Help a father set up surveillance for baby/baby sitters!

[sami1255]

Preface
I am a dad of a little one-year-old. My self, and wife are working full time and plan to hire a housemaid. While you got to trust who you entrust your child with, but I haven't done this before and need to have a surveillance/watch on what's going on to develop a mental peace at least in the early days of leaving my child with a stranger

Technical Set Up at Present
I would consider myself as technically literate. Currently virtualizing a small form factor (SFF) PC to run home router and unifi controller for AP. Have a POE switch and can purchase/extend more if need to.

Options
I have been thinking of getting another SFF computer and run Blueiris. But I am also a bit worried about redundancy i-e hard disk failures. That lead me to research a NAS which I'd connect to SFF and have blueiris save vids on NAS.

On the flip side, I have been thinking of getting a ready system out of the box which just works (plug n play).

Wishlist

1. Budget - 1000 - 1200 USD
2. 4-6 cameras
3. Reliable
4. Reliable
5. Reliable
6. At least one-way audio
7. Secure
8. Accessible on the go
9. Scalable - preferably to other brands but I can live with just one brand if the brand checks other choices.

 

[looney2ns]

Blue Iris is hands down the best option.
Study this>>> Cliff Notes.

 

[bp2008]

I don't know about availability or import taxes in UAE, but in the USA you can get a used i5-6500 SFF system for $200-$250. 8 GB RAM, Windows license included.

Then add Dahua Starlight cameras. This is a good choice: Aliexpress.com : Buy New Arriving IP Camera 2MP IR Eyeball Network Camera IPC HDW4231EM ASE,free DHL shipping fee from Reliable ip camera 2mp suppliers on Empire Technology Co., Ltd

6 of those cameras would be around $732 USD. A Blue Iris license is $60 USD. Blue Iris's official mobile apps are a separate purchase. $10 for iOS. $10 for Android. Or use the free web interface which works fine on Android. Add on the cost of an 8 port PoE switch and network cables and you are pretty close to $1200 USD.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7. Your router almost certainly has VPN server capabilities already, so use that.
8.
9.

 

[bp2008]

I didn't cover a storage solution above, assuming you would just record on motion detect and use whatever drive came with the system. Recording on motion detect, you can get weeks or months on a 500 GB drive. It is overkill recording with a lot of redundancy. Almost everything you record is going to be worthless, and the chance of a disk failure at a critical moment is really low. If you are worried about it, just mirror two drives in Windows and don't worry about more complex RAID or NAS setups. Blue Iris can be a bit tricky to get working well with a NAS.

 

[sami1255]

I don't know about availability or import taxes in UAE, but in the USA you can get a used i5-6500 SFF system for $200-$250. 8 GB RAM, Windows license included.

Then add Dahua Starlight cameras. This is a good choice: Aliexpress.com : Buy New Arriving IP Camera 2MP IR Eyeball Network Camera IPC HDW4231EM ASE,free DHL shipping fee from Reliable ip camera 2mp suppliers on Empire Technology Co., Ltd

6 of those cameras would be around $732 USD. A Blue Iris license is $60 USD. Blue Iris's official mobile apps are a separate purchase. $10 for iOS. $10 for Android. Or use the free web interface which works fine on Android. Add on the cost of an 8 port PoE switch and network cables and you are pretty close to $1200 USD.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7. Your router almost certainly has VPN server capabilities already, so use that.
8.
9.

Thank you very much for the input.

I can definitely can get my hands on another SFF from used market here for about 150 USD.

I just have a quick question around starlight cameras. How do they compare with other brands like hikvision or Ubiquiti?

 

[bp2008]

I don't remember any direct comparison reviews but Hikvision does have DS-2CD2325FWD-I and DS-2CD2335FWD-I which are similar to the Dahua starlight cam I linked above. How similar, I could not say. I really couldn't begin to guess if Ubiquiti can match the low-light performance of Dahua or Hikvision.