8 of Costco's Lorex E891AB and Synology Surveillance Station(and licenses) OR a windows pc + BlueIris

V

VladGur

n3wb
Jul 27, 2018
25
3
San Francisco Bay Area
HI Folks!

I recently got to install recent Lorex POE 8-camera kit being sold in Costco and I do find the NVR it came in semi-adequate and somewhat workable with the Lorex Home mobile app, but the lack of ability to Live View remotely without a obsolete browser plugin made me look elsewhere, and so I compiled a set of questions that i wasnt able to find answers to yet.
While cost control is definitely important, whats more important is getting as close to set-it-and-forget-it as possible, since in the balancing act of full time job vs full time parenting vs hacking on security cameras, the latter will almost always lose out.

Now on to my system:
  • 8 Lorex E891AB POE 4K cameras that were part of that kit along with Lorex N841AB-Z NVR
  • Amcrest 9-port POE Switch
  • Netgear Orbi Mesh router capable of setting up VLANs
  • I currently own a Synology DS 412+ with dual core 2.1ghz atom cpu and 1GB of RAM this has been more than adequate for my needs. It comes with 2 camera licenses for Surveillance Station and the cpu rarely went over 20% during usage. It has dual gigabit ports that some have used to isolate camera traffic

My goals in order of importance:
  1. minimal maintenance cost after initial config
  2. somewhat reasonable and predictable motion/intrusion notifications
  3. remote(i.e not directly connected to NVR) Live View and recording search capabilities


Now on to the issues that i think i have or will have:

  • Cost of 6 Synology surveillance station licenses ($300) is equivalent to the cost of used pc bought on ebay + blue iris.
  • Synology licenses are a sunk cost -- im not sure if there is away to re-sell them if i chose to switched to BI after
  • Cost of maintaining a Windows PC + increased power usage seems much greater than automatic synology updates.
  • My Synology is relatively old and if I will choose to use it as the full time surveillance station, i will need to plan to upgrade it(sell and buy a 918+)
  • Neither Synology nor BI explicitly supports these Lorex cameras.
  • Im not sure whether i should be relying on events identified by the camera or on events identified in Synology/BI. The latter will probably increase cpu and power usage

Any advice would be appreciated.
 
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Another question is in terms of codecs:
What are pros/cons of using H265 vs H265 with these cameras and these VMSes(BI or Synology)? Is one of them more CPU intensive than the other? Looks like the browser support for H265 is non-existant...
 
VladGur said:
.. without a obsolete browser plugin made me look elsewhere,...

  • Cost of 6 Synology surveillance station licenses ($300) is equivalent to the cost of used pc bought on ebay + blue iris.
  • Synology licenses are a sunk cost -- im not sure if there is away to re-sell them if i chose to switched to BI after
  • Cost of maintaining a Windows PC + increased power usage seems much greater than automatic synology updates.
  • My Synology is relatively old and if I will choose to use it as the full time surveillance station, i will need to plan to upgrade it(sell and buy a 918+)
  • Neither Synology nor BI explicitly supports these Lorex cameras.
  • Im not sure whether i should be relying on events identified by the camera or on events identified in Synology/BI. The latter will probably increase cpu and power usage

Any advice would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Welcome @VladGur

1) See if an update of the firmware ( NVR, Cameras ) will enable html video feed from the cameras. Many Dahua OEM products with new firmware no longer need older browsers.
2) Most members do not use synology for cameras.
3) BI is preferred by many members for good reasons ( see the thread ).
4) The Lorex cameras in the kit iirc are reviewed here in ipcamtalk, and you should be able to configure a VMS system to use the rtsp feed from those cameras.
5) DO NOT port forward, DO NOT enable P2P, DO NOT enable UPnP on your router. See the VPN notes here.
 
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THank you @mat200 -- main reason im here is your consistent feedback on SlickDeals.

Did you mean to link to a "the thread" above about BI?
I am curious about part 2) -- Synology seems like a path of least resistance and least maintenance. I wonder what steers people like myself(looking to get as close to maintenance free as possible) away.
P.S. I havent been able to find anything about flashing these specific cameras with DAHUA firmware
 
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I haven't tried Synology but from what I have seen on this board BI is much more flexible and offers many more options than Surveillance Station. Add in the, almost, constant upgrades that BI has and the support that's available here and BI would seem to be the best solution in terms of bang for your bucks. The yearly maintenance fee is a mere pittance given the constant upgrades.
 
VladGur said:
THank you @mat200 -- main reason im here is your consistent feedback on SlickDeals.

Did you mean to link to a "the thread" above about BI?
I am curious about part 2) -- Synology seems like a path of least resistance and least maintenance. I wonder what steers people like myself(looking to get as close to maintenance free as possible) away.
P.S. I havent been able to find anything about flashing these specific cameras with DAHUA firmware
Click to expand...

Hi @VladGur

Synology systems normally have low powered CPUs so not as good as a PC with Blue Iris for compute tasks.

As additional cameras incur license fees - which can quickly add up to the price of a decent used business class i7-6700 or better PC + the HDD and Blue Iris license, you would imho be better off going with Blue Iris instead of Synology.

If you are attempting to keep the price low, you just use the NVR in the kit.

Naturally if you have time you can test how you like the NVRs interface vs the Synology one.

In general many here have gone through the options you mentioned and have ended up going with Blue Iris PC route. Once setup it seems to work fairly stable for folks. All options require some DIY learning and setup time.

iirc there is a way to make a Hybrid NVR + Blue Iris setup by streaming the video to both... I've read some notes on it, but in general have not seen many post on that sort of setup here - so probably take a little playing around to find a decent guide on that.
 
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@
VladGur said:
HI Folks!

I recently got to install recent Lorex POE 8-camera kit being sold in Costco and I do find the NVR it came in semi-adequate and somewhat workable with the Lorex Home mobile app, but the lack of ability to Live View remotely without a obsolete browser plugin made me look elsewhere, and so I compiled a set of questions that i wasnt able to find answers to yet.
While cost control is definitely important, whats more important is getting as close to set-it-and-forget-it as possible, since in the balancing act of full time job vs full time parenting vs hacking on security cameras, the latter will almost always lose out.

Now on to my system:
  • 8 Lorex E891AB POE 4K cameras that were part of that kit along with Lorex N841AB-Z NVR
  • Amcrest 9-port POE Switch
  • Netgear Orbi Mesh router capable of setting up VLANs
  • I currently own a Synology DS 412+ with dual core 2.1ghz atom cpu and 1GB of RAM this has been more than adequate for my needs. It comes with 2 camera licenses for Surveillance Station and the cpu rarely went over 20% during usage. It has dual gigabit ports that some have used to isolate camera traffic

My goals in order of importance:
  1. minimal maintenance cost after initial config
  2. somewhat reasonable and predictable motion/intrusion notifications
  3. remote(i.e not directly connected to NVR) Live View and recording search capabilities


Now on to the issues that i think i have or will have:

  • Cost of 6 Synology surveillance station licenses ($300) is equivalent to the cost of used pc bought on ebay + blue iris.
  • Synology licenses are a sunk cost -- im not sure if there is away to re-sell them if i chose to switched to BI after
  • Cost of maintaining a Windows PC + increased power usage seems much greater than automatic synology updates.
  • My Synology is relatively old and if I will choose to use it as the full time surveillance station, i will need to plan to upgrade it(sell and buy a 918+)
  • Neither Synology nor BI explicitly supports these Lorex cameras.
  • Im not sure whether i should be relying on events identified by the camera or on events identified in Synology/BI. The latter will probably increase cpu and power usage

Any advice would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Is the E891AB fully compliant to BlueIRIS with things like motion detection, secured video feeds etc? Also i see there are claims that these cameras are not onvif complaint. I read from onvif website that E891AB is onvif Profile S&T complaint.

VladGur
 
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