secures the external connection to the IOS app and Web UI which is also brilliant. BI continues to run fine and I need to TV in to restart the tunnel app. Config is a fiddle but good instructions and support via forums. Not vital and you could use other techniques including a VPN and it does not impact the Indigo integration which is local.

The plugin is brilliant and I use the motion sensors, and other status triggers and snapshot capture that combined with the DSC plugin and pushover can push event images to me such as a snapshot from the front door when the alarm is disarmed.

9HD cameras (Max 5mp) and it runs around 60% CPU usage, I do tune the recording frame rate and use the direct to disk recording functionality of BI that minimises resource usage on the PC by eliminating transcoding. Native camera support including DoorBird and a huge spectrum of devices with frequent free updates (major versions are chargeable but infrequent, minors regular and free)

All use BI’s motion detection including zoning to control recording but I only tune the ones I rely on motion triggers to remove false positives as I have a big disk and would rather capture on the safe side. Clip browsing is also very effective from the web UI so false positive records are not a big issue.

Only real downside (if you have base Windows knowledge) is that it is a two box system, in my case a preference for redundancy and I get the best of a full featured CCTV functionality with great Indigo integration as well. You can almost consider the windows as an embedded OS, but not 100% if you are completely Windows Phobic

Neil

Posted on
Sat Jan 05, 2019 10:54 am
DPattee offline
Posts: 453
Joined: Jan 14, 2004
Location: Redmond, WA

Re: Blue Iris?

Cool, good to know that there is some decent integration. I'm willing to pay for good software, but SSpy just seems too far out of line with the rest of the market.

I already run multiple machines for my home system - one machine for 'server things' like Indigo, mail server, a web server portal for my webcams, kibana, apcd server if I can ever get it to work..., then a separate machine for 'data things' like the elasticsearch master node, time machine targets, some dbs, used to be my crash plan target before they screwed that all up ( :( ), the target for manual/rsync backups, and general Mac file server for remote docs...

I also worked at Microsoft for 15 years, so.... ;)

Biggest problems with deploying a windows box is figuring out where to put it - (only 1u in my small rack and it was supposed to be for a Ubiquiti cloud key when the rack mount module comes out) and adding a non-standard device that changes the management workflow that I use for all my other Macs.

Posted on
Sat Jan 05, 2019 11:13 am
neilk offline
Posts: 714
Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

Re: Blue Iris?

So I will leave it to you to comment on if working for MS for that long makes you windows phobic. :D

I did consider buying a server off ebay and rack mounting it, maybe worth checking out the BI forums as they discuss different platforms.

BI certainly is great value and when an update broke Glenn's plugin the developer responded and fixed it very quickly.

Posted on
Sat Jan 05, 2019 3:59 pm
GlennNZ offline
User avatar
Posts: 1555
Joined: Dec 07, 2014
Location: Central Coast, Australia

Blue Iris?

Hi

I would put in a strong vote for BlueIris - although full disclaimer I haven’t actually used anything else!

From a hardware point of view - I moved from a older dual Xeon server to a micro PC. Mainly promoting this was to try to minimize power when I went to solar and battery storage.

I bought a Dell 7050 MICRO Optiplex (note the micro bit) during one of dells 1/2 price sales. It runs a i7-7700T, max draws 35W, power supply max output is 65w & most of the time appears to draw 9-11W only!

Image


I run 22 1080p+ cameras at 15fps+audio, all recording ‘direct-to-disk’, hardware decoding enabled, straight to a local 1TB 2nd 2.5inch drive inside the micro. (the operating system is on the SSD). The CPU sits around 20-30% at most.

In fact I was so impressed with the micro (and its tiny) I ultimately picked up a 2nd one and moved all my windows VMs across to it and retired my server altogether. Gone from 500 watts plus to about 22W! (As an aside was also interesting to note how much power my server UPSs were drawing (about 120-150w each) probably constantly charging batteries)

Anyhow back to topic - I would put in a +1 for BlueIris

Glenn

Posted on
Sat Jan 05, 2019 5:05 pm
RogueProeliator offline
User avatar
Posts: 2501
Joined: Nov 13, 2012
Location: Baton Rouge, LA

Re: Blue Iris?

Biggest problems with deploying a windows box is figuring out where to put it - (only 1u in my small rack and it was supposed to be for a Ubiquiti cloud key when the rack mount module comes out) and adding a non-standard device that changes the management workflow that I use for all my other Macs.

You can pick up some nice PowerEdge servers on eBay relatively cheaply if you feel like going that route. Most of the 1U servers are limited on disk slots but if you have an external storage (NAS, or whatever) or if you were willing to run off one disk for video storage might be okay.

Eventually I plan on going that route but with a 2U unit that gives me more options for onboard storage in a RAID array. But my standalone NVR is needed now until I rid myself of the crappy analog cameras that still make up some less-critical parts of my system.

Adam

Posted on
Sun Jan 06, 2019 2:26 pm
siclark offline
Posts: 1960
Joined: Jun 13, 2017
Location: UK

Re: Blue Iris?

GlennNZ wrote:

I run 22 1080p+ cameras at 15fps+audio, all recording ‘direct-to-disk’, hardware decoding enabled, straight to a local 1TB 2nd 2.5inch drive inside the micro. (the operating system is on the SSD). The CPU sits around 20-30% at most.

Glenn


22?
I've got some expanding to do!!

Page 1 of 1

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests