Blue Iris can do so much

[jb007gd]

Holy cow. I've been using Blue Iris for years and just figured out some of the features it can do.

NOTE: I realize I'm inviting criticism because I CLEARLY did not read the damn manual.

Anyway, I actually did read some of the help file last weekend when I moved my BI server from an old Core Duo machine to a more modern i7 machine with a 1TB drive. And there I learned I can set BI to take a snapshot every x number of seconds and it'll compile a little movie out of those frames. How neat is that? No longer am I depending on motion detection to catch everything interesting. Now I can basically "review the tape" and see what went on on each camera at any given point in the day.
I'm going to do myself a favor and start watching the How-to videos @Dasstrum is putting together. Can't wait to see what I learn next!

 

[Tinman]

It's hard to know everything BI is capable of....but my biggest improvement over the years as a BI user was to go continuous recording on all my outdoor cams. I always seemed to miss something but not anymore.

 

[fenderman]

It's hard to know everything BI is capable of....but my biggest improvement over the years as a BI user was to go continuous recording on all my outdoor cams. I always seemed to miss something but not anymore.

If you set up motion detection properly you won't miss anything...

 

[Blip]

I've tried several different trigger settings but haven't had much luck with low light conditions. What have you found to be the best settings for low light conditions?

 

[fenderman]

I've tried several different trigger settings but haven't had much luck with low light conditions. What have you found to be the best settings for low light conditions?

with respect to what?

 

[Blip]

With low lighting,(light turned on in a far room but not in the room the camera is in) BI isn't triggering an alert when someone is walking from the lit room towards the camera. As soon as the light levels increase (lights turned on near the camera) the trigger works great.

 

[J Sigmo]

Blue Iris really is an amazing product, and for the price, incredible. And new updates are added frequently. I'm sure I'm only using a small fraction of its capabilities. But as @jb007gd has found, it's a lot of fun finding new things out about it.

I would highly recommend setting up a dedicated PC with Blue Iris for anyone setting up a security camera system. Even if you don't think you'll need most of its capabilities, as we all know, these systems tend to evolve and get fancier over time as we work with them. Starting out with a Blue Iris PC as the basis of the system, you won't ever feel wanting for capabilities on that end of things.

I've got to check out the tutorials by @Dasstrum too! Thanks for pointing those out.

 

[MacFun]

If you set up motion detection properly you won't miss anything...

Do you recommend continuous recording or just motion events?

R

 

[MacFun]

Blue Iris really is an amazing product, and for the price, incredible. And new updates are added frequently. I'm sure I'm only using a small fraction of its capabilities. But as @jb007gd has found, it's a lot of fun finding new things out about it.

I would highly recommend setting up a dedicated PC with Blue Iris for anyone setting up a security camera system. Even if you don't think you'll need most of its capabilities, as we all know, these systems tend to evolve and get fancier over time as we work with them. Starting out with a Blue Iris PC as the basis of the system, you won't ever feel wanting for capabilities on that end of things.

I've got to check out the tutorials by @Dasstrum too! Thanks for pointing those out.

I have a friend that was using security spy on a Mac mini. He ran out of capacity and now has a hikvision NVR and is super happy with it. Here it seems the string recommendation is BI. I wish I had some NVR experience so I’d fully grasp the BI benefits.

 

[fenderman]

I have a friend that was using security spy on a Mac mini. He ran out of capacity and now has a hikvision NVR and is super happy with it. Here it seems the string recommendation is BI. I wish I had some NVR experience so I’d fully grasp the BI benefits.

buy the nvr, then you will learn to appreciate BI..