Giving up on PC + Blue Iris- should I try an NVR?

[wittaj]

Not to pick on this guy, but it is recent and timely to this thread - we get lots of similar threads with people getting an NVR and have trouble setting it up.

error when adding a new network camera to poe nvr

Hi, I use IPtv system which consist of one IPtv network Hikvision camera connected to 4 poe ports Hikvision nvr Existing camera Is on nvr poe port 1 (D1) and Is working OK with status In green - It Is connected using plug and play method and IP Is 192.168.254.2 Hikvision nvr has 192.168.0.160...

ipcamtalk.com

And if they were plug-n-play, then this instructional PSA thread wouldn't have had to be developed that is approaching 600 posts of trouble people have had setting up an NVR:

***PSA for those with a New DAHUA NVR with Built-in PoE switch

IF you have a Dahua NVR with built-in PoE switch... DO NOT follow instructions telling you to use the config tool or switch the IP of your cameras or initialize anything..! With NVR's typically with a -P designation (Built-n PoE switch - example: 4208-8P-4KS2) none of that is required and it...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[Flintstone61]

Get the NVR so @wittaj can get back to watching Youtube product reviews of wakeboards.

 

[bigredfish]

The NVR will work fine and in the end be less difficult for you to setup and use.

 

[spend2much]

I like reading these somewhat NVR vs BI threads. I have had 3 NVRs in the last 20 years, currently using one of them now, none have failed, they just become out dated and limited as others have stated. What I can't get past is I need a powerhouse PC just to run a few cameras and the NVR with a tiny motherboard sipping electricity can run 30 cameras while recording random movements and not skip a beat. The reason for the chime in is Fenderman caught my eye with the multiple PC option, I may have to mess around again with that idea and create another thread to get some help and opinions on a 30 camera setup. Hope you found a solution that is working for you.

 

[lane777smith]

i would highly suggest you give Scrypted NVR a try.. Scrypted Network Video Recorder

 

[Starglow]

Windows has no problem running for long periods of time without a reboot. Sorry you are misinformed....this is typical of linux snobs. Top enterprise VMS that costs several hundred per camera in licensing and other fees run on windows. There are also plenty of vms that run on linux. 3 days experience with an nvr and zero experience running a vms and you are an expert....

Come on now....you know that's not quite true. Windows PC's are known to randomly reboot on their own for various reasons or if Microsoft pushes a MANDATORY update that installs itself even if auto updates are disabled. My NVR has been running several years without even a hiccup and it doesn't reboot itself like Microsoft Windows.

 

[samplenhold]

Windows PC's are known to randomly reboot on their own for various reasons or if Microsoft pushes a MANDATORY update that installs itself

Come on now....you know that's not quite true.

Maybe years ago, but not now. I have three desktops running in my home. Mine, my wife's and the BI server. None of these have spontaneously rebooted ever.

As far as the BI pc, as long as BI is running, Win10 does not reboot even if there has been an update done on the sly. I have been away from home for 5-6 weeks and had MS do an update, but it will not reboot as long as BI is running. I come home and still do not close out of BI for a few weeks. Only when I wish to reboot will that happen.

 

[samplenhold]

What I can't get past is I need a powerhouse PC just to run a few cameras

Powerhouse PC? Where did you get that idea from? No one ever said you need some super computer for BI.

 

[TonyR]

Come on now....you know that's not quite true. Windows PC's are known to randomly reboot on their own for various reasons or if Microsoft pushes a MANDATORY update that installs itself even if auto updates are disabled. My NVR has been running several years without even a hiccup and it doesn't reboot itself like Microsoft Windows.

I don't recall that happening to any of my 3 PC's (Win 7, 10 & 11) at any time since the oldest, from 2009.
I also don't recall any of my several dozen active clients over the last 10 years voicing such a complaint.

Maybe I (or they) should head to Las Vegas with some cash?

 

[TonyR]

I like reading these somewhat NVR vs BI threads. I have had 3 NVRs in the last 20 years, currently using one of them now, none have failed, they just become out dated and limited as others have stated. What I can't get past is I need a powerhouse PC just to run a few cameras and the NVR with a tiny motherboard sipping electricity can run 30 cameras while recording random movements and not skip a beat. The reason for the chime in is Fenderman caught my eye with the multiple PC option, I may have to mess around again with that idea and create another thread to get some help and opinions on a 30 camera setup. Hope you found a solution that is working for you.

I think you should get an NVR...unless you suffer a head injury or mental trauma soon and wind up with permanent amnesia, you'll constantly be comparing BI with your "....always dependable, never skipped a beat, electricity-sipping" NVR's of days past and BI won't stand a snowflake-in-Hell's chance of working well for you........just my opinion.

 

[spend2much]

i would highly suggest you give Scrypted NVR a try.. Scrypted Network Video Recorder

Thank you for that suggestion, I will surely look into that.

Powerhouse PC? Where did you get that idea from? No one ever said you need some super computer for BI.

Actually I may be wrong on this as I haven't explored using BI in a couple years now, bought it in Jan 2021 and once you get past a few cameras it starts to really work that PC hard, now I was playing around with turning all kinds of things off and down, but even then once I had about 10 cameras running it would be using tons of power and I had issues. Now as far as the phone app, setup, features, it was great... Oh and the rebooting, that was a non issue either as it was running windows 10 PRO so I could easily control the updates, and we are always messing with our cameras anyhow, so a once in a while manual update was never a thing, Currently I still have to computer working and now it's a hobby PC running cricut and other software like that. core i5 32G ram, older i5 mind you. I think you may have inspired me to explore this once again with updated versions.

 

[wittaj]

Thank you for that suggestion, I will surely look into that.



Actually I may be wrong on this as I haven't explored using BI in a couple years now, bought it in Jan 2021 and once you get past a few cameras it starts to really work that PC hard, now I was playing around with turning all kinds of things off and down, but even then once I had about 10 cameras running it would be using tons of power and I had issues. Now as far as the phone app, setup, features, it was great... Oh and the rebooting, that was a non issue either as it was running windows 10 PRO so I could easily control the updates, and we are always messing with our cameras anyhow, so a once in a while manual update was never a thing, Currently I still have to computer working and now it's a hobby PC running cricut and other software like that. core i5 32G ram, older i5 mind you. I think you may have inspired me to explore this once again with updated versions.

That was probably before substreams- now a 4th generation can run 50 cameras sub 40% CPU. A 4th generation can be picked up at government auctions for 10 bucks.

My humble i5-4590 still humming along with 30+ cams:

I see people posting about their i7-xxxx system bogging down with less than 10 cameras so I wanted to update my setup. I have ~33 cams running on my BI system: HP Elitedesk 800 G1 tower i5-4590 @ 3.3GHz 16GB ram 12TB total purple drives for storage 30+ total cams currently - 22 cams visible in...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[IAmATeaf]

My BI PC has never spontaneously rebooted but there again I did do some googling on how to block updates and driver updates?

 

[fenderman]

Come on now....you know that's not quite true. Windows PC's are known to randomly reboot on their own for various reasons or if Microsoft pushes a MANDATORY update that installs itself even if auto updates are disabled. My NVR has been running several years without even a hiccup and it doesn't reboot itself like Microsoft Windows.

It's 100% true.... It's unfortunate that you don't understand how to set up a basic PC to prevent this....
How long has your NVR been running continuously? Here is a screenshot of one system I recently installed at a friend's house. In fact in this system I never did anything to prevent automatic reboots.... And it's going on 98 days right now.

 

[spend2much]

That was probably before substreams- now a 4th generation can run 50 cameras sub 40% CPU. A 4th generation can be picked up at government auctions for 10 bucks.

My humble i5-4590 still humming along with 30+ cams:

I see people posting about their i7-xxxx system bogging down with less than 10 cameras so I wanted to update my setup. I have ~33 cams running on my BI system: HP Elitedesk 800 G1 tower i5-4590 @ 3.3GHz 16GB ram 12TB total purple drives for storage 30+ total cams currently - 22 cams visible in...

ipcamtalk.com

Now this is helpful information, thank you for this. Please don't get me wrong, Blu Iris is great software, everything was working great, no random reboots, (I know how to setup windows bare bones) all cameras very easy to setup and get working, the remote app worked very well, just once I added too many cameras it bogged down. Thanks for letting me chime in on this thread and for the great support.

 

[Starglow]

It's 100% true.... It's unfortunate that you don't understand how to set up a basic PC to prevent this....
How long has your NVR been running continuously? Here is a screenshot of one system I recently installed at a friend's house. In fact in this system I never did anything to prevent automatic reboots.... And it's going on 98 days right now.

You know nothing about my IT industry background or technical skills to make such a bold statement....but you can believe whatever false assumptions you want to make up.

 

[fenderman]

You know nothing about my IT industry background or technical skills to make such a bold statement....but you can believe whatever false assumptions you want to make up.

I know that you have made baseless accusations about windows that myself and many others here have proven wrong...its always the IT "Expert" who is clueless...if the NVR suits you enjoy it...it is extremely limited and unusable for me. The fact that dahua and many other nvr's and cameras have an auto reboot options evidences their poor firmware...
Ironic that you called me a liar then got pissed when I showed you evidence of your misunderstanding...

 

[tigerwillow1]

I think there's an apples-to-oranges comparison going on here. Even if a particular windows release has some bugs, if you don't run an app or use features and device drivers that have bugs, it can run forever. There have been enough posts to make me believe that BI does not have any system crash bugs of its own, or trigger anything in windows that causes a crash. Run an app other than BI, or use windows features or drivers that BI doesn't use, and you might see a crash that dedicated BI systems never see.

I use a Mac app for church presentations. Two weeks ago I imported a jpeg file that causes the app to crash, every time. First time this has happened after using over a thousand jpeg files. Somebody who doesn't use this particular jpeg could easily think it's my own fault and it never happened to anybody else. It could even be caused by a low-probability repeatable memory error or other weird hardware issue.

As a data point, my Dahua NVR has rebooted by itself one time in 6 years. It may have been a power glitch or NVR problem. I have no way of knowing which.

 

[fenderman]

I think there's an apples-to-oranges comparison going on here. Even if a particular windows release has some bugs, if you don't run an app or use features and device drivers that have bugs, it can run forever. There have been enough posts to make me believe that BI does not have any system crash bugs of its own, or trigger anything in windows that causes a crash. Run an app other than BI, or use windows features or drivers that BI doesn't use, and you might see a crash that dedicated BI systems never see.

I use a Mac app for church presentations. Two weeks ago I imported a jpeg file that causes the app to crash, every time. First time this has happened after using over a thousand jpeg files. Somebody who doesn't use this particular jpeg could easily think it's my own fault and it never happened to anybody else. It could even be caused by a low-probability repeatable memory error or other weird hardware issue.

As a data point, my Dahua NVR has rebooted by itself one time in 6 years. It may have been a power glitch or NVR problem. I have no way of knowing which.

There are certainly bugs in bi that can and do cause crashes...this is why its important to run stable releases like in the image I have posted above...if you do it like this it will run indefinitely.

 

[wittaj]

I refer back to my post in this thread that shows some BI systems approaching 6 years without a reboot, which shows you can make a Windows PC stable...