Computer as NVR opinions

[Velogopher]

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to the world of home security / IP cams. I just bought a DS-2CD2342WD-I and ordered a DS-2CD2345-I, which should be here in about a week or so, to compare features and performance for my area before deciding on the rest. I'm now trying to decide if I should use a computer or an NVR for the collection of the streams. I'm leaning toward the computer, because it seems like it's got a lot more flexibility, plus I like to be more in control of the software (IT/software engineer here). If I did, it would most likely be running Linux, not Windows.

What I have:
I currently have a home Linux server, and I am wondering if it would be sufficient for the task of reliably capturing and processing the video feeds and being able to alert, as appropriate. I have a Windows laptop for my general use (like writing this), but the home server acts as a file store and media server for now, and I intend to add in home automation. It's got an i7-6700k (4core/8thread @4.0GHz) processor with 64G RAM (I may have gone a little overboard there), 2xSSD for the OS, and 4x4T drives in RAID-5 for data storage, and 2xGigE. I have room to add 3 more drives on the system and in the case.

It spends most of its time with pretty low load, but there have been times when I've run HandBrake to re-encode 4 different video files at the same time, bringing the system load up to around 35. During those times, I have never felt the slightest sluggishness from with anything I'm doing in a terminal session, though it's clear that the HandBrake processes each take longer to run. There's also a high likelihood that I would occasionally be running some intense Matlab-like jobs. I have not tried them on this computer, so I have no idea how much they might bog down the system.

What I want to do:
Since I've become aware of what seems to be an increasing amount of burglary activity in the neighborhoods around me, I want to put a number of IP cams around my house. I am thinking two to cover different angles of the front yard and driveway, one somewhat subtly taking the place of the peephole in my front door (I'd rather not have something as obvious as the Ring doorbell), one or two on each side, and maybe two more in back. I may also want something inside to watch entry points. In total, I can see myself having anywhere from 8 to 12 cams in the near future. (I'm not actually that paranoid, I just enjoy playing with tech.:laugh

I'm leaning toward 4MP cams - at least for the front, maybe 3MP for the sides, as the main difference between 3 and 4 that I have seen seemed to be a wider resolution without it being taller. For the sides, which are narrower, that would seem a waste. My thinking is that more pixels == better chance of catching any identifying details.

Options
1) Use my existing home server. I'd need to buy a PoE switch, but I could dedicate one of my server's NICs to the PoE nick to keep everything on the same switch and not send all the cam data across the rest of the network. I'd also probably add a WD Purple drive for this data.

2) Buy a dedicated NVR, with all software, etc, ready to go.

3) Buy a new computer just for this task. This would probably be the most expensive, but I did see another post where someone bought a really small/slim pc which would fit well in my rack, but would need an external USB3 drive for the storage.

4) If my current server is not enough, I'd love to be able to do something like this with a Raspberry PI cluster, but I wouldn't know where to begin there, or if there is even any software that would really work for something like this.

Questions
My questions to those of you with experience:

1) Given my server's specs and activity, would it have the ability to monitor the cameras, too? How much server horsepower does that take?

2) What Linux software is out there for this? I've seen references to ZoneMinder, Motion, and BlueCherry. What am I missing out on by going with any of those (i.e. is one of them miles ahead of the others, or should I seriously be considering a Windows host and BlueIris)?

3) Is there anything I am completely overlooking?


Thanks for any input!
Colin

 

[crw030]

Colin.

I'm new here, but also interested in the Linux angle, I saw also Xeoma has a Linux version -- but I personally haven't used it yet. Trawling the forums it seems BlueIris is a forum favorite, or dedicated hardware NVR (neither really would use your Linux Server). Based on how deads-ville the ZoneMinder sub-forum is, it does not look promising to me.

Going to follow this thread though because I have similar interests.

R

 

[jasauders]

As a long time Linux user, I too found myself in the same boat. Given the nature of ZoneMinder being open source, I defaulted to it. I'm not sure how many people know this, but ZoneMinder's development has been taken over by a small team of enthusiastic developers who have been making progress at refining ZoneMinder that much more. ZM has a bright future ahead of it, however as of this writing, today, I still have some issues with it. Some of these are on the brink of being addressed, though. My biggest issue with ZM is how heavy it is. Even with full time recording, it's just... heavy. I have a home server (Ubuntu Server), but it's a low end box. It's basically a low wattage 2nd gen i3, 8GB of RAM, and a bunch of hard drives. With 4 cameras, ZM was abusing that server pretty badly. Likewise, ZoneMinder doesn't store the feeds in a video format. Instead, it's a series of JPGs stitched together. This causes my 2TB WD Purple to a surprisingly low amount of 24/7 recordings. I understand the next version of ZM is supposed to help address this, but I'm speaking entirely from a "right now -- today" standpoint, as today, we're still talking about a bunch of JPGs for the feeds.

I was on the fence. Do I buy an NVR? Is there other Linux software out there? I considered several options. NVR's are light on power usage, so that was an easy pill to swallow with my considerations. I didn't like the idea of spinning up a second box with Windows on it to run it 24/7 alongside my Linux server just for CCTV related tasks. I mean, I could have, I just didn't want to go that route. I didn't have the hardware available and I wanted, if anything, to cut back on what items (computers/servers included) ran all the time since that electricity bill can hurt... So from where I was standing, it was either I find an NVR program based on Linux, or I go the regular NVR route.

Bluecherry scratched that itch. I've been running it for a few weeks now and have found myself pretty happy with it. The 30 day demo really helped out, as I was able to see how it felt beyond the initial honeymoon phase. I recommend you give it a shot and see what you think. They support a wide range of cameras. I've had Vivotek, EyeSurv (Dahua), and Hikvisions attached... all with no issues. They focus on Linux for the server (nice) but offer a cross platform client (niiice) as well. Bluecherry is not as feature packed as some others I've seen. I mean, it won't exactly dethrone Milestone from their current position in the features-offered department. But it works well for what it does. The UI for the settings panel is clean, easy to navigate, easy to set things up, events playback works well, the client itself works good, etc. Another thing I liked is the fact the feeds are stored in mkv format, which circumvents my biggest frustration with a lot of other solutions; proprietary file exports. I'm sorry, but that makes no sense in this day and age. Mkv is one of many common video file types that makes working with the exports easier.

As I sit here, my four cameras are recording 24/7 to my low end i3 home server. The load is sitting at:
23:50:49 up 9 days, 23:58, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.04, 0.05

I can't say I see an issue there. This box is all but asleep. But anyway, this is where I ended up, and I'm pretty happy with it.

Server:
Ubuntu Server 14.04
i3-3220t
8GB RAM
4x3TB WD Red, mdadm software raid 6 for centralized data storage, backups, etc.
1x2TB WD Purple specifically for Bluecherry/CCTV feeds

 

[Velogopher]

Thanks, jasauders! I saw your post on another thread from a few weeks/months back, and was going to ask you if you were running ZM on your NAS server, or on another host. This answers my question. I was looking at the possibility of getting a separate host, as there was a neat little Zotac that someone posted, and it wouldn't end up being *too* expensive, but, like you, I was kind of looking to minimize the number of servers I need to maintain. I just replaced my hand-me-down Atom-based NAS/media server with the i7-6700/Z170 system I mentioned above, hoping to be able to centralize everything home-related into one primary system.

I have only the one camera at the moment, with a second on the way, and my PoE switch just arrived this afternoon. I'll probably start off with ZoneMinder on my server to start with and play around with the settings to see what sort of effect it has on the load. What resolutions/fps are you running your cams at?

 

[jasauders]

Hey there, Velogopher.

I was running ZoneMinder. ZM holds a special place in my heart. It's open source and lead by a new team of enthusiastic developers (what's not to love??). The catch is, there are some things the team is working towards that they haven't achieved yet. This is not to undermine their abilities, but a project like ZM is just massive, and it takes time. These folks work on their own time. I'm actually quite astonished they have the time to offer that they're already giving.

I had an interesting setup. ZM ran on my NAS, which is an i3 3200t, 8GB RAM, and a 2TB WD Purple. In an effort to keep the NAS from facing the outside, yet still accessing ZM from the outside, I set up a reverse proxy within Apache on my web server, thereby passing any hits to the ZM URL to toss it over to the NAS. This allowed me to have my regular web server running with all of its Apache and ownCloud goodness while still being able to leverage ZM externally.

This worked well. It took a little bit of tinkering, but I got it. In the end, ZM was just a bit too heavy. In motion detect mode, my processor would still be pushed quite hard. In full time record mode (which I prefer to use), it ran a bit better, but it was still taxed quite a bit. Part of the issue stems from ZM (as of this writing) encoding the video stream to JPGs. I ran four cameras; two 1mp, two 3mp, all at 5fps. This meant ZM was saving 20 JPGs worth of feeds every second. There's a test branch out there with the capability to record to straight video, however issues are still being teased out. I'm sure it'll land in a near-future release.

Bluecherry was name dropped in a video podcast I was watching. Given they had a 30 day demo, I figured why not. I have a spare box with an i3 2100 in it. According to CPU comparisons, the 3220t is considerably better than the i3 2100, so I figured if Bluecherry ran great on the 2100, it'd be even better on my actual NAS.

Once I saw how light Bluecherry ran (my current NAS/Bluecherry load is 0.00, 0.03, 0.04, this time with 3x 3mp and 1x 1mp cameras), I had a difficult time justifying *not* going with it. In the end, I bought it.

Someday I hope to return to ZM. Lots of great stuff there. But I've been pretty happy with Bluecherry... the struggle is real.

 

[essjay]

Just to chime in that I was looking at something similar and probably leaning towards BlueIris.

On order I have one of the E5 2670 v1's that have flooded eBay recently and 64GB of ECC RAM. $150 wasn't bad for the CPU and RAM. The plan was to run unRAID on this machine with a fleet of VM's running on top. This machine would act as a media server (22TB), Emby Media Server on a Server 2012 VM, HTPC on a Win7 VM, CCTV VM etc.


After doing some reading it seems BlueIris is a great product and really benefits from Quick Sync Video (or something like that) built into newer Intel CPU's such as the i7 6700. So the plan now is to sell the CPU and RAM when it arrives and buy myself a Skylake setup (6700, H170, RAM). On this just run Server 2012 R2 with BlueIris and Emby Media Server. I can also use Stablebit Scanner and Drivepool to pool and watch the drives (no parity though but I can live with that).