70 Camera System Need Advice

[lakesarecool]

Hi,

We want to run 70 Hikvision DS-2CD2132 Cameras across our 250 000 square foot manufacturing facility inside and outside. We were trying to make this as low cost as possible and are trying to do the run ourselves, built the hardware ourselves, etc. I'm struggling to find a decently priced DVR or NVR solution for 70 Cameras. I also was wondering if there is a storage solution that can do compression and deduplication so we can keep at least 1 MP pixel pictures at 16 hours per day for 60 days without buying 100's of terabytes of storage.

Thank you anyone who is able to help with this project.

 

[nayr]

instead of one big ass massive NVR and point of failure for 70 cameras, why not run three 32 stream NVR's balanced out to ~24 streams a NVR.

your compression your looking for is already there, its called h264 encoding, and still your going to need a fucking ton of storage.. your not getting out of that unless you install 70 dummy cameras, and then it will be really cheap!

If you stuffed 3 NVR's with 4x 4TB drives it would give you 48TB storage.. some quick calculations show:

H264 @ 1MP, Standard Video Quality x 70 Cameras @ 10FPS x 16h day x 60 Days = 38.88TB Storage Needed.
http://www.supercircuits.com/resources/tools/security-nvr-storage-calculator

 

[bp2008]

Good answer, but the "Standard" video quality there uses rather low bit rates. It may be worth the additional cost to split up the load a bit more (at least more storage) and use higher bit rates and possibly higher resolution as well.

Also, plan for hard drive failures and have a few spares ready.

Either way, you will save an incredible amount of money doing this yourselves as long as you do it right --- milkisbad here has the Hikvision cams on sale this month too, down to $100 each cam plus shipping. Still a bit pricier than aliexpress but this way you get a warranty and with 70 cams you will likely need it.

 

[nayr]

I agree entirely @bp2008, personally I would (and did) spend the money on adequate storage so I could get very high quality HD recordings.. It'd be rather frustrating to spend all this money and effort setting this system up, only to find out after the fact the quality is inadequate for proper identification, even though the capabilities are there..

If your installing and paying for HD cameras, then save an HD stream.. Regularly we see captures posted of crimes taking place, with poor quality and poor placement of the cameras it did not leave much to work with, best case showing where to dust for prints to get the needed ID.

 

[nayr]

Still a bit pricier than aliexpress but this way you get a warranty and with 70 cams you will likely need it.

70x is a huge multiplier, even if he saves $10 each (he can proabibly get a great deal from china on a bulk order of 70) thats $700 which could get him 7-8 spare cameras, which I would argue would be more usefull than a local warranty.. and if for some reason he finds him self with 6 dead cameras the shipping back to China is justified.

tho im sure milkisbad will give a bulk discount too; its something to consider.. $700-$1400 ($10-$20 savings) can buy alot of spares.

 

[lakesarecool]

Thanks everyone for the speedy responses and suggestions. A few questions for everyone

What quality do you think we should shoot for? Is 1 Megapixel at Medium Quality at 10FPS considered adequate? Should I Push it to 2 Megapixels? Should I lower the framerate?

Does anyone know of any NAS equipment or DVR software that can support 20-30 hard drives?

Also any recommendations for NVR software that can support this all that may be less than $50 per camera?

In terms of purchasing from China we are being quoted $83 with shipping, which is $1190 in savings and could buy a bunch of spares if needed. We're open to buying American if there is someone who is able to come close and warrant it.

 

[nayr]

minimum id say is 2MP @ Medium Quality.

oh yeah there's alot of NAS's that can hold that many disks..

Dahua has a 16 Disk 128 stream moster that can load additional disks off an ISCSI Nas or external SATA array, which you could configure with another 16 drives:
http://www.dahuasecurity.com/products/nvr616616d616r616dr-128-4k-814.html

Here is a drive chassis, you need to provide a NAS Server (check out freenas) w/Raid card and all the disks:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133046&cm_re=JBOD_SATA-_-16-133-046-_-Product

that 60 day storage requirement is going to kill you, why so long? 30 days would cut the requirements in half.. If you tried to do this a few years back with Analogue cameras you'd need another warehouse to store all that tape.. Might be cheaper to do inventory more often so you can find missing items quicker than trying to make a massive video archive going back months.. I know I would despise having to sift through 60 days of video to find an event.

 

[nayr]

I would not try to do this in NVR software, this many cameras should stick with NVR Hardware from either Hikvision or Dahua and as many as it takes.. If your allocating $50 license per camera that gives you $1200 you can spend on a Hardware NVR for 24 cameras..

Managing all those streams though a single recorder is going to require too much resources and power to be justifiable, Software like BlueIris isint 64bit and would probably choke even on massive hardware long before you got all 70 cameras recording.

Id urge you to try the distributed/segmented approach with multiple NVR's, this way one single issue wont stop every single camera from recording.

If you want to do a display wall with a bunch of monitors then get as many NVR's as you want monitors and dedicate one to each monitor and have them record the cameras displayed, it will be very fault tolerant and expandable.. 24 cameras on a single 1080p TV will be very difficult to see regardless of how big your displays are.. if you want to show all 70 live somewhere 3 displays wouldent cut it, setup a small rack with a bunch of 16 camera NVR's and have them display ~8 feeds each across 8-9 displays.. if you dont want to display some secret cameras put them on a headless NVR.

Once you figure out how many NVR's you need I would get PoE switches sized appropriately for each one, this way each NVR has its own PoE switch/throughput and it also reduces any single point of failure.. With Multiple NVR's and Multiple Switches and a few spare's on hand it will be easy to keep all those cameras online for the long haul... Redundancy is a great thing, and with this many devices you should surely add some redundancy.

This will also allow you to manage storage needs easier, if you dont need a full 60 day archive for every camera but just a few you only need to ensure enough storage for the NVR's that need it.. If a bunch of cameras are watching locked/secure rooms you can set them up to only record on motion and save even more space... no real need to record 16h a day of a never changing scene, video motion detection works really well inside secure rooms, they can be very sensitive and not save a bunch of false events.. in more public/open areas I like to record constantly, too easy to miss something (sudden/fast objects) and too easy to record nothing (shadows/lighting/etc).

 

[vector18]

Whatever you decide, this would be a great option to have.

http://www.dahuasecurity.com/products/ess3116x-427.html

 

[lakesarecool]

Thanks again for all of the advice.

The storage requirement is there to allow for a delay in any HR claims, injury claims, etc as it is for a manufacturing floor. Not all cameras will need 60 days, a lot of them will probably be motion detection based as long as it's reliable, but when building the system we're trying to account for it if needed.

Would a Dahua NVR work well with Hikvision cameras? Would we be better off buying a bunch of 16 channel Hikvision NVR's? How good is the motion detection on these NVRs/Cameras? How important would RAID 5/6 be in this case, and if not using RAID would the NVRs jump from hard drive to hard drive as they run out of space or use a RAID 0 type setup. Also is there a way to view all the NVRs so it appears as if there is only one with Hikvision?

In terms of display we wouldn't really need to see more than 10-16 cameras at a time as it won't be actively monitored, it's mostly for following up on events that may have occurred and looking for operational improvements.

Thank you.

 

[nayr]

If you went with Dahua NVR id go with Dahua Cameras.. theres odd issues you'll encounter if you try to mix-match brands.

The motion detection is not good enough to trigger an alarm, or notification.. but its perfectly fine for recording, especially indoors, if the only goal is to reduce storage requirements.

Bugs/Clouds/Shadows/Passing Emergency Vehicles/etc will trigger recordings, if your being notified every time this happens it gets really annoying and you will start ignoring all alerts coming from your security system, defeating the entire purpose of alerts.. Outdoors motion detection typically is continuously triggered, and I perfer to hardwire real motion sensors to trigger recordings since the are immune to bugs/headlights/sudden lighting changes (partly cloudy day).

If you put your self in the habbit of reviewing al the motion events too you will get frustrated with false alarms, but if your just checking recordings when nessicary and not hovering over them its no big deal... lots of new camera owners are checking every single event at first, and then as time goes on they care less and less and stop checking until something actually happens.

 

[pal251]

I agree entirely @bp2008, personally I would (and did) spend the money on adequate storage so I could get very high quality HD recordings.. It'd be rather frustrating to spend all this money and effort setting this system up, only to find out after the fact the quality is inadequate for proper identification, even though the capabilities are there..

If your installing and paying for HD cameras, then save an HD stream.. Regularly we see captures posted of crimes taking place, with poor quality and poor placement of the cameras it did not leave much to work with, best case showing where to dust for prints to get the needed ID.

Exactly. Unless they have gloves

If you can afford a license plate capture camera record key points of entry and exit

 

[pal251]

I would do 4 16 channel nerd and contact milkisbad hE might cut a deal