Camera Recommendations for BI - 1080p

[hammillt]

New to IP Cam Talk...
I am building a house and want to design my surveillance system around BI.

• All cameras will be 1080p / POE and need night vision running on Cat5e
• 4 Cameras total
  • 1 x PTZ dome camera under covered patio at the front door
  • 3 x Bullet Cameras at the corners of the house
• I have fiber running to the house with 30Mb upload speeds, thus I want to mirror in the cloud

My questions...based on the above, does anyone have a recommendation for a 4 camera system? I'm looking at the Lorax branded 1080p dome and bullet cams. If I am using BI software, do I only need cameras connected to the network, a compliant Windows labtop and raw drives for local storage? Most camera packages come with a DVR / Switch solution with seems like overkill.


Thank you in advance for your response!

 

[fenderman]

If you are running new cable, may as well do cat6.
If you want a bullet camera, the look at the hikvision 2032...
PTZ-dahua makes a nice blackface ptz..

 

[hammillt]

thanks for the response fenderman...so no need to buy a "kit" with dvr, sw etc if i'm going to use BlueIris as the software, correct?

 

[fenderman]

Correct. You will however need a pc with adequate cpu power.

 

[DaveP]

If you want a bullet camera, the look at the hikvision 2032...

+1 on that.

so no need to buy a "kit" with dvr, sw etc if i'm going to use BlueIris as the software, correct?

Kinda... lol

BI is great, but as you know requires the pc to be on 24/7.

I recently got a Hikvision nvr so use that as my main device and turn the pc off when I'm not using it.

Sure BI has more bells, whistles & features that you can shake a stick at, but after a long period of experimenting and playing around.... 86.53 % of the features are overkill (maybe)

 

[hammillt]

Thank you, I may start with their NVR/SW and if needed, add BI

 

[fenderman]

If you use an NVR, then match all the cameras to the NVR by brand...while may claim to support other cams it will just cause you trouble...
As far as blue iris is concerned, i cannot live without the bells and whistles, particularly the profile scheduling, motion detection (i set different levels of motion detection for alerts vs recordings, this way im not bothered by false alarms, but also never miss anything)...

 

[bp2008]

You will want a 802.3af PoE switch, like this one: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003CFATT2

If you do not need night vision on the PTZ, this is a good, cost-effective choice here: http://www.nellyssecurity.com/cameras/hi-def-cameras/ip-cameras/ip-ptz-s/dahua-sd42212sn-hn-2mp-mini-ptz-1080p-high-definition-ip-security-camera.html

Otherwise for fixed cameras I would recommend Hikvision brand. Any of their 3 megapixel models are fine, though the 2032 (bullet) is one of the most popular and least expensive. Lorex does rebrand these, but you don't have to buy a rebranded one if you don't want to. Dahua cameras work well too. Dahua is the maker of that PTZ I linked.

Mirroring to the cloud is a tricky subject. Most ISPs, in the fine print of their terms of service, explicitly prohibit a lot of internet activities on residential connections. They will make blanket statements prohibiting things like servers (http, ftp, etc) and activities requiring sustained throughput. But in my experience they don't really care if you run these services and they do nothing to stop you as long as it does not cause them any trouble. What the ISPs really care about is high throughput users -- folks who use an overwhelming amount more than the average. So even though you technically have enough bandwidth to stream all your cameras to the cloud at full bit rate, 24/7 streaming would almost certainly get you into trouble. Consider that a mere 1 Mbps sustained 24/7 is 10.8 gigabytes a day or 324 gigabytes per month. That would likely put you in the top 5% of users no matter who your ISP is, and with some of the worst ISPs it would be enough to get you penalized. If you tried to live-stream your 4 cameras at a moderate 4 Mbps each, you'd only use half your upload speed but that would be 5.184 terabytes in a month! It is a near certainty that your ISP would notice and shut you down. However if you use conservative motion detection and only upload on motion, that would be just fine, and will be well-within acceptable limits.

I once asked my ISP about pricing for a 100x100 Mbps service. They said they could not come up with residential pricing and that it would fall into the enterprise user category, at $2000 per month for the dedicated bandwidth. ISPs take their throughput seriously. They'll sell you a 30 Mbps upload service, but only if you swear to use it less than 5% of the time LOL.

 

[hammillt]

So Hikvision NVR, 3 Bullets and a dome for the front door along with BI running on a mac mini should do the trick and throttled back backup to the cloud? Thank you!

 

[bp2008]

I wouldn't use a mac mini for Blue Iris. From what I read the CPUs have actually been getting less powerful over the last 2 or 3 years as they reduce power consumption. You should get a CPU that scores at least 5000 on cpubenchmark.net. Also beware of really small machines with high power CPUs in them. Gigabyte Brix Pro GB-BXi7-4770R in particular has an almost-full-power i7 in it and it runs really hot and gets really loud under load.

Also if you use an NVR you don't really need Blue Iris, and if you use Blue Iris you don't really need an NVR. Also in case you missed that, BI runs on Windows only in case you were thinking it might be OS X compatible.

 

[Zxel]

I wouldn't use a mac mini for Blue Iris. From what I read the CPUs have actually been getting less powerful over the last 2 or 3 years as they reduce power consumption. You should get a CPU that scores at least 5000 on cpubenchmark.net. Also beware of really small machines with high power CPUs in them. Gigabyte Brix Pro GB-BXi7-4770R in particular has an almost-full-power i7 in it and it runs really hot and gets really loud under load.

Also if you use an NVR you don't really need Blue Iris, and if you use Blue Iris you don't really need an NVR. Also in case you missed that, BI runs on Windows only in case you were thinking it might be OS X compatible.

I wouldn't use a mac ANYTHING for BI, it would be underpowered and/or overpriced considerably, and I'm one of the rare creatures who actually like Mac and Windows (usually peeps love one and hate the other). Unless you are trying to figure out the least cost and absolute minimum power you need, just get yourself an i7 and be done with it. The number of cameras you are using will not be an issue for any i7 I can think of, I'm doing 9 cameras in continous record mode (and don't have to use direct to disk recording either) on a i7 2600 built several years ago as an HTPC. I watch/record TV and bluray movies, run Office apps., all kinds of things while recording ALL 9 camera's 24/7 and have never run out of power.

 

[DaveP]

Also if you use an NVR you don't really need Blue Iris, and if you use Blue Iris you don't really need an NVR

Which of course is 100% true... but belt and braces makes sort of sure that your trousers are up all the time.

 

[fenderman]

I wouldn't use a mac ANYTHING for BI, it would be underpowered and/or overpriced considerably, and I'm one of the rare creatures who actually like Mac and Windows (usually peeps love one and hate the other). Unless you are trying to figure out the least cost and absolute minimum power you need, just get yourself an i7 and be done with it. The number of cameras you are using will not be an issue for any i7 I can think of, I'm doing 9 cameras in continous record mode (and don't have to use direct to disk recording either) on a i7 2600 built several years ago as an HTPC. I watch/record TV and bluray movies, run Office apps., all kinds of things while recording ALL 9 camera's 24/7 and have never run out of power.

Good points..that i7 is rather powerful at 8200 in benchmarking...One thing to not is that with blue iris, its not so much the amount of cameras but the totak megapixel count..

 

[Zxel]

One thing to note is that with blue iris, its not so much the amount of cameras but the totak megapixel count..

To be strictly technical, the amout of pixels per second (pps), that is recording/viewed is the limiting factor. FPS is a very important factor. How you intend to use BI will also matter, motion detection/overlays... will take more resources then just straight recording.

That being said even if all 4 of the cameras are recording at 3k with 15-20 fps and using motion detection, and any other bell or whistle feature that BI has any normal i7 will be fine (don't slack on your RAM).

Of course this is my opinion and for sure @fenderman certainly has more experience in this area than me.

 

[fenderman]

You are correct, there is some impact with fps..in the few tests ive done, i haven't seen recording fps make much of a difference....live view more so (blue iris has an option to limit live view frames while preserving full frame rates for the recording)..
As you point out..any i7 (desktop) will do (except first generation, because they were power hogs)...with 4 cams a 3mp an i5 will certainly suffice (always recommend going with haswell 4th gen, if buying a new system, due to power consumption reductions...)
Op mentioned using a laptop, which is doable, but its important to check the processor benchmark score because there a low voltage i7's that will be too weak.