Blue Iris - Offloading Motion detection \Camera Stream question

[primalsmoke]

Hi, can I offload motion detection from Blue Iris to cameras?
There seems to be an option, not sure if it works or how it works.
If so what cameras can be used?

I'm also curious about camera streams, I just noticed this on my Q-SEE cameras.
I'm not sure I understand streams.

My goal would be:
1-For HD cameras, have BI read and record the lowest resolution stream
2-Have the camera prompt BI to record
3-Have the camera record the Highest def to a NAS

This would:
1-Save CPU cycles at the BI server
2-Minimize traffic over the backbones
3-Allow staff to audit activity in BI, and find time and date of activity to locate data on NAS

Thanks

Richard

 

[skywise]

I've been pondering this, wondering the exact same thing.
One thing I noticed when I had my cameras doing the Motion Detection. They weren't very good at it.
A branch near one camera, or flicker of light over the entire frame would get my old system recording not much of anything at all.
BI seems to think a lot more about what it sees, although that has it's own issues, cars passing my street camera only generally get recorded 1/2 way through.
But I've only been playing with BI for a few days so I'm certainly not an expert.

 

[fenderman]

@primalsmoke Blue iris can use in camera motion on some cameras, like axis, mobotix, and hikvision cameras that have an alarm out..the -IS models....there are probably others but I dont know...I think its a huge pan to have to search nas for your footage...you are better of just recording hd to the blue iris machine...yes you will need a more power unit but its worth while..I would not be concerned about camera traffic unless you many cameras with high bit rates.

@skywise, disable object detect reject in the motion tab. In the record tab set the pretrigger frame to be at least 2 times your FPS....also if you are using direct to disk recording - in your camera match your i-frame interval to your frame rate.

 

[primalsmoke]

@skywise I'm not an expert either I'm not so worried about the "false positives", what I mean is that disk space is cheap. So recording too much should not be a problem. The crappy DVRs that came with the cameras would always record. At least that's how I got them working.
@fenderman thanks for the info. I agree that piping to NAS and messing around with recording Low resolution here and High resolution there is a pain. I pretty much was expecting to not have to learn much about BI, just use default settings. The problem is that I have over 20 high resolution cameras and close to 20 low resolution Foscams. I will still need another 10 HD cameras. It's a large storage yard in a rough part of a town with one of the highest crime rates in California.

The server is a i7, it starting hitting 100% at 16-17 cameras. I did the basics such as adding a SSD drive, writing directly to disk when recording, changing FPS to 10, changing resolution down to 640 x 400, no buffering. That server is now managing 22 cameras probably at 50%-100% CPU utilizations. After doing some research I guess the most I can expect is around 20-24 cameras with so-so resolution.
I just purchased a second server.

The new server will be an i7 with 16 GB, I'll add a SSD to dump recordings to speed things up. I think I'll need a third server, unless i can figure out how to get 50 cameras monitored by two servers. Especially if I want to record at the highest definition possible.

My biggest concern is that the end users of the system are confused with even one URL. I configured a viewing station (with a Raspberry PI and a HDMI monitor) so they can watch and not mess with the browser. They had problems with opening up a browser or understanding the concept of going to a particular camera to see recordings. So setting up a second and third server will not be easy to present to the users.

Another option would be to embrace "scaling out. Get as many servers as needed, but figure out a way to consolidate the "front end" via one web server, so I could seamlessly mix and or cycle cameras from different servers on one single page. Is that possible? I haven't read anything about that.

Well anyway thank you for your suggestions

RIchard

 

[fenderman]

What model i7 are you using? there is a significant difference between th models?
You can also limit the live preview frame rate, it will not affect the recordings..blue iris options>cameras

 

[primalsmoke]

The older system is a i7 3770 running at 3.4Ghz 24 GB of RAM.
I believe that much RAM is not necessary.

The new system is a i7 4790, 16 GB
They seem similar on paper
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare_CPUs/Intel_CM8063701211600,Intel_CM8064601560113/
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3770K+@+3.50GHz

Although who knows how the server or BI was installed before I got there.
My plan it to configure the newer 4970, and then re-install the OS and BI on the older (current) 3770


I did limit the preview rate on BI, have not gotten to each individual camera FPS settings. I'm under the understanding that for optimum performance, the FPS on both cameras and BI should match.

Is there a tool to roll out bulk changes for cameras? Haven't found any indication.

Some cameras seem to have text based .config files.
So I might have to download and edit in bulk then upload.

A breakdown on cameras:
16 - Q-SEE cameras
7 - Different HD cameras I got to test and deploy (was looking for a brand that i liked)
20+ Foscam low res cameras

 

[fenderman]

The older system is a i7 3770 running at 3.4Ghz 24 GB of RAM.
I believe that much RAM is not necessary.

The new system is a i7 4790, 16 GB
They seem similar on paper
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare_CPUs/Intel_CM8063701211600,Intel_CM8064601560113/
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3770K+@+3.50GHz

Although who knows how the server or BI was installed before I got there.
My plan it to configure the newer 4970, and then re-install the OS and BI on the older (current) 3770


I did limit the preview rate on BI, have not gotten to each individual camera FPS settings. I'm under the understanding that for optimum performance, the FPS on both cameras and BI should match.

Is there a tool to roll out bulk changes for cameras? Haven't found any indication.

Some cameras seem to have text based .config files.
So I might have to download and edit in bulk then upload.

A breakdown on cameras:
16 - Q-SEE cameras
7 - Different HD cameras I got to test and deploy (was looking for a brand that i liked)
20+ Foscam low res cameras

Matching iframes to fps helps with respect to direct to disk recordings..
There is no tool i am aware of..you will have to manually adjust the changes. The ram is overkill..i would be surprised if you used 4gb

 

[primalsmoke]

Matching iframes to fps helps with respect to direct to disk recordings..
There is no tool i am aware of..you will have to manually adjust the changes. The ram is overkill..i would be surprised if you used 4gb

From what I've read here it seems to be the case.
I inherited the first box, the second one came with 16 GB.

I took a look at the config files for the q-see cameras, I could automate a process to build files, but them would have to manually upload them.

I was kind of hoping for something along the line of Onvif, but that seems to not be very useful. I'm still learning.

Thanks FM!

 

[primalsmoke]

Thanks FenderM
I'll try to figure out how the Dahuas save the config, I was poking around one day and saved the configuration, it was a basic text file. I've got 16 of those. A tool based on Perl could work.

The Foscams that I have don't seem to have a place to configure, but I didn't look too hard.
It's funny how little standards exists with these cameras.