Changing PCs - Any Advice?

DLONG2

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Soon I'm going to be installing a new PC for Blue Iris. Any advice on a smooth transition? I'll change the IP of the old PC and assign the old IP to the new PC. I have a backup export of the .REG configuration. I am assuming the install of BI will go well from the license. Anything else I am not considering?
 

Q™

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Why do you need to change the new PC's IP address to that of the old PC?
  1. Give the new PC a static IP address
  2. "Export Settings" on the old PC
  3. Deactivate the BI license on the old PC
  4. Install BI on the new PC
  5. Activate the BI license on the new PC
  6. "Import Settings" on the new PC
  7. Optional: Copy your old BI archival video from the old PC to the new PC
joy-smiley.gif
 

Q™

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On second thought, if your old PC is also acting as a NTP server to your network cameras it would be advisable to change the IP address of the new PC to that of the old PC. :)
 

J Sigmo

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I need to set that up for my system. As it is, I've been occasionally updating the time on the cameras manually.

But I did set up a dedicated PC for Blue Iris, moving BI from an existing PC that I still use for other things, and I did pretty much what you recommended in your first post.

I guess the only reason to set up the new PC to be on the same IP address that the first BI PC was using would be to save you the effort of changing all of the cameras' NTP server addresses.
 

J Sigmo

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In case you don’t know this, install this lightweight NTP server (runs as a Windows Service) on your BI server and then point all of your network cameras to your NTP server...

NetTime - Network Time Synchronization Tool
I will do that tonight. That should save me the hassle of updating the cameras by hand and make the BI time always match the individual cameras' times.

BI on the dedicated PC has been so reliable that I haven't touched that PC for three or four months. I mostly check things using UI3 on my phone, or from work over VPN also using UI3 on one of my PCs there.

It's about time I played with it a bit. Thanks!
 
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Yeah I somewhat recently did this to move from the laptop I had forever to the computer in my sig. I’d been putting it off because I had recording and syslog from the firewall going there, and NTP server that the cameras were pointing to as well.

Anyhow Q’s steps were what I ended up doing, but if I had to do it again I wouldn’t copy all the files, as it took more than a day to copy over the network, and I haven’t looked back at two month old videos anyhow (and soon they will be erased naturally by Blue Iris).

Anyway since I have the dual-NIC configuration, I setup everything (NTP, BI, BIupdatehelper, Sunrise/Sunset service and Syslog on the new computer, exported the config and imported it on the new computer. Since I had a new license for BI I just used that, but easily could have deregistered BI and reregistered the old license on the new computer. Unplugged the old laptop and moved the 2nd network (USB) and plugged in the new computer into both networks, and was back up and running.
 

DLONG2

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In case you don’t know this, install this lightweight NTP server (runs as a Windows Service) on your BI server and then point all of your network cameras to your NTP server...

NetTime - Network Time Synchronization Tool
The NTP server setting for the camera is then the IP address of the BI PC? Some camera settings need an NTP port number, too. Any pointers there?
 

Nonsense

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In case you don’t know this, install this lightweight NTP server (runs as a Windows Service) on your BI server and then point all of your network cameras to your NTP server...

NetTime - Network Time Synchronization Tool
You don't need any third party ntp server software tho. Just enable ntp server built in to windows, then use BI PC ip address and UDP 123 port for cameras ntp settings. You also need to modify windows firewall settings to get this setup to work, enable incoming and outgoing UDP 123. Ofcourse BI PC needs internet connection to get net time.
 

Q™

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The NTP server setting for the camera is then the IP address of the BI PC? Some camera settings need an NTP port number, too. Any pointers there?
Since the NTP Service is installed on the same machine as Blue Iris -- yes -- the IP address of the NTP server is the same IP address as the Blue Iris server. Then, simply log into each camera's Web UI and specify the Blue Iris/NTP server's IP address as each camera's source for NTP. 10 minutes max...including the coffee break. thumbsup.gif
 

Q™

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You don't need any third party ntp server software tho. Just enable ntp server built in to windows, then use BI PC ip address and UDP 123 port for cameras ntp settings. You also need to modify windows firewall settings to get this setup to work, enable incoming and outgoing UDP 123. Ofcourse BI PC needs internet connection to get net time.
Never tried this, but it sounds sweet.
 

th182

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Never tried this, but it sounds sweet.
It’s how I run mine. Much better than having to allow the cameras out to the internet for time.


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They both address the requirement of not allowing the cameras access to synch time over the internet. I mistakenly thought Windows Time SERVER was a server component (it isn't since Win2k), but there are some steps required for a standard windows computer to SERVE the time I found via Google.

I would be interested if anyone has any experience (positive or negative) relative to using Windows w32time instead of the NetTime app (which is third parry open source). I am currently using NetTime app due to my incorrect assumption above.

I will say I noticed the following stepping through the process to enable w32time on my Windows Pro Blue Iris machine:
  • one default time server: time.windows.com seems you can change it to a different time server via Control Panel
  • there are some articles related to troubleshooting w32time that mention some w32time versions won't query time properly from NTP timer servers.
  • You may have to do a registry edit to turn your desktop machine into a time SERVER that will respond to camera SNTP requests
  • I dont see anyway to configure multiple time servers in the Control Panel (in case your default time server is offline), might be available via the command line
 

DLONG2

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Very happy with the used HP EliteDesk 800 G2 SFF PC I found on eBay. It came with an i7-6700 CPU, 16 GB of RAM, Windows 10 Pro, and 9 months left on the extended warranty. Installed a Samsung 250 GB 860 PRO SSD and a 4TB WD Purple HDD. I had wanted to get a 6TB Purple, but Frys didn't have them on the shelf, and I was impatient to get the service moved. It was a breeze to move Blue Iris over to the new machine. What a difference in CPU usage and quickness in accessing the alerts.

(The major reason for keeping the old IP address is for remote viewing; all the TVs in the home are set to connect to the BI PC's LAN IP. And I am uncertain about the VPN architecture, but it was hard enough to get it working initially, and didn't want to impede it, either.)
 
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