Hardware/Software Advice for BI

[HomeWPoe]

Got our VPN online. Been testing our 5 EmpireTech cams (w/micro SD's) with BI, UI3 and Pushover with our laptop (and 16ch POE switch) for the last few weeks. Not fond of switching from Pushover to UI3 to access notification videos on our iphone, but we can live with it. Thankfully, the Pushover photo attachment provides enough info most of the time so we don't need to access UI3 much. Using email notifications with Pushover. Scripts (CURL?) are way over our head for the time being.

1. Are we somewhat on track with this software arrangement? Other options we should consider?

2. Have plans to add another 4 or 5 cams (total 9-10). Currently Looking at refurbed desktops on eBay. Focusing on units with i7/i9 (8th gen and higher), 16-32gb RAM, 1tb SSD on eBay for $400-$450. Plan to purchase a surveillance rated 4-6tb harddrive. With some judicious fine-tuning of BI/UI3, I'm assuming this hardware will easily support 10 cams??

3. If we add a 2nd gigabit NIC, would a USB version suffice (vs. PCI)? With our VPN, not sure whether it's necessary to isolate our cams with a 2nd NIC?

4. Going to place/hide the desktop, out-of-sight/reach, less than 10 ft from our home office. What are our options for accessing this desktop remotely from our home office? Assuming a strong signal, would a wireless HDMI (lag??) and a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse work?

5. Since we don't have plans to use DMSS after upgrading to BI, should we consider turning-off any particular protocols/ports on the individual cams via the GUI for security purposes?

As always, thanks!

 

[wittaj]

You are on track.

People are running 50 cams on a 4th gen LOL, so yeah your 8th gen and higher will be fine.

You can use the USB version for the 2nd NIC, but use that for the INTERNET connection not the cameras. Let the cameras go to the main ethernet port.

Most of us use Remote Desktop to get into the computer you will have hidden. Then you can access it from any computer on your network. That eliminates the need for a wireless HDMI, bluetooth mouse/keyboard etc. that is connected to the BI computer.

 

[bp2008]

I would avoid a wireless HDMI solution. If you want HDMI, use a cord. You can get HDMI over fiber optic cords for fairly cheap ($50 or so) that are really thin compared to standard HDMI cords. Or you can get HDBase-T adapters which use standard cat5e or better network cable to carry the HDMI signal, on the offchance that this is more convenient for you. Some HDBase-T adapters also have USB ports for keyboard and mouse over the same network cable; just don't expect the USB to do anything more than a keyboard and mouse, they tend to use really shitty USB hardware in those in my limited experience.

If the machine has integrated wifi, you could use the wifi adapter for internet and LAN access and use the wired network port for cameras, with no need for an additional network adapter. But if you want to live view for many hours straight, then there's no beating a wired connection for the internet/LAN too.

 

[henry8653j]

Got our VPN online. Been testing our 5 EmpireTech cams (w/micro SD's) with BI, UI3 and Pushover with our laptop (and 16ch POE switch) for the last few weeks. Not fond of switching from Pushover to UI3 to access notification videos on our iphone, but we can live with it. Thankfully, the Pushover photo attachment provides enough info most of the time so we don't the need to access UI3. Using email notifications with Pushover. Scripts (CURL?) are way over our head for the time being.

1. Are we somewhat on track with this software arrangement? Other options we should consider?

2. Have plans to add another 4 or 5 cams (total 9-10). Currently Looking at refurbed desktops on eBay. Focusing on units with i7/i9 (8th gen and higher), 16-32gb RAM, 1tb SSD on eBay for $400-$450. Plan to purchase a surveillance rated 4-6tb harddrive. With some judicious fine-tuning of BI/UI3, I'm assuming this hardware will easily support 10 cams??

3. If we add a 2nd gigabit NIC, would a USB version suffice (vs. PCI)? With our VPN, not sure whether it's necessary to isolate our cams with a 2nd NIC?

4. Going to place/hide the desktop, out-of-sight/reach, less than 10 ft from our home office. What are our options for accessing this desktop remotely from our home office? Assuming a strong signal, would a wireless HDMI (lag??) and a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse work?

5. Since we don't have plans to use DMSS nasdaq fintechzoom after upgrading to BI, should we consider turning-off any particular protocols/ports on the individual cams via the GUI for security purposes?

As always, thanks!

Thanks for sharing informative topic.

 

[HomeWPoe]

You are on track.

People are running 50 cams on a 4th gen LOL, so yeah your 8th gen and higher will be fine.

You can use the USB version for the 2nd NIC, but use that for the INTERNET connection not the cameras. Let the cameras go to the main ethernet port.

Most of us use Remote Desktop to get into the computer you will have hidden. Then you can access it from any computer on your network. That eliminates the need for a wireless HDMI, bluetooth mouse/keyboard etc. that is connected to the BI computer.

Thanks, @wittaj! Good to know we're headin' in the right direction.

50 cams?! With a 4th gen? Wow. Guess we should ok with 10 cams and an 8th gen

I get the impression isolating the cams completely from the internet using a 2nd NIC is ideal. However, does our VPN offer a reasonable compromise in terms of protection/security?

Also, once we get on-board with BI/UI3/Pushover, our plan is to quit using DMSS. Should we consider turning-off anything (ports?) in each of the cameras to reduce any backdoor security issues?

Have to check out the Remote Desktop. Seems like a solid solution.

Thanks again!

 

[HomeWPoe]

I would avoid a wireless HDMI solution. If you want HDMI, use a cord. You can get HDMI over fiber optic cords for fairly cheap ($50 or so) that are really thin compared to standard HDMI cords. Or you can get HDBase-T adapters which use standard cat5e or better network cable to carry the HDMI signal, on the offchance that this is more convenient for you. Some HDBase-T adapters also have USB ports for keyboard and mouse over the same network cable; just don't expect the USB to do anything more than a keyboard and mouse, they tend to use really shitty USB hardware in those in my limited experience.

If the machine has integrated wifi, you could use the wifi adapter for internet and LAN access and use the wired network port for cameras, with no need for an additional network adapter. But if you want to live view for many hours straight, then there's no beating a wired connection for the internet/LAN too.

Our wifi bandwidth is right up there with our ethernet, so might give that a try before investing in a 2nd NIC. Kinda figured wireless HDMI was not probably going to be the most refined solution--lol! Thanks for the heads-up ref the HDBase-T adapters. Didn't know such a thing existed. Push comes to shove, would rather run the more versatile cat6 than the one-trick HDMI. If the Remote Desktop option doesn't pan out, cat6 and the HDBase-T adapters seems like a good plan B. Thx!

 

[HomeWPoe]

Got a refurbed Dell OptiPlex 7060 SFF (i7/8700, 32g ram, 500g SSD) up and running with BI. With 1 4mp and 4 8mp cams, the CPU typically hovers around 0-1% with UI3 (@1-2mp ;sometimes spikes to 10-15% for a few sec when accessing a single cam at 4-8mp). Setup BI and the Dell BIOS so they both restart after a power outage. Have plans to install a 6tb drive tomorrow.

Surprised how well Windows Remote Desktop works (locally). Easy to forget which computer we're actually using. OpenVPN supports remote access (via iPhone/laptop) with UI3 and the cam GUI's, unfortunately, Remote Desktop is a no-go. Turning off the firewall on both devices doesn't help. We can live without remote access to BI itself, but it would be a nice option to have.

Outside of the fact it's nearly impossible to accurately download a specific section of video using UI3 on an iphone (very easy with a Windows browser), we're relatively pleased with how UI3 and Pushover work together on our iPhones. Haven't tried the BI iOS app yet. Should we give it a try?

P.S. Using IVS with DMSS, motion notifications identify Human or Vehicle. Anyway to obtain this capability with BI/Pushover?

 

[wittaj]

I told you Remote Desktop is pretty sweet!

Yes you can do that with BI/Pushover.

You need to make 2 IVS rules - one for person and one for vehicle.

Then you create a new rule in BI and tell it to listen for each IVS rule.

So you add a rule that says listen for it to contain IVS-1 and then the memo is person. Then the same for IVS-2 and memo is vehicle.

Or rename the IVS rule to person and vehicle respectfully and tell it to listen for it.



Then it will display the appropriate object in the alert.

 

[HomeWPoe]

I told you Remote Desktop is pretty sweet!

Yes you can do that with BI/Pushover.

You need to make 2 IVS rules - one for person and one for vehicle.

Then you create a new rule in BI and tell it to listen for each IVS rule.

So you add a rule that says listen for it to contain IVS-1 and then the memo is person. Then the same for IVS-2 and memo is vehicle.

Or rename the IVS rule to person and vehicle respectfully and tell it to listen for it.

View attachment 204228

Then it will display the appropriate object in the alert.

Thanks for the reply! I tried entering IVS-1, IVS-2, Person, Human, Vehicle, Motor Vehicle, etc. in the Contains field, Trigger in the Action field, and Person, Human, Motor Vehicle, etc. in the Memo field. Seemed to have no effect on the Pushover notifications.

All the Pushover notifications have the same memo: "Motion detected on camera: xxxxxx".

I'm running Pushover (using email) and DMSS at the same time. The same notifications from DMSS contain, "Tripwire Alarm-Human", "Intrusion Alarm-Human", "Tripwire Alarm-Vehicle", or "Intrusion Alarm-Vehicle".

I looked at the list of alerts in BI and it seems two rules/events triggered most of the alerts: RuleEngine/LineDetector/Crossed and RuleEngine/CellMotionDetector/Motion.

 

[HomeWPoe]

Making progress. Finally got Remote Desktop on our laptops and iPhones working with the BI desktop using both OpenVPN and ZeroTier. Having the option to change BI presets remotely is sweet. It took some practice to navigate throughout BI on an iphone, but it's totally doable. Surprised to see OpenVPN (Asus router) go down a few times for an hour or so. Nice to have ZeroTier as a backup.

Got @jaydeel's curl script working with Pushover---wasn't fond of using emails. Since we're using OpenVPN/ZeroTier had to change &WAN to &LAN in the script to access BI. Having both the snapshot and a direct link to the UI3 alert video inside the Pushover notification makes day-to-day use so much easier (vs. DMSS). Very surprised (actually shocked) how quickly we can scrub through days of videos with UI3 on our phone with just a sweep of our finger with very little lag. As long as there's 2+ bars of 5g and we don't get crazy with the bitrate/resolution, works great.

We've had IVS up and running for the last few weeks. The alerts are super reliable---zero complaints. However, never could get BI to push any person/vehicle data to our phone with Pushover (we get this data using DMSS). Decided to give CodeProject AI a try yesterday. Nice to get the person/vehicle/bicycle/dog data, but looks like it may take a fair amount of tinkering to get the triggering to work as well as IVS. Discovered we can run both IVS/ONVIF and AI at the same time. Looks like some potential here, but not sure. Time will tell.

Our initial plan was to keep things simple and low budget with cheap cams, micro cards, OEM software and a POE switch. Funny how that plan is now long-gone

 

[HomeWPoe]

After tinkering with CPAI for a couple days decided to stick with IVS. CPAI was just a too buggy--even after reinstalling it 3-4 times. It would drop off-line randomly---a deal killer for us. The CPAI "auto stop/start" in BI seemed to play a part. With it active it would sometimes never start (after a BI reboot) or simply go off-line after working for a few min. Also noticed a 5-7 sec delay with scripted/curl Pushover alerts with CPAI (even with 200-300ms processing times)---only experienced a 1-2 sec delay with ONVIF/IVS. When CPAI was working properly (both confirming ONVIF/IVS alerts and running solo), its motion detection was excellent. No false alerts even with 30mph winds blowing everything around. It accurately ID'd persons, cars, trucks, bicycles, etc. FWIW, CPAI identified our new Bronco (non-Sport) as a truck--lol!

As for CPAI face detection, we could load known faces and it would manually id them. But, it would never acknowledge or identify a face in a video stream realtime--no matter how close the person was---always reported 'no face detected'.

While installing CPAI we did notice a "winget" error. Winget can be accessed on our BI desktop via the CMD prompt so not sure what's behind this. For all we know this could be the source of all our problems--lol!

Have to say ONVIF/IVS is rock solid. Every alert is quick and legitimate. Would like some of the CPAI toys, but we can certainly live with IVS.

We were using CPAI v2.6.5 (and BI v5.9.8.5). Wonder if we woulda had better luck with an older version of CPAI.

 

[tigerwillow1]

After tinkering with CPAI for a couple days decided to stick with IVS. CPAI was just a too buggy--even after reinstalling it 3-4 times.

I went down the same path, not for the exact same reasons. I'll summarize it as general instability. I stuck with CPAI for at least a month. For me, BI is a lot more stable without CPAI. I have more work to do on windy days when I get a lot of false IVS triggers, but reliability is my #1 priority. If I was a tinkerer with the camera system it might have been ok, or I maybe could have solved the problems I ran into. I'm already tinkering with too many other things, and want the camera system to just work.

 

[HomeWPoe]

I went down the same path, not for the exact same reasons. I'll summarize it as general instability. I stuck with CPAI for at least a month. For me, BI is a lot more stable without CPAI. I have more work to do on windy days when I get a lot of false IVS triggers, but reliability is my #1 priority. If I was a tinkerer with the camera system it might have been ok, or I maybe could have solved the problems I ran into. I'm already tinkering with too many other things, and want the camera system to just work.

I've noticed "wire" placement with IVS is a bit tricky if shadows (from a moving tree or bush) fall on them during a windy day. Took some experimenting to get them positioned right.

As for 'tinkering with too many other things', I hear ya. To be honest, I'm probably using the term tinkering a bit lightly here. The reality is I just exited one of the deeper rabbit holes I've been down in recent memory. Two months ago my security camera and networking skills/knowledge were limited to entering the SSID/key into our old cable router and $20 wireless security cams. Had no idea what a MAC or IP address was, or that Reolink was a curse-word on ipcamtalk---lol!