How do you really use your cams and what's your experience for those use cases? Non-professionals only

[Jono83]

Curious on how the non-professionals really use their security cameras and associated hardware/software on a regular basis.
I ask this because prices and features keep getting better and better but the reality as evidence by all the Q&A on forums like this indicate lots of tweaking, fine tuning, etc. required by most if not all.

So for us amateurs’ how do you guys really use your cams and systems on a regular basis?
My current use cases / experience, priority order for me in table below.

Use Case in priority order	Personal Experience with this Use Case
Live views around the exterior of my house exclusively from my phone/camera apps. I like to be able to see what’s going on around the house when I am not around, i.e. any packages by door, kids playing out front, what’s the cat doing in the back yard, did I forget to close the garage door, etc. (8 Wyze cams provide these views, 3 external IR lights support night time views in darker areas)	95% successful, occasionally the camera vendor apps crash (Wyze & Eufy) but I have learned that a simple restart of my phone tends to make the live views work again.
Monitor equipment, I have 2 cams (Wyze) viewing my pool equipment (Heater display to see water temp of spa) and one on the valves (so I can be sure water flow is going where I want it, pool or spa), Again I get this view on my phone cam vendor app (Wyze)	95% successful, again the Wyze phone app occasionally locks up, but turning phone on/off resets 98% of the time
Alerts/notifications, again for me this is the Wyze app and the Eufy app for their respective cams I have. Wyze cams outside views and Eufy indoor views	Mixed but definitely NOT something you can rely on for anything critical. Yeah I get an alert somebody is at the front door, but also get an alert somebody is by my pool when its really sun reflecting of the water or shadows. So I watch for them and look occasionally but I don’t rely on the alerts/notifications. The Eufy alerts work better than the Wyze alerts in my case (the cam vendor phone apps). But this could also be because the Eufy is indoors. Indoor cams are strictly for when we are out of town.
Review recorded videos (in my case each cam has its own micro sd cards that are recording 24x7)	One time my neighbor had a break in and one of my cams did record some of the break-in activity. I was able to use the phone app (Wyze) to search the recorded history for the possible days in question and voila it worked as advertised, gave the clips to my neighbor and the police, helped them but didn’t result in any arrests. Other than that I thought this would be a feature I would use more. In 2 years I had 1 sd card go bad so pretty reliable. I put this in the potentially useful column, it’s an after the fact potential benefit, so for me it’s a nice to have but so far not worth the effort for me to get my approach to the next level (BI, equipment, etc) to up my game in this particular area.

• I will buy and play with more advanced cameras (really want the color night view for one of my front locations that has good street lighting). Not sure if I’ll ever make the leap to BI and real recording storage as the upside vs effort, for me is definitely questionable.
• 
  
• Thx for sharing your use cases and experiences.

 

[sebastiantombs]

I use the system to monitor around the house, exterior. Review every morning looking at alerts, interesting wildlife (deer, fox, raccoon, cats, ground hogs, possums and an occasional hawk or owl) . It also serves as a "window" to look outside while sitting on the couch with no view to the outside. Monitor for package deliveries and trespassers. Monitor volume of street traffic. Keep an eye on the house while out and about or when traveling (not much traveling with the CCP Virus). I use BI simply due to the size of the system, 14 cameras at the moment.

The Dahua 5442 series if the current king of the hill for low light color capabilities. Available in turret, bullet and dome, fixed focal and varifocal. Yes, BI has a learning curve, but to get the most out of a surveillance system you will, eventually, probably make that leap or a smaller hop to an NVR. To me not using some form of VMS or NVR with cameras is like buying a Corvette and never getting out of first gear.

 

[LittleBrother]

I and wife use live view often. Got the system first set over 5 years ago and barely looked at configuration since, so I would live view often, then review playback fairly often also. The most I ever "caught" on it was my neighbor's dog constantly on our property and I got into it with them and the town (no control over their dog at all).

Since putting my system in I never had any more car break ins or similar anyway, but I always wanted an LPR and am moving in that direction now, even though I live on an even more quiet street than before.

I do nothing with alerts. I keep images on a separate, local FTP server in addition to the video and tend to look for events in still images because I can quickly view thumbnails.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Blue Iris.

I use live view to monitor the exterior of the house and package delivery when I am not home.
Also use live view to check on the dogs both inside and out.
I do not use alerts.
I look at night motion , the next morning.

 

[bp2008]

I use Blue Iris and have almost 30 cameras (I don't need that many, but they are fun). All of them now are Dahua or Hikvision brand, and while they are not 100% reliable, it is very close. Only a few times a year, some camera at random will become unresponsive and need power cycled. Most of the cameras I can reboot remotely via managed PoE switch or web-controllable power switch. Only one camera is on wifi, above my kitchen cabinets (not shown below) where I don't have a network cord, and it is set to a very low bit rate because wifi sucks.



I run two Blue Iris servers at home. One is the "main" system where I record only on motion detection (it keeps many months of video this way). It has a 4K TV hooked up as a monitor, and it is the one I view and interact with on a daily basis, and the one I let family members access remotely. I keep it on the latest bleeding-edge Blue Iris version, and I develop UI3 on it. Stability problems occasionally happen thanks to the occasional buggy Blue Iris update. And besides that, recording only when triggered means it doesn't always capture everything interesting that happens. That is where the secondary server comes in.

My secondary BI server runs headless and does continuous recording of the most important cams. These recordings go to an 8 TB drive and it keeps video going back about a week. I only log in to this server on rare occasions when something interesting happens and I want to export more than the main server had available with its motion-triggered recordings. It hasn't failed me yet.

I view remotely all the time and it works great as long as the power and internet are on. I only use alert notifications when I leave the house for more than a day. In that situation, I have it alert me by email only, and that also tends to work flawlessly.

 

[th182]

I now have 23 cameras on Blue Iris.

I use live view all the time to set what's going on outside. Either checking on the dogs, seeing if the mail is here, or wondering what noise I heard out front. I have monitors in all the rooms we hang out in so I can just glance at them when needed.

All my cams record continuously and I typically review alerts in the morning to see what happened overnight. Most of the time it's the neighbors cat or a fox hunting, but we've had car prowlers a few times now.

I do most of my reviewing on the console through a monitor and keyboard in my office. My wife uses the iOS app. As much as she makes fun of me for all the cameras I think she checks them more than I do!!

I also have LPR setup on a separate machine with two cameras dedicated to this purpose. I check on it occasionally to make sure it's running but otherwise just let it do its thing. The main use for me is alerting me when certain plates are captured. We had a methed out guy knocking on our bedroom windows with brass knuckles over a year ago and he drives by occasionally.

I also have two 25x PTZ cameras with Auto tracking. One covers the back yard and the other the front. The front one's main duty is tracking people who enter my yard or come near our mailboxes. That being said, I have fixed cameras that cover 100% and the PTZs are just for "extra" video if you will. I manually control them when I want to look around, see what an unfamiliar vehicle is doing, what the dogs are barking at, etc.

As far as tinkering goes.. my system is pretty much set it and forget it. When I first set up BI I was playing with settings every day to learn what it was capable of. But like any new toy eventually some of that wears off Now I only adjust stuff if I'm adding a new camera or if I capture something and want to tweak it to get a better image next time. Or I see something new on here that I didnt know could be done! I'm also getting deeper into home automation so learning how to tie BI into that has been fun!!

I came from using a DVR and was dissatisfied with the lack of options it had. Blue Iris is only as complicated as you want it to be. Once you get your initial setup done it can just sit and do its thing. I'm currently helping some friends set up NVRs and can't get over how minimalistic their options are compared to BI.

This is another hobby and it gets expensive if you let it!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[SJGUSMC21]

Pretty much the same as sebastiantombs:

I use the system to monitor around the house, exterior and interior (stay at home wife and remote school daughters when I am at work) and a dedicated tablet in the kitchen for the family to view the front porch and driveway. I review every morning looking at alerts, wildlife (deer, fox, raccoon, cats, and possums) never thought I would have so many recordings of possums pooping in my yard. It also serves as a "window" to look outside. Monitor for package deliveries and trespassers. Keep an eye on the house while out and about. I have a Dahua NVR with 10 (will be 11) cameras. So far I have had 'zero' freeze ups' or malfunctions. I have one Amcrest Wifi PTZ indoor camera.

 

[Timothy TAN]

Guys : I am seeing some of you have 20+ cameras. I am in the midst of setting up Blue Iris with that many; I have 16 older cameras bought in 2015 and have to buy another 10 or so newer ones. All Dahua. My question is : what brand and model / configuration of PC do you have in order to support so many cameras? I am doing this for my home, not a business. I live on acreage, so I do have more cameras than normal I have a Dell Optiplex (i7 just bought this year) that I am testing my Blue Iris evaluation Installation on, but I do want to buy a separate PC or two in order to support the surveillance requirement at home. Also, I am open to adding a NAS for storage, since I am guessing 20+ cameras is a huge load of data to store. Thanks in advance for your advice

Tim

 

[sebastiantombs]

With the substream ability that BI now has hardware, CPU, is not as critical as it used to be. I'm running a total of 55MP/S on an i7-6700K using substreams and rarely hit 10% CPU utilization. Prior to substreams it was in the 30% range. i7 doesn't say much about the processor. The version is the key, as in 6700, 7700 and so on. Without resolution, bit rate and frame rate calculating storage is not possible. How long you want to store it for is another factor. I'm happy with a week worth on disk. I review the alerts daily and export anything that I feel is interesting or critical. That keeps disk storage manageable.

 

[SouthernYankee]

@TimothyTAN
The issues is MP/SEC not number of cameras. Look at Blue Iris Update Helper

Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris

 

[brianegge]

I use my eight Lorex cameras to alert me to wildlife, when a get a package delivered and when a person or video enters the property. I run my DVR headless in the attic and mostly rely on push notifications to my phone.

 

[JNDATHP]

We use Blue Iris in conjunction with HS3, our home automation system. So, when a PERSON enters our front door camera area, we are alerted that someone is at the front door. Similarly, when our gate is opened, an announcement is made.

All of our exterior cameras are recording 24/7.

We have an RCA tablet running UI3 over WiFi that is positioned in our living room next to our couch so we can keep an eye on most of our cameras.

On other computers, if I’m not in our living room, I pull up UI3 if I get an announcement from our Sonos speakers to see what is happening.

My wife was initially reticent about the cameras but now she relies on them to see if someone is at the front door or in our side or back yards. She is totally onboard now.

 

[mzezman]

Hi Everyone,

Noob here - only got my cameras on Monday and am still getting used to setting up, navigating and general functionality in BI. We are moving to a new house in a few weeks and so got them cameras to act as an additional layer of security. Still trying to figure out if they will record continuously or only on motion trigger. Ultimately would like to integrate to HomeAssistant and my home alarm as well

 

[NielK]

I started with a cheap Longse camera + NVR as recommended by a local CCTV shop. I learned loads from this forum and upgraded to 8 x Dahua 5442 and BI - it's in a different league, especially at night. Mainly used for spotting wildlife visitors (from rats upwards) but it doesn't hurt to have a couple of visible bullets on the front of the house.

BI headless server with most of the cameras recording 7x24. I use the (brilliant) UI3 to look at the alerts in the morning. At this time of year the leaf fall gives load of false alarms but that's an acceptable downside of wanting to detect small creatures.