Blue Iris and an Amcrest DVR at the same time

[bennett2843]

I've tried searching for an answer but can not find one. Don't beat me up to bad if this has been talked about already.....Maybe point me to a link?

I am looking to have my Amcrest POE NVR record 24/7 but use BI on my PC for motion notifications and live viewing of my cameras but I can't figure out how to do this. I haven't used BI for a couple of years but have recently moved and need to get back to it.

I have 6 POE cameras running to my Amcrest POE NVR. The NVR is tied into my home network and I can view the cameras on the Amcrest app. I don't like Amcrest's phone interface and for me, I like BI much better for fine tuning motion notifications.

If this is possible or has been talked about, please point me to a link or explain it here would be great.


Thank you in advance.

 

[TonyR]

Stream RTSP from the NVR to BI.

Each cam config (make "Dahua", model "Main Stream RTSP") will have the same IP (the NVR's LAN IP) , username and password (the NVR's); the only difference for each one is the drop down selection for camera number, located under the path.

You'll configure 6 cams in BI, all the same except the camera numbers will be 1 through 6.

 

[pozzello]

OR pull a separate stream from each cam to BI. The cams will all support it. It does carry more traffic (bandwidth) on the cam ethernets, but no more on the LAN than TonyR's suggestion. Plus you'd have redundancy in case either BI or the NVR take a dump, the other will most likely still have data... Of course, this requires direct rtsp:/ stream access to the cams from your BI server, through the NVR (via 'virtual host' or equivalent feature, which i guess may fail if the NVR goes belly-up). So you might think about putting your BI server on the PoE side of the NVR along with the cams... Just another option that may or may not work for you.

 

[Norcal]

bennett2843

You can use Blue Iris to also feed from the IP Cameras while the Amcrest NVR and even a 3rd device all feed from the same Amcrest IP Camera (i am assuming is) simultaneously. The issue you may be facing is that since the IP Cameras are powered and network-switched by the Amcrest NVR, their IP addresses may be in a different subnet than that of your Blue Iris Host Computer. I am not 100% sure with the Amcrest NVR but i have seen this other NVR brands with built-in POE switch for IPCs also have a basic DHCP server that provides the IPCs with IP Addresses. This makes sense design-wise since it minimizes the networking complexity for their products to see each other.

Because of this, the NVR DHCP Server cannot provide IP Addresses that are in the same IP Subnet as your Blue Iris Computer UNLESS you also connect the BI Computer in the NVR, but I am also going to assume that that computer is not just used for BI so this is not a good solution. Long story short the BI Host computer will not see the IPCs on the local network and you cannot add them on the Blue Iris.

What you can try to do is, if you are confident enough to make changes on the Amcrest NVR, you can:
1. Set the IP Address of the Amcrest NVR to Static so you dont have to hunt for it later. This is just a recommendation so you can document but you can skip this part if you know how to look for the Amcrest NVR on the network later to load the Web Interface.
2. Disable the DHCP Server function of the Amcrest NVR.
3-A. Get an extra patch cord/network cable and connect it to your home wired network (where the NVR is already connected to) and to one of the empty IPC PoE ports in the back of the NVR. Or if you dont have any available wired ethernet ports available on your home network to connect to, you can (3-b)
3-B. Connect the NVR Network port (dedicated for internet connection and management only) into one of the empty IPC PoE Ports in the back, then connect another network cable from another one of the empty IPC PoE ports into your home wired network. This way you only need 1 network cable and ethernet port to be used in connecting the NVR into your home network.

Step 3 will only work if you make sure to disable the DHCP server function of the NVR. If you dont and then proceed with step 3 a or b, you will have issues on your home network as two DHCP Servers will exist at the same time on the same physical network. If you follow the steps properly, what will happen is your home network's DHCP Server will provide the IPCs with IP Addresses that are in the same IP Subnet as your Blue Iris Host computer and other devices on your home network. The NVR will provide the power to the IPCs via the PoE ports they are connected to on the NVR. You can then go back to the management panel of the NVR and re-add the IPCs if they are not already detected or recognized because of some IP address changes. Then on the Blue Iris server, you can add the IPCs if you already wrote down their IP addresses from what the NVR discovered. You can also use Advanced IP Scanner to find them on the network.

Worst thing that can happen is that you did not set up the network settings properly on the Amcrest NVR and you can just factory reset it to start all over again. Hope you get it to work!

 

[BlueWave]

I have 16 POE IP cameras going into my NVR (Different brand) and all those cameras get an IP from the NVR that is not on the same subnet as my network so I can not access the cameras "directly" however I am able to connect BlueIris to all my cameras by connecting to the output stream from the NVR.

Example URL: rtsp:/NVR-IP/chID=5&streamType=main&linkType=tcp

That basically got the video stream from the NVR out into BlueIris. Didnt need to go into bridge mode or doing anything complex, just find the output rtsp link fo your NVR

 

[bennett2843]

Was able to at least get one of my 5 cameras to populate using the rtsp feed. Problem is, I can only get the camera that is plugged into PoE port number 1 on the DVR to populate. How do I get the other cameras in 2, 3, 4 and 5 to populate? to get the first camera to populate, I used: monitor=1?subtype=1. I tried changing the 1 to a 2 thinking that might pick up camera 2 but no luck.

 

[TonyR]

Was able to at least get one of my 5 cameras to populate using the rtsp feed. Problem is, I can only get the camera that is plugged into PoE port number 1 on the DVR to populate. How do I get the other cameras in 2, 3, 4 and 5 to populate? to get the first camera to populate, I used: monitor=1?subtype=1. I tried changing the 1 to a 2 thinking that might pick up camera 2 but no luck.

Did post #2 not help with that?

 

[Travis798]

For me, the camera number doesn't seem to make a difference. I still change it to the cam I want, but if I only change that it will only use the first camera. As long as I change the channel number in the path, it populates correctly

 

[bennett2843]

Success!!! Thanks everyone for the help. This is what worked for me, hope this helps someone else with the same issues I ran into. I have a basic understanding of networking and video and consider myself "basic" knowledge. All IPs in my example are not real and were for demo purposes only.

My NVR had an IP of 12.0.0.150, Same network as my PC that BI is on. I set that IP to static. The NVR issued each camera an IP starting at 12.1.1.135 and so one. I didn't change any of the IPs.

I put the IP address of my NVR into Blue Iris then under VIDEO in the same window, I added the required info to get to the Amcrest cameras. With each camera, I added the channel number that the camera was plugged into on the back of the NVR for that camera. Under subtype, I changed from 1 to 0 as the video quality was much better when set to 0. Of course I had to add the user and password each time.

My 2TB NVR is recording 24/7 for all my cameras. I use Blue Iris to handle all the motion alerts and scheduling. Very happy with the set up so far.