Church system dilemma

[Flintstone61]

Maybe do both
I have an NVR ( Amcrest) AND it streams to Blue Iris.
Let the monkeys play with the NVR and when they can't find their ass with both hands,
you can pop in later and see whats up using the Blue Iris machine. They'll think your a god. or a witch.
After your first miracle, avoid stakes with firewood piled under them.
Or if they have Mission Critical video to review it'll be faster on the Blue Iris machine.
Once you have a lot of incidents weekly to look at, you will find BI will save you hours of time each week reviewing all the ClownShow bullshit.

 

[Flintstone61]

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
I put in an Amcrest AD410 for my Churchified friend. He can cut the hell out of a lawn, and lay a block wall, but he had the misfortune of having marginal power to the doorbell and so the thing was clanging away in the hallway. no he disconnected rather than go up a step in power.
I'm so glad I installed that NOT.
Now he wants a few cameras. What could go wrong. He's got like DSL with 3 Google Nest( or whatever the fuck they're called) on 5ghz.
BI would be beyond him. and the NVR will be a learning curve too. they he'll have so many problems I'll have to change my Phone number.

 

[Flintstone61]

On Second thought, quit that church AND change your phone number.

 

[tigerwillow1]

They'll think your a god. or a witch.

You're reminding me of a time about 25 years ago when I had a rental car with a factory GPS and my mother-in-law as a passenger. After she heard the thing telling when to turn and that we had reached our destination, she thought there was a witch in the car

 

[Smilingreen]

You're reminding me of a time about 25 years ago when I had a rental car with a factory GPS and my mother-in-law as a passenger. After she heard the thing telling when to turn and that we had reached our destination, she thought there was a witch in the car

Depending on how well you like or dislike your MIL, there may have been one............

 

[Griswalduk]

I had a new idea and it sounds so simple that there must be a catch I don't see. Instead of a central NVR or BI machine, put a separate 8-port with POE NVR in each building, then connect each NVR to the network. Each NVR should auto-configure the cameras, and every camera would be accessible from anywhere on the network. Other than a few hundred $ extra upfront cost, what's the downside to this?

That would work well. it also offers redundancy in that if 1 system fails the other 2 will still be working. Although I've never used it dahua also make software for Windows that should make all the cameras / NVR available via the one program on a central PC. Others might have experience using this software and would be better placed to comment. See link

SmartPSS – Dahua Technology USA Inc

us.dahuasecurity.com

 

[Griswalduk]

This thread deals with a similar situation

Running All Cameras Through A Switch

Let me preface, I’m not a networking guy. I’ve done the basics of networking but am slow and resort to reading a lot of instruction for guidance. I currently have POE cameras ran directly to my NVR in my utility room in the basement and was a plug & play install. System is monitored via HIK...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[hajalie24]

I know this site hates them, but this seems like the optimal setup for a Ring or Nest system if they're willing to pay the price...

 

[tigerwillow1]

I know this site hates them, but this seems like the optimal setup for a Ring or Nest system if they're willing to pay the price...

I appreciate the input, and you might very well be right. It's just that I can imagine ever wishing that on somebody, much less having anything to do with it.

 

[hajalie24]

I appreciate the input, and you might very well be right. It's just that I can imagine ever wishing that on somebody, much less having anything to do with it.

I truthfully doubt they will care about the quality, most people are fine with them. They're not hardcore like us. They just want something to work reliably. I doubt they would even think it's bad, they probably just will think that's how cameras are supposed to be. Ignorance is bliss...

 

[Smilingreen]

Just watch the evening news. I don't believe I have ever seen a video clip of a robbery or a crime where the picture even remotely will allow you to ID a perp. They always follow the video clip with: "If you have seen this person, call Crime Stoppers at:.........."

I think I saw the perp on a Musinex commercial...

 

[paul09]

In our church we have a BI 55 Hikvision video surveillance system currently which works well. (Almost all our rooms have two or more cameras. ) We bought our first PC and 12 cameras about 4 years ago and have upgraded and added cameras and PC's twice. We just bought and installed a Windows 11 system along with a high end HP computer and additional POE Hikvision cameras. I have a great installer who has done our cables and camera installs for the last two times.
I agree that documentation is important. However I have found the BI manual and tech support to be excellent.

 

[tigerwillow1]

Does your BI church system have smartphone remote access? From what I've been able to gather, the only good way to do BI remote access is with a VPN, and getting that on the church leaders' phones is not going to fly. They wouldn't be able to do it themselves, and there's no IT resource to maintain it. Loading an app from the usual places is the only thing they'd be able to handle. That works for camera vendor P2P, not for BI as far as I can tell.

 

[Griswalduk]

Blue iris has an Android App in the Google play store. I don't use it so can't comment on how good or bad it is.

I'm sure others can advise on it's merits. Search the play store for "blue iris"and you'll get some screen grabs and reviews

 

[K7BEN]

I found a few related threads, they're pretty old and don't address my primary concern. Context is a small church, wants camera coverage for 3 buildings separated by 80 feet or so, knows I have a camera system, therefore I volunteered to get it done. From my experience with my own system I'd have no problem getting a bunch of cameras from Andy and setting them up with an NVR or BI. My concern is that after I'm unavailable to maintain that system for whatever reason, it's going to become an unusable brick. Kind of like a broken car that nobody knows how to repair. This is a seriously computer illiterate congregation. If there was something like a faulty camera cable, IP address conflict, or crashed BI system, there is nobody else who would even know where to start. Many of the members are smartphone gurus. With computers or networks, everybody but me is scared to get near it. I see three high-level approaches:

1. Professional installation with ongoing support. Probably won't fly because of the cost.
2. Dahua cameras with NVR or BI.
3. Packaged system.

They'd get the best bang for the buck with choice #2, but I can't help thinking a packaged system is the better choice because it will have a more user-friendly manual and I'm assuming the manufacturer can be called on for support and troubleshooting assistance. For starters I peeked at a Swann system manual and it looks a whole lot easier to follow and decipher than a Dahua manual. With a packaged system they have all the info in one place, instead of having to find a camera manual, NVR manual, smartPss manual, and so forth. I realize some of the obvious disadvantages of older firmware and less choice in camera specs, but a less capable working system is better than a higher capability system that isn't working.

I'm looking for any experience here that a packaged system is indeed the best way to go. Then I have to start learning about them, starting from scratch.

I lead the deployment of a system at my church over the past couple of years. We have a large campus with two main buildings. We put a Dahua NVR in each building. Staff members have the IMOU app and the office has a PC running SmartPSS along with their 'safety team' room. We had a lot of volunteers spend time on the initial installation and deployment. Eventually we did have to hire a contractor to button up some loose ends and get some of the final cameras up and running. As far as ongoing maintenance goes, I have trained two other people on how the cameras are set up and how to configure the NVR's etc. We have training documents on how to use and configure Smart PSS. Having over 30 cameras, like we do, there is always going to be something down or not working right. The hard part is getting a contractor to do this kind of work. It seems like if it's not at least a couple thousand dollars worth of work, they aren't interested. Since you are doing this as a volunteer for a church, I don't mind taking some time on a conference call to talk to you about some of the lessons we learned the hard way. Just PM me and we can set something up.

 

[looney2ns]

Does your BI church system have smartphone remote access? From what I've been able to gather, the only good way to do BI remote access is with a VPN, and getting that on the church leaders' phones is not going to fly. They wouldn't be able to do it themselves, and there's no IT resource to maintain it. Loading an app from the usual places is the only thing they'd be able to handle. That works for camera vendor P2P, not for BI as far as I can tell.

It can be setup in such a way that the VPN and the BI app can both be started from a single click on the screen.

My wife can handle BI and VPN on her phone with no problem, and the VPN is not automatically set to start.

 

[tigerwillow1]

It can be setup in such a way that the VPN and the BI app can both be started from a single click on the screen.

That's good to know, but at least at the moment not my main concern. No matter what I set up, I'm asking how will the camera system carry on if I suddenly disappear for whatever reason. I'm a huge tinkerer and hacker with my own stuff. With what I do for the church I have to keep my greasy hands off of it as much as possible. If the router running a VPN quits working, nobody else will know what to do. If a new user needs smartphone access, will they be able to get it installed and running on the phone? (Not a gotcha question as I don't know what it takes at this point). The cameras and NVRs have a manual, BI has a manual. If I put a VPN in the mix, there's no consumer level manual I know of for maintaining the system, and I'm not stepping up to author it.

 

[wittaj]

Slap a post it note on the router - buy a new one with OpenVPN and print this out LOL:

OpenVPN on a Asus router

Sept 2021 Turned off comments because of ads July 2021 Bought a new Asus router, an RT-AX86U. Loaded it right away with Merlin firmware, s...

randyshomeprojects.blogspot.com

Unless you P2P the system, if they have to get a new router, there would still be issues with port forward or stunnel as the IP address would likely change.

 

[looney2ns]

That's good to know, but at least at the moment not my main concern. No matter what I set up, I'm asking how will the camera system carry on if I suddenly disappear for whatever reason. I'm a huge tinkerer and hacker with my own stuff. With what I do for the church I have to keep my greasy hands off of it as much as possible. If the router running a VPN quits working, nobody else will know what to do. If a new user needs smartphone access, will they be able to get it installed and running on the phone? (Not a gotcha question as I don't know what it takes at this point). The cameras and NVRs have a manual, BI has a manual. If I put a VPN in the mix, there's no consumer level manual I know of for maintaining the system, and I'm not stepping up to author it.

Then I'd say you should decline to install the system in the first place, because you will become the defacto tech support to it.

 

[tigerwillow1]

Staff members have the IMOU app.....

Yet another thing I didn't know about. I will give it a try with my home system, and I'm glad I have a disposable phone to try things with. I'm slow-walking this project to try to get it right the first time. I got a new varifocal from Andy and will spend a couple of months hanging it in various places to determine camera locations and FOV, so I've got time for the other decisions. Interesting comment about the NVR in each building. I'm flip flopping on a single channel NVR vs. an 8-channel NVR in each of two buildings.