Blue Iris

Almost finished setting the network at my sisters place after replacing some questionable hardware purchases. They bought a HIKVision 4 camera setup with 4 x 5MP cameras, but we have run wiring to add another 4 cameras on the lower story to get better face recognition, 3 of which will be 8MP HIKVision cameras.

I also replaced the Apple Air 2TB NAS the so called IT guy installed and cheap 10 port POE switch with a Synology 918+ (2 x 10TB WD Red HDDs) and a managed Ubiquiti 24 Port 250w POE EdgeSwitch. So we are now in the position that we don't need to rely on the HIKVision box to provide POE to the cameras.

Two trains of thought have crossed my mind.,, Use the Synology NAS box to run the Synology camera software (potentially slowing the box so much that it causes the 4k media setup to slow), or go with Blue Iris 5 software on some new dedicated hardware.

A third option also exists... Use the temporary D-Link NAS box with 2 x 3TB WD Red HDDs to somehow act as a storage box.

I want all the cameras to be able to record high quality video (otherwise it is pointless forking out for 8MP cameras) but since I am no camera expert I have no idea just how much processing, ram, video, and storage I require to achieve this. I read somewhere that you need a really good video card with lots of GPU RAM on it for the cameras to record in high def, but that doesn't sound right to me if the cameras are streaming the video as a data file.

Please offer any recommendations as to which solution is going to be best (ignoring costs to a large degree, don't want the cheapest option if it won't perform).

TIA.

BadWolf wrote: ↑Mon Sep 02, 2019 12:50 am Almost finished setting the network at my sisters place after replacing some questionable hardware purchases. They bought a HIKVision 4 camera setup with 4 x 5MP cameras, but we have run wiring to add another 4 cameras on the lower story to get better face recognition, 3 of which will be 8MP HIKVision cameras.

I also replaced the Apple Air 2TB NAS the so called IT guy installed and cheap 10 port POE switch with a Synology 918+ (2 x 10TB WD Red HDDs) and a managed Ubiquiti 24 Port 250w POE EdgeSwitch. So we are now in the position that we don't need to rely on the HIKVision box to provide POE to the cameras.

Two trains of thought have crossed my mind.,, Use the Synology NAS box to run the Synology camera software (potentially slowing the box so much that it causes the 4k media setup to slow), or go with Blue Iris 5 software on some new dedicated hardware.

A third option also exists... Use the temporary D-Link NAS box with 2 x 3TB WD Red HDDs to somehow act as a storage box.

I want all the cameras to be able to record high quality video (otherwise it is pointless forking out for 8MP cameras) but since I am no camera expert I have no idea just how much processing, ram, video, and storage I require to achieve this. I read somewhere that you need a really good video card with lots of GPU RAM on it for the cameras to record in high def, but that doesn't sound right to me if the cameras are streaming the video as a data file.

Please offer any recommendations as to which solution is going to be best (ignoring costs to a large degree, don't want the cheapest option if it won't perform).

TIA.

Hi, sorry if this sounds a bit negative but it may have helped to do a little more research.
Ultra Low Light 2MP camera's are better for most use cases around the house, especially at night. 4MP cameras generally provide much clearer pictures than the 8MP, it's all about horizontal rows, but you can adjust your res, down to 4MP to compare.
Don't get me wrong the 8MP will look great the day, just stick to a sensible frame rate like 15-20fps.
The purple drives are designed for the constant writes of surveillance, not the RED's but they will work.
A cheap dedicated PC with a modern i7 (non-k), and no dedicated GPU is what you need, preferably with local drives. (even a refurb from ebay $250)
Unless you know what you are doing, you are unlikely to get the write performance from the NAS, so best to write locally and then archive off.
Assume the NAS will be in RAID 1, so performance won't suffer like RAID 5, but that is a lot of disk space to waste.
If you use H.265 decoding (No Integrated GPU support), you don't require a lot of storage, and keeps the bandwidth low on the network. Storage is cheap, so best to add a decent amount of local storage to the PC and leave the NAS as a NAS. But don't use RAID 5, will kill performance.

Synology 918+ is good, especially their NVR software (although it can drive 40 cameras, usually 720p and low frame rates, never seen one drive 8MP). Usually you need to upgrade the RAM.
Again consider leaving the NAS as a NAS, and running PLEX from it, but again probably need to upgrade the RAM from 2GB to 4GB.

Thanks for the reply. It took a few days for this post to appear, so other plans were put in place while time was ticking by.

My sister has already ordered 3 x 2.8mm and 1 x 4mm 8MP cameras. The reseller is trying to get a hold of Hikvision 8MP PoE DS-2CD2385G1-I over the older DS-2CD2385FWD-I end of life model. Apparently the newer model is better in low light.

The whole camera system was put in place without my knowledge. I asked them to talk to me before they did anything, but like usual they went ahead and had someone "expert" come in and do a crap job. He put in an off the shelf HIK Vision 4 camera setup and NVR. Some of the cameras he put in bad locations (too high up). Rather than buying an 8 camera version of the HIK Vision NVR, I suggested we build a PC with enough grunt to record at decent resolution, and run Blue Iris software.

PC Hardware wise I have a rough budget of AU$2000 (about US$1.50 these days) to build a box. Was thinking about using the WD Purple, as it is recommended for surveillance, and maybe a small SSD for the OS.

Ahhh just realised I wasn't clear about the D-Link box... They already have that with the 2 x 3TB Red drives in it, that wasn't going to be a purchasing option for surveillance, although it could be used for long term surveillance file storage and leave the Synology NAS untouched.

Do I need a lot of RAM for 8 cameras? What would you recommend? I am guessing to some degree this is probably going to be dictated by which codec I use / compression / raw.

I set the Synology NAS up using RAID 0, I was more concerned about performance than I was data security, as it is predominately 4K moves and HD music that will be stored / streamed.

My preference was to leave the NAS as is, and now I have a PC budget that will be the case.

As you suggest I could always record locally and write up a program to automatically send the files over to the NAS for longer term storage if needed.

Hi, please see other posts where we have mentioned the website showing the hardware and camera load that people are using with BI5.

I also agree that the race for megapixels is a false one. You need to check the low light sensitivity, and compare them. Without that you will end up with a system that shows fantastic images in daylight, but you won't see a darn thing when it gets dark. Not much use to catch the bad guys...

Just about every CCTV system display you see in a showroom will show wonderful pictures in the light too. Hmm...

The Dahua starlight 2MP range is awesome. There will be new cameras that will beat them, but these cameras can see in colour - without using the IR LEDs - when your eyes see only darkness.