Blue Iris PC and EmpireTech NVR together?

[H. Swanson]

So, I have the EmpireTech 8-port PoE AI NVR. If I were to get a Blue Iris PC with dual NICs, could I connect one NIC to the NVR uplink and the other to my network and have both the NVR recording video and Blue Iris as well?

 

[wittaj]

Yes it is very common for people making the transition to BI to use both.

If you have a PC, download the trial of BI and see if you can feed the cameras into it.

In BI, you select add camera and put the IP address of the NVR into the IP address location. Put in username and password and hit find/inspect and let BI do its thing.

Then about halfway down is a pull down for Camera number and pick camera 1 and then hit ok. The camera should show up. Then add camera and the select copy and copy this camera and then change the number 1 to a 2 and repeat for your cameras. OR depending on your NVR, it may populate all the cameras in the main and substream pulldown boxes and you just select a camera number and then add another camera and select the next pulldown.

 

[H. Swanson]

Thanks!! Is there any way for the BI PC to use the video stored on the NVR hard drives to do its thing, or does it need its own storage locally to do that?

 

[wittaj]

Nope, BI cannot access NVR storage. In fact the video files are different as well.

 

[H. Swanson]

Nope, BI cannot access NVR storage. In fact the video files are different as well.

If I have the NVR with a lot of storage for historical purposes, I suppose I could have less storage on the BI PC since I figure most event analysis would be within a short time frame. Does that strategy make sense?

Cost aside, this integration seems to be the most optimal. It would also naturally isolate the NVR given it's on the second NIC of the BI PC. I would just need to remote into the BI PC to access the NVR and the cameras.

 

[wittaj]

Yeah, but you will find that scrubbing video is much easier in BI.

Personally, I put the more storage in the BI computer and the NVR is the redundant short-time frame in the event something went wrong with BI or the computer.

 

[H. Swanson]

Fair point.

 

[CaptainCrunch]

To extend this conversation, I have my cameras on a separate network. All of the cameras are connected to POE switches. The BI is plugged into the switch. A dual NIC allows me to also plug the BI into the main network. If I want to add an NVR for testing and backup purposes, I should be able to plug it into the POE switch, even if the NVR has POE, and see all of the cameras on the network. I believe that should allow me to record all of the cameras on both devices. If all the cameras are set to continuously record on both devices, would that cause a problem? Does the POE built into the NVR act as a switch? In other words, can I plug the NVR into the main network and plug one of the NVR POE ports into the camera network and see all of the cameras, effectively making the NVR a dual NIC device? Or does each NVR POE port only see one camera per port?

 

[wittaj]

To extend this conversation, I have my cameras on a separate network. All of the cameras are connected to POE switches. The BI is plugged into the switch. A dual NIC allows me to also plug the BI into the main network. If I want to add an NVR for testing and backup purposes, I should be able to plug it into the POE switch, even if the NVR has POE, and see all of the cameras on the network. I believe that should allow me to record all of the cameras on both devices. If all the cameras are set to continuously record on both devices, would that cause a problem? Does the POE built into the NVR act as a switch? In other words, can I plug the NVR into the main network and plug one of the NVR POE ports into the camera network and see all of the cameras, effectively making the NVR a dual NIC device? Or does each NVR POE port only see one camera per port?

In theory the POE port on the NVR can only accept one camera. Doesn't mean some units can't accept some, but you wouldn't want to count on it seeing all your cameras.

Best practice is to plug the camera switch into the WAN/LAN of the NVR.

By design, the POE ports on the back of the NVR on most NVRs are assigned its own IP subnet, so in a sense the NVR does act as a firewall/router/dual NIC.

In your situation, if you don't want to plug the NVR into the camera switch, then you either get an NVR with two WAN/LAN ports to do what you want or put all the cameras on the NVR POE ports and then feed the NVR into BI.

 

[CaptainCrunch]

In theory the POE port on the NVR can only accept one camera. Doesn't mean some units can't accept some, but you wouldn't want to count on it seeing all your cameras.

Best practice is to plug the camera switch into the WAN/LAN of the NVR.

By design, the POE ports on the back of the NVR on most NVRs are assigned its own IP subnet, so in a sense the NVR does act as a firewall/router/dual NIC.

In your situation, if you don't want to plug the NVR into the camera switch, then you either get an NVR with two WAN/LAN ports to do what you want or put all the cameras on the NVR POE ports and then feed the NVR into BI.

Thanks, that's what I thought I figured out but wanted to ask a pro to be sure. It looks like the 6 series has 2 network ports. They are also geared more for businesses and start off at $1K. That's a little much for my budget for a test platform. I don't mind plugging the NVR into the camera switch. I was hoping to see both the BI PC and the NVR from the main network. Right now, the BI PC is the only link between the two networks. I think plugging cameras into the back of the NVR then plugging the NVR into the BI PC won't fix that. I think my only, or at least best, option is to get a non-poe 5 series (I want anpr) and use vpn, either to connect to the BI PC or use one of my Raspberry Pis with dual NIC to create a second connection between the networks that doesn't go through the BI PC.