Contact with Ken

[billmeek]

Has anyone heard from Ken at Perspective Software (Blue Iris) in the last week or so? I sent an email 12 days ago (just before my support expired) asking for info about another buying another copy of Blue Iris for a backup server and another question on buying the software maintenance / support plan. I got an automated message about the ticket being opened, but didn’t heard anything back in over a week. 3 days ago I sent another abbreviated email (this time to sales email address rather than support) and not a single whisper. My other support requests about Blue Iris from a year ago were all answered within a day or 2… even before I purchased the software.

Since I received the automated response to the email sent to the support email address, I doubt that my server is blocking the emails. (It shouldn’t as I only have the server set to tag them as spam.) So I’m wondering why I’m not getting a reply. I know Ken’s a one-man-shop and can appreciate that as I work that way too. But I’d think he’d have a better response time for emails that are directly related to sending him more of my money. <grin>

 

[Tinman]

Maybe he went on vacation and left it all behind like you're suppose too

 

[billmeek]

Vacation? I'll have to look up that word as it's not in my lexicon (anymore).

 

[bp2008]

Don't get me started on Ken's response times lately. I don't think Blue Iris is as high a priority for him as it used to be.

I swear one of these days we're going to find a notice on the official web page saying his development computer crashed and there are no backups of the source code anywhere. (seen it happen to many a project, lol)

 

[billmeek]

Thanks for the info. It's good to know I'm not the only one... and lousy to know that the response times are an issue with Blue Iris. Is it even worth paying for the Priority support plan?

I do technical support for a living. I'm basically the IT department for 10 local small businesses and do hourly work for other customers. I've had a lot of work recovering data for customers where they didn't have a backup plan. My largest contract customer started off where a drive failed on their primary accounting machine... with no backup... ever. They carried the computer to the PC shop that sold them the machine to get their data recovered. The tech handed them a USB drive with "all they could recover" which was not one single data file they needed. Another customer referred them to me. In 2 hours onsite I had every single file they needed. They now have a solid automated backup routine with the status of the backups checked daily (by me). I'm a big believer in backups with any PC that has important data on it getting a full disk image daily and near real-time backups of changed files. Any business should have at least a 2-layer backup. I'm on the "paranoid side" and have backups, of my backups, of my backups of my business and personal information... plus backups to the cloud of all data except my encrypted password database which is mirrored (over wifi only) directly to multiple devices including my cell phones.

Disk space is cheap and losing business data isn't.

The reason that I need another copy of Blue Iris is that I shutdown the PC running it on the 11th of this month for updating Blue Iris, Windows updates, and the required reboot. Blue Iris was offline for a total of just under 6.5 minutes (the only time it had been down in 30 days for more than a few seconds) and wouldn't you know it? In that small time-frame I missed getting video of the guy who broke into my neighbors garage and stole a bunch of stuff including the ATV he rode away on. Guess I need a backup of my NVR for the small amount of time it's down monthly. While I have a decent security system here using my smart home hardware and 6 cameras protecting the most valuable items outside, I'm going to be adding a few more cameras and tweak a couple of them to be able to pickup license plates clearly on the street day or night.

 

[fenderman]

I communicated with him a week or two ago with respect to dauha h.265 his responses were quick. He accessed my cam within an hour of providing log in info and said he will work on it.
Considering we get software updates every two weeks and the BI android mobile app was updated yesterday, I wouldnt be concerned.. make sure you are emailing from a standard account like gmail so it doesnt get sent to spam, also email using the email support butting in the about tab so you can provide your current license info.

 

[billmeek]

Thank you for the info fenderman. I guess I'll just wait for a reply from Ken. <begins twiddling thumbs>

I assume that my email address isn't being sent to spam since I received the automated reply and I regularly check the server against all the common blacklists.

In the emails I did include the license info as you suggested.

 

[memphis02]

Thanks for the info. It's good to know I'm not the only one... and lousy to know that the response times are an issue with Blue Iris. Is it even worth paying for the Priority support plan?

I do technical support for a living. I'm basically the IT department for 10 local small businesses and do hourly work for other customers. I've had a lot of work recovering data for customers where they didn't have a backup plan. My largest contract customer started off where a drive failed on their primary accounting machine... with no backup... ever. They carried the computer to the PC shop that sold them the machine to get their data recovered. The tech handed them a USB drive with "all they could recover" which was not one single data file they needed. Another customer referred them to me. In 2 hours onsite I had every single file they needed. They now have a solid automated backup routine with the status of the backups checked daily (by me). I'm a big believer in backups with any PC that has important data on it getting a full disk image daily and near real-time backups of changed files. Any business should have at least a 2-layer backup. I'm on the "paranoid side" and have backups, of my backups, of my backups of my business and personal information... plus backups to the cloud of all data except my encrypted password database which is mirrored (over wifi only) directly to multiple devices including my cell phones.

Disk space is cheap and losing business data isn't.

The reason that I need another copy of Blue Iris is that I shutdown the PC running it on the 11th of this month for updating Blue Iris, Windows updates, and the required reboot. Blue Iris was offline for a total of just under 6.5 minutes (the only time it had been down in 30 days for more than a few seconds) and wouldn't you know it? In that small time-frame I missed getting video of the guy who broke into my neighbors garage and stole a bunch of stuff including the ATV he rode away on. Guess I need a backup of my NVR for the small amount of time it's down monthly. While I have a decent security system here using my smart home hardware and 6 cameras protecting the most valuable items outside, I'm going to be adding a few more cameras and tweak a couple of them to be able to pickup license plates clearly on the street day or night.

For that exact reason, I have added some cameras with sd cards to my setup. I may not have every angle covered, but I'm going to at least see something.