Camera Recommendations With Edge Recording

[chbeck2010]

Hello community, hopefully you can help me a bit. Here are my guidelines.

Power Over Ethernet (POE)
Night Vision
Outdoor
2MP min (3MP+ preferred)
ONVIF Profile S and Profile G compliant (for edge recording)
PTZ not required but an option with PTZ would be nice for 1 location


We are coming from a Logitech Alert System I have all the cameras running over POE Cat6 rather than their Power-line technology. The alert cameras only record at 720p so we would like to move up from that quite a bit. Currently they communicate with a desktop running the alert software. We have a sinology 1515+ NAS that we have thought running surveillance station from. However, we have also looked into BlueIris. I am not against a dedicated NVR but that may not be possible with our network setup. As long as the NVR can use our existing LAN we should be good. 4 of our 6 current cameras are on a remote barn.My solution to that was to use EnGenious wireless bridges. This works perfectly currently but wan't sure how it would work with an NVR.

I appreciate your suggestions and guidance in this process.

 

[fenderman]

Hello community, hopefully you can help me a bit. Here are my guidelines.

Power Over Ethernet (POE)
Night Vision
Outdoor
2MP min (3MP+ preferred)
ONVIF Profile S and Profile G compliant (for edge recording)
PTZ not required but an option with PTZ would be nice for 1 location


We are coming from a Logitech Alert System I have all the cameras running over POE Cat6 rather than their Power-line technology. The alert cameras only record at 720p so we would like to move up from that quite a bit. Currently they communicate with a desktop running the alert software. We have a sinology 1515+ NAS that we have thought running surveillance station from. However, we have also looked into BlueIris. I am not against a dedicated NVR but that may not be possible with our network setup. As long as the NVR can use our existing LAN we should be good. 4 of our 6 current cameras are on a remote barn.My solution to that was to use EnGenious wireless bridges. This works perfectly currently but wan't sure how it would work with an NVR.

I appreciate your suggestions and guidance in this process.

Welcome to the forum. Blue iris would work just fine with that setup. The beauty of ip is that it can utilize existing lan infrastructure.

 

[chbeck2010]

I have been testing blue iris. I like it but I havent figured out how to utiluze the recording on the edge features of my cameras using it. Has anyone had success with recording on the edge with blue iris?

 

[fenderman]

I have been testing blue iris. I like it but I havent figured out how to utiluze the recording on the edge features of my cameras using it. Has anyone had success with recording on the edge with blue iris?

Blue iris cannot utilize edge storage... Edge is pointless if using a vms... Simply record to the server hard drive and set the camera to record to sd card as a backup...

 

[D!ngo]

Blue iris cannot utilize edge storage... Edge is pointless if using a vms... Simply record to the server hard drive and set the camera to record to sd card as a backup...

@fenderman, when you say record to server hard drive, do you mean an NVR? How do you record to sd card as backup? I am trying to figure out how these IP work. I've been trying to read as much as I can on this board but all the reading seemed to confuse my more. Some say you can't do certain things with some setups and some said you can't use Blue Iris with an NVR. Can you point me to where I can understand all these?

 

[chbeck2010]

@fenderman, when you say record to server hard drive, do you mean an NVR? How do you record to sd card as backup? I am trying to figure out how these IP work. I've been trying to read as much as I can on this board but all the reading seemed to confuse my more. Some say you can't do certain things with some setups and some said you can't use Blue Iris with an NVR. Can you point me to where I can understand all these?

@D!ngo I can answer that one. A NVR is a network appliance that records the video directly to it. You can then review/view the footage via a web browser or an app. Blue Iris is a Windows application (one of many but I believe to be the best for the price). It runs on a windows computer that is left on all the time. In this case that windows computer running Blue Iris is the server. Lastly some cameras have SD card slots and can record video strait to them instead of or as well as to the server/nvr. Recording on the edge is where the cameras have the SD card and store video. There is emerging standardized protocols to make life easier. It is up to the companies to incorporate them into their cameras but when they do it makes our lives easier. ONVIF is the standard. Profile G allows cameras to record to the SD card when the Server/NVR cannot connect to the cameras to stream. When the server/NVR can connect it copies the video from the SD cards to the archive. What he was referring to in this case (correct me if I am wrong) is that Blue Iris does not support the recording on the edge features. So if the computer (server) is not on or cannot connect to the cameras. There will be no recordings. His suggested solution to this problem is to have the cameras record to their SD card as well as utilizing blue iris. If something happened while the server or network was down. you could still retrieve the SD card from the camera and have footage. The configuration web page is where you would find the settings to record the the SD card if the camera supported it.

 

[chbeck2010]

Since I am leaning the Blue Iris route. Do we have any suggestions for cameras that meet my requests? Are there any brands that seem better? Price wise I was looking for <$200 per camera. But could go to the sub $300 level for a PTZ. I have used foscams before, I know they are out the my personal running. I had two foscams 1 the wired network port stopped working but wireless continued to work for a while. The other the IR leds flicker and mess-up the motion detection software at night.

 

[fenderman]

@D!ngo I can answer that one. A NVR is a network appliance that records the video directly to it. You can then review/view the footage via a web browser or an app. Blue Iris is a Windows application (one of many but I believe to be the best for the price). It runs on a windows computer that is left on all the time. In this case that windows computer running Blue Iris is the server. Lastly some cameras have SD card slots and can record video strait to them instead of or as well as to the server/nvr. Recording on the edge is where the cameras have the SD card and store video. There is emerging standardized protocols to make life easier. It is up to the companies to incorporate them into their cameras but when they do it makes our lives easier. ONVIF is the standard. Profile G allows cameras to record to the SD card when the Server/NVR cannot connect to the cameras to stream. When the server/NVR can connect it copies the video from the SD cards to the archive. What he was referring to in this case (correct me if I am wrong) is that Blue Iris does not support the recording on the edge features. So if the computer (server) is not on or cannot connect to the cameras. There will be no recordings. His suggested solution to this problem is to have the cameras record to their SD card as well as utilizing blue iris. If something happened while the server or network was down. you could still retrieve the SD card from the camera and have footage. The configuration web page is where you would find the settings to record the the SD card if the camera supported it.

Exactly, except you dont have to retrieve the card, you can simply pull the video via browser.

 

[fenderman]

Since I am leaning the Blue Iris route. Do we have any suggestions for cameras that meet my requests? Are there any brands that seem better? Price wise I was looking for <$200 per camera. But could go to the sub $300 level for a PTZ. I have used foscams before, I know they are out the my personal running. I had two foscams 1 the wired network port stopped working but wireless continued to work for a while. The other the IR leds flicker and mess-up the motion detection software at night.

Forget foscam. Look at hikvision or dahua. There are are also threads that discuss Longse and Huisun. The latter two are for companies that are lesser known and long term reliability is unknown but they will produce better image quality that the hikvisions and dahua if you have poor night lighting.

 

[D!ngo]

@D!ngo I can answer that one. A NVR is a network appliance that records the video directly to it. You can then review/view the footage via a web browser or an app. Blue Iris is a Windows application (one of many but I believe to be the best for the price). It runs on a windows computer that is left on all the time. In this case that windows computer running Blue Iris is the server. Lastly some cameras have SD card slots and can record video strait to them instead of or as well as to the server/nvr. Recording on the edge is where the cameras have the SD card and store video. There is emerging standardized protocols to make life easier. It is up to the companies to incorporate them into their cameras but when they do it makes our lives easier. ONVIF is the standard. Profile G allows cameras to record to the SD card when the Server/NVR cannot connect to the cameras to stream. When the server/NVR can connect it copies the video from the SD cards to the archive. What he was referring to in this case (correct me if I am wrong) is that Blue Iris does not support the recording on the edge features. So if the computer (server) is not on or cannot connect to the cameras. There will be no recordings. His suggested solution to this problem is to have the cameras record to their SD card as well as utilizing blue iris. If something happened while the server or network was down. you could still retrieve the SD card from the camera and have footage. The configuration web page is where you would find the settings to record the the SD card if the camera supported it.

Thanks @chbeck2010 for clearing that a bit. Sorry if I kinda hickjack your thread but if you can answer my questions I'd really appreciate it. So if I have an NVR recording my cameras, can I control the cameras with my phone if I'm not at home such as stop/pause, record, search, etc or is it just for live view only? I know you can do that with Blue Iris. However, you can't use Blue Iris on an NVR, am I correct?

Thanks again.

 

[fenderman]

Thanks @chbeck2010 for clearing that a bit. Sorry if I kinda hickjack your thread but if you can answer my questions I'd really appreciate it. So if I have an NVR recording my cameras, can I control the cameras with my phone if I'm not at home such as stop/pause, record, search, etc or is it just for live view only? I know you can do that with Blue Iris. However, you can't use Blue Iris on an NVR, am I correct?

Thanks again.

You can review recorded video with an NVR, though for example the hikvision mobile app is a real pain to use to review video. Its not nearly as quick as blue iris. The difference is night and day.
The blue iris app allows you to do much more, like change profiles, enable/disable cameras, enable disable alerts etc right from the app.