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Hello everyone. The world has no shortage of ways to do HTTPS reverse proxying to add https:// capability to web applications (like Blue Iris) that lack good support natively: stunnel, nginx, apache, traefik, haproxy, Cloudflare DNS proxy, and many more. Most of these do not have a user...

Crazy coincidence. I was outside chatting with my brother and I was telling him about starlink satellite trains because he's never seen one. Then this one flew by not 10 minutes later. I could hardly have planned it better. These are from mission Starlink Group 3-2.

I bought a refurbished IPC-COLOR4K-X from Andy last year and its focus was not great. Then for some reason it got worse over time. So I took it apart today and was able to fix the focus easily. 1. Take off front panel of camera to expose 4 screws. 2. Unscrew 4 screws to open camera case. 3...

Over the years, several people have asked for ways to remotely control UI3 instances beyond what is enabled by URL parameters. I always had to say there is no easy mechanism for this to happen. But I recently learned that most popular MQTT brokers make MQTT accessible via web socket. So I...

One of my dad's 25x 2MP PTZ cams lost signal in Blue Iris. When I try to log into the cam's web interface, it goes straight to the "Device Initialization" screen: But filling that out and clicking Save doesn't get it past that page. The camera just returns some meaningless error code and...

My family knows a guy who had an old CCTV system installed decades ago using analog cameras that used phone lines, signal amplifiers and such, but all the equipment is so outdated and broken that it is basically trash now. We might replace his system with IP cams. Unlike most systems, this...

Everyone knows SSDs are faster than hard drives, but common wisdom says you shouldn't record security video to an SSD because: SSDs aren't nearly as cost-effective as a hard drive for the same capacity SSDs have limited write endurance, so they will wear out faster than a hard drive You don't...

Here's the tl;dr: There is a common problem with Z-Wave USB sticks that utilize 700-series chips, such as Aeotec Z-Stick 7. Basically, they communicate unreliably. You should not buy one. If you want a Z-Wave controller USB stick, get one with a 500 series chip. My whole story: I moved...

I moved last year, and wanted my cameras to be more discreet than they were at my previous house (big turret and bullet cams mounted all over the siding). This mostly meant using small and inconspicuous cams to watch the driveway, and those aren't great for ID shots. So I was thrilled when I...

I recently purchased an EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-X with a 2.8mm lens from @EMPIRETECANDY. This model is also known as Dahua DH-IPC-HFW5849T1-ASE-LED. I installed it not as a security cam, but as a weather cam. The high resolution and large sensor make for great captures both day and night. The...

I moved to a bigger house this summer and wanted remote control of many of the lights, like I'd had in my previous home. My old system was Z-wave, mainly consisting of Evolve and GE dimmers controlled by a Vera controller. My only complaints were: 1. The Vera controller would sometimes stop...

Hi everyone. I normally don't bother talking about UI3 releases here anymore, but I just released UI3-181 with a new video player option. It uses "WebCodecs" which is a brand new web API that gives low-level access to the video decoders, just like I've wanted for only about a decade. It is...

I haven't seen this happen before. It is kind of weird having the IR filter stuck with only about 60% coverage. I simply had to log in to the camera and toggle it to B&W mode and back to Auto to fix this.

I have built a Chrome extension that exploits the recently disclosed Dahua vulnerabilities discussed here to log you in to Dahua cameras without needing to know the password. There is a technical description of the vulnerabilities here which shows how easy this is. This is meant to be a tool...

Based on reviews I have seen, the EZVIZ DB1C doorbell cam is one of the better doorbell cams a person can buy to use with an NVR or Blue Iris (NO ONVIF SUPPORT, but does support RTSP). I'm getting one myself, and found it discounted to $50 at B&H until June 30 at 11:59 PM EDT. "limited supply...

A couple months ago one of my relatives bought a pair of Reolink turret cameras. Somehow he thought I had recommended them :eek:. I told him he should return them. He didn't. So now here I am with one of them to see if it will be useful. Hardware The entire mount is made of plastic. I...

Amazon.com has their ring alarms discounted again for Black Friday, just like on Prime day. http://amzn.com/B085RLNFR9 I ordered the 14 piece kit during the last sale in October for $200 and it was really easy to set up. I can't speak for the long term reliability yet, but so far it hasn't...

It is hard to believe it is so light outside. This is a Dahua 2MP full color starlight tuned for long exposure, but still, it should not be this bright!! It is 12:14 AM in this picture and it is snowing fairly heavily (which you don't see falling because there are no nearby light sources)...

As usual with big Amazon.com sales, the Ring Alarm kits are heavily discounted today. http://amzn.com/B085RLNFR9 The big 14 piece kit is $200, down from the usual price of $330.

I tried to use the Picture Overlay on a Dahua camera, and found it cumbersome to produce an image that fits within the constraints required by the camera. So today I built a program that converts common image formats into a small bitmap image that works with the "Picture Overlay" feature...

It is common knowledge that Digital Zoom is basically a scam, right? We've all seen products that advertise sky-high digital zoom numbers, and we all know that doesn't mean very much. That is certainly what I thought. So whenever I found Digital Zoom in a PTZ camera's options, I turned it...

I just upgraded my main workstation/gaming PC to AMD Ryzen 3950x (16 cores!), and decided to test Blue Iris on it. Hardware Setup https://pcpartpicker.com/user/bp2008/saved/NB2hgs (please note: This configuration was chosen for performance, not energy-efficiency or cost-effectiveness)...

I was in my crawlspace last week installing a fiber optic cable, and I guess a mouse got in because it kept showing up in my water line camera every day or two. I put in a trap this morning, and this evening, I got it. I almost got it twice!!

Hello, everyone! @EMPIRETECANDY reached out to me a few months ago, wanting to send me one of the new 4MP Starlight+ cameras to test and review, and I happily agreed. Thanks, Andy! I asked for a wide angle IR turret, so this review features the 2.8mm lens version of the camera...

An old Hikvision DS-2CD2032-I. The previous night there was no sign of a spider.

Blue Iris 5 was released on May 31, 2019. This is a guide for how to upgrade from Blue Iris 4 to Blue Iris 5. When following this procedure, your existing Blue Iris 4 license key will be upgraded to a Blue Iris 5 license and you will not receive a new Blue Iris 5 license key. Step 0) Consider...

Lately I have been telling people that CPUs with hyper-threading suffer reduced performance when their CPU usage is over 50%, but I've never had real data demonstrating this. Today I put together a program to benchmark and test this theory. The results are interesting, and not exactly what I...

My IPC-HFW5231E-Z5 bullet managed to get a little moisture into the camera body. A few days ago an icicle formed on the front and I suspect this somehow channeled water to a weak point in the waterproofing because right now there is condensation inside the glass directly in front of the lens...