Hello / Looking for advice

[Nixon]

Hello,

My name's Evan, I recently became the IT administrator at the health club where I worked as a life guard. (I've had a strange career path at this place) My employer is putting in a security camera system and had a contractor come in but the quote was ridiculously high so he'd like me to do it.

My plan right now is to use Blue Iris on the company server (should work having looked at the specs compared to what is in NVRs but I may use an NVR if there is a big performance hit to the servers other tasks)

Problem is I know nothing about cameras! I know a good deal about computers and enough about networking to setup the domain in the office, I've been going off the quote given to us by the contractor as far as specs (Beat their quote by over $11,000 so I feel pretty good about that) but I'm not 100% sure what I've found is compatible with Blue Iris (or the NVR if the server and blue iris doesn't work)

Right now I'm looking at:
12 HIKVISION DS-2CD2131I 2.8mm
6 HIKVISION DS-2CD2131I 4mm
2 or 3 Linksys LCAD03VLNOD

If the server doesn't pan out I found a good deal on a Dahua NVR4232-4P

So I guess my question is do these cameras all work with Blue Iris?
Do they all work with the NVR if I go that route? (They all say they comply with ONVIF but I read somewhere that doesn't necessarily mean they'll work together)

If they don't work together what would you recommend?
Are there any alternative's you'd recommend in general?

Thanks for any and all help! I'm somewhat clueless going into this and I don't wanna make a costly screw up!

 

[bp2008]

Hello! Welcome to the forum!

I assume you meant to write DS-2CD2132-I for the Hikvision models. There are a few things you should know about that model.

It is fairly common for this model to have IR bleeding issues (causing a foggy effect in the video at night) caused by the foam ring around the lens not properly blocking all the infrared light. See: http://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php?1177-Hikvision-Foggy
and also see the attached technical bulletin. This problem can typically be corrected with some physical tweaking of the foam ring.

Another issue is that the DS-2CD2132-I is not 3-axis-adjustable. Only 2-axis. This means you can't rotate the camera module behind the dome so you can't position the camera in 'portrait' mode (rotated 90 degrees) even if you want to, and it just about requires a perfectly horizontal mounting surface to ensure the video isn't rotated incorrectly. There is apparently an upgraded model with an SD card slot and 3-axis mounting, the DS-2CD2132F-I. If you like the dome form factor, I recommend that model instead. It will be much less trouble to mount.

Alternatively, there is the DS-2CD2332-I which is a white turret-shaped camera that uses a single very strong infrared LED instead of a ring of smaller ones, and it is practically impossible for that model to have IR bleeding issues.

Regarding the Linksys 5MP dome cameras, I recommend you buy Hikvision instead as this will make compatibility a lot easier. Consider something like Hikvision DS-2CD7283F-EIZ instead of the Linksys 5mp domes.

I am sure all those cameras would work with Blue Iris, as practically everything works with Blue Iris. The problem is you are looking at about 20 multi-megapixel cameras and that is a very heavy load for any Blue Iris server. I run 20 similar cameras on my Blue Iris server, and I have to use every trick in the book to keep the CPU usage under control on an i7-3770k system. I try to keep constant CPU usage below 50% so it won't go near 100% when I'm remote viewing and cameras are recording (these things cost more CPU time). I have to use direct to disk recording and limit frame rates to an average of 6 FPS per camera. Memory usage is close to 2.5 GB (making the 64 bit version important, as it used to sometimes run out of memory back in 32-bit Blue Iris).

An alternative to Blue Iris would be to use Hikvision's iVMS software. It is free and works with Hikvision cameras exclusively. It should be a whole lot more efficient with CPU than Blue Iris, and you won't have to compromise on frame rate. Though I have never personally used the iVMS software, so I can't go into further details. A Hikvision brand NVR should also work but you'll need a fairly high spec one to handle about 20 cameras. A lot of them are designed for 4, 8, or 16 cams.

Now, assuming you don't end up with an NVR with PoE ports, you will need PoE switches to power the cameras and feed the data back to the PC. A switch with 24 PoE ports and some gigabit uplink ports (for the PCs/router/other switches) costs between $100 used on ebay and $300+ new on Amazon.com. They are fairly large and have fairly noisy fans and they require you to run all camera network cables back to one spot to plug them in to a PoE port. Kind of a pain in some cases. You can also get smaller fanless PoE switches with 4 or 8 PoE ports each.

The last thing I'll mention is that with 20 cams you can easily overload a 100 Mbps network, so make sure your backbone is gigabit. As you are the IT admin, I'm sure you already know all about how to do that.

 

[Nixon]

Thanks for the info!

I think I'm definitely going to swap out the linksys for the Hikvision and try their free software. My server has a Xeon E3-1230 v3 which has slightly worse performance benchmarks than your i7 so I'd likely run into the same issues you described.

I think all the DS-2CD2132-I cameras are going to be ceiling mounted and there won't be a need for portrait viewing but I'll definitely look into the DS-2CD2132F-I if the cost isn't much different. With the DS-2CD2132F-I it comes up multiple times with an (WS) or (S)(W) afterwards. I don't see it anywhere as just DS-2CD2132F-I so I want to be sure I'm looking at the right one.

And yes I figured a gigabit network would be a must for this. Ours is currently 100Mbs but I'm running new cables and getting a new switch specifically for the cameras. Do you have any specific PoE switches? I was looking on newegg but couldn't find one with enough PoE ports. Most had only half the ports as PoE except for a 48 port netgear I'd found but I'd rather not spend that much money. I'd probably want more than 24 ports though because there are 5 VOIP phones that I'm going to run off the switch as well that typically won't be in use (They're just for calling 911 if someone has an emergency in an area far away from the main phone)

 

[bp2008]

In hikvision model numbers, I believe the letters after the last hyphen indicate certain features, like this:

I - Infrared
S - Sound (microphone, speaker, or both)
W - WiFi

and F just before the last hyphen I think indicates an SD cart slot.

For a switch, I use a lot of 4-PoE TP-Link switches: Amazon.com: TP-LINK TL-SF1008P 10/100Mbps 8-Port PoE Switch, 4 POE ports, IEEE 802.3af, 53W: Electronics and they work great.

I used to have 4 of those in my garage but I swapped them out for a Netgear FS728TP which is 24x 10/100 PoE ports, 4x gigabit uplink ports, and a 192 watt power budget. It of course has fans and is noisy but it works. Its built in web server is extremely slow but that is really the only complaint I have about it. If I was to buy another switch of the same style though I would get a NETGEAR ProSAFE M4100-26-POE instead. It has only 2 gigabit uplinks and is $100 cheaper but it still has 24x PoE ports and an incredible 384 watt power budget (not that you need that much power). Amazon.com: NETGEAR ProSAFE M4100-26-POE 24 Port Fast Ethernet Managed Switch w/ PoE 10/100 Mbps: Computers & Accessories

 

[Nixon]

My only concern with those switches is the lack of [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]802.3at support. Two of the cameras are outdoors and it goes below the minimum temperature without the heater on a regular basis so I was looking to get the model with the (h) option so it did't die outside when it goes below 0 again next winter.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I'm actually debating on upgrading the entirety of our network while I'm at it and getting a switch along these lines and using it for the entire network.

[/FONT]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122540[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]

Having a 1gig backbone for the entire building would be extremely helpful for certain computers that are regularly querying large reports from our membership database. It also needs to happen anyways as the owner is planning on bringing in a ton of tenants who are likely going to be using our network for internet connectivity and networks.

The last thing I'm kinda stuck on is storage size and what the standard framerates used are. I've gathered that the standard to keep the video is a min of 30 days but I'm not sure how to do that on 16TB (the amount we were quoted originally) of HDD space unless the quality is going to take a serious hit... I know it's supposed to be 1080p using H.264 but what is a standard frame rate people use for business security systems? I've seen 6-10 thrown around but 6 requires 32TB of HDD space for this many cameras.

I was using this calculator in trying to figure it out.

[/FONT]http://www.supercircuits.com/resources/tools/security-nvr-storage-calculator[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]
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