Will this desktop suffice for Blue Iris (BI)

A

alwayson

Getting the hang of it
Apr 27, 2016
111
16
Hello,

I hope you all are doing great, I am back again with another question. I was gifted a desktop (see below), I plan to dedicate it solely to use for Blue Iris (BI) for about 18 cameras.

The desktop is a HP Pavillion 570-p033w

HP Pavilion 570-p033w Desktop PC Product Specifications | HP® Customer Support

I am not sure if it is sufficient to run/manage Blue Iris (BI), some of its specs are:

Motherboard - Lubin - I read from other reviews of this desktop that this motherboard is worthless and not that great

Power Supply - Internal 180 W PSU - I read that this is a problem as well and should be upgraded?

Processor

Intel Core i7-7700
CPU speed: 3.6 GHz (max turbo boost - 4.2 GHz)
CPU cores: 4
CPU Cache: 8 MB
TDP: 65 W
Socket: LGA 1151

Memory 16GB - not sure if it can be upgraded

Dual channel memory architecture
Two DDR4 UDIMM (288-pin) sockets
Supports up to PC4-19200 (DDR4-2400)
Supports 2 GB, 4 GB, and 8 GB UDIMMs
Supports up to 16 GB (unbuffered) on 64-bit computers

Integrated Intel HD Graphics

2TB HD

Now that I already have this computer, there is little I can do to return it. I am hoping I can use it to run Blue Iris (BI) as is or with slight upgrades?

I presume one upgrade would be adding a SSD? either internally or externally?

Please do educate me so I can set this up if it is good enough and get it running :)

Thank you
 
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That computer should be very good for Blue Iris. Big power supplies and fancy motherboards are good for expandability (like large numbers of hard drives, graphics cards, etc) but you don't care about that for Blue Iris.
 
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Keep in mind that many reviews are done by people into gaming or other intensive GPU or even CPU applications. BI doesn't do any of that other than process the raw video feeds from your cameras. The CPU has onboard graphics so you can use hardware acceleration in BI. An SSD for a boot/system drive would be an idea just to speed up boot and application access. You can use the 2TB hard drive for video storage that way. Overall the base machine is more than capable of running BI and has more than enough memory as well.

One more thing....any more "gifts" like that around?:)
 
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Thank you all for your feedback. Actually it was sort of shared gift from my family to me, and also partly from me to myself. I found this for a good price and decided to bite the bullet.

I am in the process of trying to set up Blue Iris (BI) and moving the cameras from the NVR to the switch.
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I have so many questions, but the first one is....do I need to keep the desktop running 24/7 in order to keep Blue Iris (BI) running?

Also, are there ways to reduce the CPU usage/intensity of Blue Iris (BI) e.g reduce recording quality, etc.?

Any tips that you have are very welcome.

Thank you
 
That’s a great pc for blue iris. 7th gen intels are the most power efficient of all including 8th gen. As you already mentioned adding as ssd would be recommended. Go Internal. External ssds will be bottle necked. Also 2tb for 18 cameras might be too little depending on how many days of footage you are planning to keep
 
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Hello,

Thank you for your help. I have begun trying to setup Blue Iris (BI) and managed to get on maybe 2/3 of my cameras.

I am using the trial version and will upgrade to the full version tomorrow.

I have two quick questions, I still need to go through the Blue Iris instruction manuals etc.

1) Do you know how I can access the portal for each individual camera? This setting is configured individually for each camera in the camera's web interface

I want to be able to individually configure the camera FPS rate for each came in order to reduce CPU usage

2) How does one view the cameras (live and playback) from a remote location, e.g. I am in a hotel room in another city, not on my home network, do I need to use an App or configure something in the desktop version of Blue Iris (BI) on the primary computer running Blue Iris (BI)?

This information will at least get me started towards setting up Blue Iris (BI).

Thank you
 
Sounds like you are proceeding quite well, congrats!

You will need to configure each of your cameras by logging into them using a browser like Chrome or whatever you prefer. Each camera must have a unique ipaddress and that is what you will enter in the browser for the url. I.E. "192.168.1.108" It might help if you told us what type of cameras you have but they all pretty much work through the browser. If you haven't already you will need to set static or reserved ip addresses for the cameras. You can do this directly on the camera interface for static IP but most prefer using the router function (if available) to reserve an ip address for each camera based on the mac address. Once you log in you can set the fps etc.

Second question a bit more complicated and recommend reading this once you get there. VPN Primer for Noobs

Basically the preferred method is to use vpn to access your BI machine. No port forwarding. This is more secure.

Oh and yes, there is a BI app for your phone.
 
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Hello and greetings,

I have begun configuring the cameras individually to reduce the fps on each, I think it has dropped the CPU usage, I will check. I was also playing around with triggers and alerts, and have a question:

1) Using Blue Iris (BI), I have set some of the cameras to send me alerts when there is a trigger. I am still playing around with the trigger settings.

I set the alert to include text and email alerts. For some reason, my text alerts also include a lot of texts from 4 digit numbers e.g. 404-8, 979-3 which basically contain the text 'youremail@gmail.com/Blue Iris alert' where youremail@gmail.com is the email I configured as the outgoing email on BI.

Do you know what these texts are?

Thank you
 
Also, I have another question.

I have a couple of WD Purple Surveillance HDs....how do I use these? Do I need to replace the original HD on this desktop (HP Pavillion 570-p033w) not sure if it takes additional HDs or do I connect the Purple HD via USB or how does one connect and use it?

Thank you
 
alwayson said:
Also, I have another question.

I have a couple of WD Purple Surveillance HDs....how do I use these? Do I need to replace the original HD on this desktop (HP Pavillion 570-p033w) not sure if it takes additional HDs or do I connect the Purple HD via USB or how does one connect and use it?

Thank you
Click to expand...
you will want to install an ssd for the OS, blue iris and the database..then use the purple for storage....you need to check available bays and sata ports on that pc.
 
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Thank you @fenderman I believe there are 2 SATA ports one being used by the current HDD and the other by the DVD rom. I guess I can disable the DVD rom and use that SATA port for the purple HD for storage.

How would I migrate Blue Iris (BI) to the SSD? Would I lose all my settings, i.e. all the cameras that are on there, and also all the individual settings like triggers, alerts? The main concern would be if I needed to reconfigure and add all the cameras, I guess I have their IP addresses.

Is there some way to migrate BIue Iris (BI) from the HD to SSD? Do I need to record the license number etc. because I have purchased a full version of Blue Iris (BI)

Apologies for this novice questions!

Thank you
 
When you buy an SSD it will come with, or you can download from the manufacturer, cloning software. Assuming you are starting with a basically clean install on the 2TB drive, you can just "clone" it onto the SSD, swap them and you're good to go. You may need to point your BIOS to boot from the SSD drive.

Alternately, you can export al the settings from BI, make a note of your license number and where the export file gets written to, deactivate BI on the 2TB drive, install the SSD drive, install your OS, install BI onto the SSD and activate with your license then import the settings you exported. Maybe export those settings to a USB stick for convenience.
 
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You can also use Macrium Reflect free. It's great for cloning and is free. I used it recently to clone my three new dell systems with 8th Gen core i5 CPUs. One is being used for my new BI machine. And this past weekend I used it clone my five old PCs. So I could put smaller SSDs or platter drives them. Since I wanted to get more SSD storage in my new BI machine.

So currently the OS is on a 250GB M2 drive with 16Gb/s read speeds and 8Gb/s write speeds. I have 130GB of storage allocated on the M2 drive where BI will initially store clips. Then next is a 1TB Samsung SSD with 4.2Gb/s read/write speeds where data gets pushed to, from the M2 drive. And then I have a 480 Crucial SSD with 4Gb/s read/write speeds that the BI data gets pushed to from the Samsung SSD.

I still might try out a 7200 rpm platter drive to see how it would work instead of the SSds. But I used SSDs for all my storage for around five years with my old BI machine with great results.
 
Good morning,

I am slightly confused about clips vs alerts on Blue Iris (BI), I have read the forums on here, but still a bit hazy.

I have configured about 10 of my cameras to trigger when motion is detected, and I guess record an alert.

The issue I am facing is that when I log on to UI3, and click on alerts, I see the triggered event on the preview. However, when I hit play, to watch the entire alert, I only see either the end of the motion or a second of the motion.

I presume I am messing up with the make time, recording duration etc?

So, how would I record this, for example, I have 3 cameras on my front gate at my rural property. I want to be able to make a recor 40ding each time a car drives by (they usually drive by at 40-50mph), or someone walks by, or someone comes in to the gate (which means they would wait at the gate for a couple of mins for it to open).

I also want to make a recording each time someone walks in my backyard, or goes to my warehouse on my property etc.


Should I have some cameras on 24/7 record?

Please help!!

Thank you

@fenderman @NoloC @bp2008 @awsum140
 
alwayson said:
The issue I am facing is that when I log on to UI3, and click on alerts, I see the triggered event on the preview. However, when I hit play, to watch the entire alert, I only see either the end of the motion or a second of the motion.
Click to expand...

@alwayson If you want to ensure that the alert include the action before and right at trigger time, adjust the pre-trigger setting. See screenshot below.

Also, record continuous because no matter how much you try to tweak the motion detection, there is always a chance that it will miss an event. Recording continously ensures that you can go back and review the situation.


Screen Shot 2018-11-03 at 9.27.05 AM.png
 
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Blue iris only starts recording on the iframe when using direct to disk..therefore in the camera match the iframe interval to the fps.
 
@fenderman Thank you sir. I am using direct to disk recording on Blue Iris (I think this is the preferred option to minimize CPU usage). So if I am understanding right the iframe interval and fps e.g. 15fps must be the same?

Thank you @actran - if I set to record continuous, I presume it will record till the HDD is full? and then start from scratch? Can I set continuous recording to record for lets say 24 hours before deleting the file or saving it on a secondary drive?

Thank you!
 
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