Blue Iris

Hi all. I have had weeks of pain with Blue Iris, lockups and blue screens/hard freezes due to CodeProject AI.

Symptoms
My computer randomly locks up/reboots and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why other than Blue Iris/CodeProject Server windows service. If I turn off Blue Iris via mmc/services console (stop the service) I do not get random crashes and the system is stable. I assumed this must have something to do with the decoding of the camera streams. I debugged for days by finally turning off the camera streams and CodeProject AI, I turned everything back on one by one, ensuring I'm only using H.264 streams, and so far, WITHOUT CodeProject AI running, it has been stable and not crashing for a couple of days which is a record for me.

I did have CodeProject setup to detect persons/cars in certain areas. The bummer for me is that it was working PERFECTLY. I absolutely love the integration. I wasn't getting tons of false alerts from my cat/dog, I was only getting notified via email when I wanted to be. Now I'm wondering if anyone has had this issue, how I might go about debugging CodeProject to solve it? With these hard freezes/random lockups I don't have any good stacktrace to go from.

System.
Blue Iris 5.8.1.5
i7 8700K Processor @ stock speed with integrated graphics
Nvidia GTX 1060 3GB (Asus)
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 5
32GB DDR4 at 2400mhz stock speed
Samsung 980 Evo SSD 512GB (plenty of free space)
Multiple other internal drives for various reasons
Windows 10 latest updates/edition
Nvidia latest graphics driver direct from Nvidia.com (clean)
Installed most recent network card (Intel ethernet) drivers (clean)
Installed most recent intel graphics and chipset drivers (clean)

Cameras (4x with PoE switch)
Amcrest 5MP Turret POE Camera, UltraHD Outdoor IP Camera POE with Mic/Audio, 5-Megapixel Security Surveillance Cameras, 98ft NightVision, 103° FOV, MicroSD (256GB), (IP5M-T1179EW-28MM)

Camera settings (double checked on every camera and tried multiple different settings)

Main Stream
H.264
Smart Code: Off
1920x1080 resolution (even though the cameras can do 4k)
25FPS
VBR
Quality: 4
Max Bit Rate: 4096

Sub Stream
H.264
704*480(D1) resolution
15FPS
CBR
Bit Rate: 512Kb/S
Frame Interval: 30

Within Blue Iris, I have tried setting up the cameras to decode with “Intel”, “Intel + VPP”, “Nvidia”. and CPU only with NO hardware acceleration, the system will lock up and crash regardless of which is chosen if I have AI enabled. With Intel + VPP, sometimes I might get lucky and it might go nearly a full day without crashing, but it still crashes every day.

It’s obvious that something is not playing nicely with Blue Iris/CodeProject integration, I thought maybe it was the camera streams/encoding, but they are all H.264 and fairly easy bitrate at 1080p…it should not have any issue with 4 cameras at 1080p.

Any suggestions? If not, do you have any other thoughts or settings you might suggest I change to try to achieve normal system stability? I would absolutely love to use the AI integration as it makes my alerts actually useful.

Thank you!

If the desktop itself is locking up and or rebooting then I’d check the desktop itself, start by checking the memory, download a memory tester and see if that reports any problems.

Sorry I should have mentioned that.

I already ran memtest. I also fully cleaned/reinstalled video drivers.

I also tried swapping from an RTX 3060 Ti back to a GTX 1060...just wanted to see if some raw hardware was causing some issue.

I have no stability issues until Codeproject is turned on with Blue Iris. If I'm just running Blue Iris, it's fine...stable.

My son was even gaming on this system WITH Blue Iris on..and it was stable.... Seems like the major system instability only comes with CodeProject AI. I just have no idea why that would cause such an issue when nothing else seems to crash the system.

Have you tried CP AI without the video card?

IAmATeaf wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2023 8:16 pm Have you tried CP AI without the video card?

I have not. Do you mean removing the video card completely or is there just a setting to force it to use CPU instead?

I suggest forcing it to cpu. Removal of the video card may be a valid move later.

The complication in CPAI is usually getting a gpu to work. Surely the CPAI screen will allow a return to cpu. Will have a look in a while.

I will try to turn off the GPU in CPAI if this doesn't work.

Currently, I tested that I can run Blue Iris by itself and it at least seems stable for over 24 hours which is better than previously.

I then uninstalled/removed CPAI.

I reinstalled the latest version of CPAI and double checked that my cuda drivers etc. are all current.

I turned on AI in Blue Iris and....so far today it hasn't crashed (yet). I don't see any errors in CPAI logs, response time generally in the 50ms range and I have 20GB Ram free/lots of CPU/GPU free.

I should know within 24 hours if the uninstall/reinstall somehow magically fixed it.

Well it is nearly Christmas

I keep getting a lump of coal

TimG wrote: ↑Tue Dec 19, 2023 5:28 pm Well it is nearly Christmas

I keep getting a lump of coal

Well I have only had it running since this morning so.....I still have at least 14 hours or so for a typical crash to occur.

jlrosine wrote: ↑Tue Dec 19, 2023 5:01 pm I will try to turn off the GPU in CPAI if this doesn't work.

Currently, I tested that I can run Blue Iris by itself and it at least seems stable for over 24 hours which is better than previously.

I then uninstalled/removed CPAI.

I reinstalled the latest version of CPAI and double checked that my cuda drivers etc. are all current.

I turned on AI in Blue Iris and....so far today it hasn't crashed (yet). I don't see any errors in CPAI logs, response time generally in the 50ms range and I have 20GB Ram free/lots of CPU/GPU free.

I should know within 24 hours if the uninstall/reinstall somehow magically fixed it.

EDIT: I spoke too soon, it froze 2 hours after I posted this. Back to the drawing board for me!
EDIT 2: Turned out to be a faulty NUC. I replaced the RAM and the SSD and it was still freezing. Thankfully it was under warranty and Asus replaced it no questions asked. It's been chugging along for two weeks with AI enabled and no freezes - so far!

Came here from a Google search, registered and logged in to say thank you for posting this solution. I was having almost identical symptoms - the computer would completely lock up at seemingly random times. Once I turned on the saving of the BI log file though, I saw that immediately before the freeze (because the time was frozen on the screen too) one of my cameras with AI enabled had a motion event. So this led me to believe it was CPAI. At first I simply tried futzing with some of the settings and trying different YOLO versions, but it was still freezing. However, just like you said, a complete uninstall and reinstall of CPAI did the trick! It's now been about 48 hours with no freezes AND the AI detection is working better than it ever did before. Previously it would never make it a full day without a lock up.

For anyone coming in the future, I don't think this is specific to a particular computer or graphics card - I'm using a 12th gen i7 Intel NUC and, therefore, running CPAI on the CPU. So no CUDA drivers or anything like that, yet CPAI was still having the same issues as jlrosine's. No amount of rebooting would help, it seems it was just something got corrupted and needed reinstalling.