I.T. Director, Registered Nurse and whatever else I am asked to do in need of a solution...

[bp2008]

Based on the sensor size, those cameras are overpriced by about 2-3x. See what I mean,

http://amzn.com/dp/B07RHQGS8V

You can get a 1/1.2" 4K sensor for the kind of price that installer was proposing:

http://amzn.com/dp/B0BC18KVF7

However those particular cameras don't support infrared, instead they are meant to be used only with regular visible light, and they don't need much to capture decent color video. I'm not personally a fan of having visible-light LEDs on cameras, so I would want to turn off the built-in LEDs on these and just use other external lighting.

 

[mat200]

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Quick look .. many small sensors .. 1/2.7" 1/2.8" 1/3" ...

Guessing Hikvision OEM .. but not certain ..

 

[bp2008]

Guessing Hikvision OEM .. but not certain ..

Some of them perhaps, but they have a lot of NDAA compliant cameras too which are certainly not Hikvision or Dahua as those are explicitly banned for NDAA compliance. Not sure if that matters in this case.

 

[ipcam_Griz]

@mat200 Agreed. The installer has been trustworthy and rock solid when it comes to pulling cable for me, however I believe I am going to suggest we purchase the cameras and NVR ourselves and simply use him as the installer? I might even suggest some other cameras and NVR and ask him to see what he can do price wise using my suggested set up. Is there an advantage to going with turrets inside as well, versus using the domes?

We were budgeting for about $6-9K out the door for hardware and install. To save myself some research time, what cameras do you all recommend? We need about 11 cams inside to cover all entry doors and about 7 on outside, two on the front parking lot, two in the rear, on West and East looking down the side of the building and another in a outside hallway looking out. (See pictures)

@Flintstone61 See pictures. Not great in the front mostly soffit cans and low reaching floods, wall floods and parking lot poles in the rear.

Thanks gentlemen, I do appreciate your wisdom. Truly.

 

[Flintstone61]

The installer can't go by Amazon pricing though....There is going to be a markup....

 

[ipcam_Griz]

The installer can't go by Amazon pricing though....There is going to be a markup....

Totally understandable and I can respect that.

 

[mat200]

@mat200 Agreed. The installer has been trustworthy and rock solid when it comes to pulling cable for me, however I believe I am going to suggest we purchase the cameras and NVR ourselves and simply use him as the installer? I might even suggest some other cameras and NVR and ask him to see what he can do price wise using my suggested set up. Is there an advantage to going with turrets inside as well, versus using the domes?

We were budgeting for about $6-9K out the door for hardware and install. To save myself some research time, what cameras do you all recommend? We need about 11 cams inside to cover all entry doors and about 7 on outside, two on the front parking lot, two in the rear, on West and East looking down the side of the building and another in a outside hallway looking out. (See pictures)

@Flintstone61 See pictures. Not great in the front mostly soffit cans and low reaching floods, wall floods and parking lot poles in the rear.

Thanks gentlemen, I do appreciate your wisdom. Truly.

In general most of us prefer Turrets vs Domes as Domes degrade more over time .. ( plastic dome, and foam / rubber within the dome due to UV exposure and heat ) .. Turrets seem to be more durable over members use

 

[ipcam_Griz]

That was what I was reading and that makes total sense. Thanks! I am going to have to alot some time to research what cameras would work best in our situation.

 

[looney2ns]

It really is hard to beat these cams indoors and out.
They come with varifocal lens so you can fine tune the field of view to what is important.
They also come in a fixed lens version as well.
Review-OEM Loryta IPC-T5442T-ZE Varifocal 4mp camera (Dahua) | IP Cam Talk

 

[ipcam_Griz]

Thanks @looney2ns ! I see this thread is over two years old, the IPC-T5442T-ZE is still recommended then? Also, what do y'all recommend for an decent NVR in this situation or is it recommended to just go with BlueIris or should be consider doing both BI and an NVR (Amcrest or Dahua)? If the latter, which 18+ (32)cam NVR do y'all like best? I would prefer the option to monitor via mobile when needed.

 

[wittaj]

Yes the 5442 is still the king of cameras overall. The 4K/X is the newer "better" model, but it has a defined use case - it doesn't come in a varifocal and it cannot see infrared light, so light is needed at night for it to work, either ambient or the built-in white LED of the cameras.

The 5xxx series of the Dahua OEM by @EMPIRETECANDY would be the preferred NVR if you want to go that route. The Amcrest is built by Dahua but the Amcrest usually has capacity stripped to sell to budget minded consumers.

 

[looney2ns]

Thanks @looney2ns ! I see this thread is over two years old, the IPC-T5442T-ZE is still recommended then? Also, what do y'all recommend for an decent NVR in this situation or is it recommended to just go with BlueIris or should be consider doing both BI and an NVR (Amcrest or Dahua)? If the latter, which 18+ (32)cam NVR do y'all like best? I would prefer the option to monitor via mobile when needed.

Yes, absolutely, it's still the all around workhorse king. It has AI so it can distinguish between humans and automobiles from shadows and leaves moving. This cuts down on the false alerts greatly.
It can be viewed remotely with a proper VPN setup on premises.
How to Secure Your Network (Don't Get Hacked!) | IP Cam Talk
This NVR: Link

If you go with Blue Iris there is absolutely no need for an additional NVR as well.

 

[ipcam_Griz]

Thank you - Y'all rock!!

So I can configure this 5xxx Series to allow us to view remotely OR with our servers onsite, would it be more advantageous to go with a BI license also to allow more simple online viewing option? Any idea how difficult is it to set up a virtual BI server with or with out a NVR?

I am going to send this info to the installer and ask him to price out all of this with install. Seems, if he researches a little, he could probably still make about the same $ on the cameras. His NVR quote is about 2-3x what the Dahua cost, so he should be able to make a little on that as well, plus the amount he will making for the install. I am not asking for much but quality at a fair price.

 

[ipcam_Griz]

Sent the info to the installer. He is concerned about the 'hackability' of the Dahua cams. Considering the HIPAA concerns, would it be a better option to go completely with BI as @sebastiantombs recommends to provide a layer of security?

 

[wittaj]

Any camera can be hacked, even more so the NDAA compliant ones because people get complacent and allow them to touch the internet under the false pretense that NDAA compliant means something. The cameras he proposed are just as easy to be hacked as Dahua....

As long as you don't give the cameras or the NVR internet access, you are good to go. Don't use P2P on the NVR and instead VPN when you need to see remotely.

Personally I would say go the BI route LOL, but it comes down to each intended use.

 

[ipcam_Griz]

I asked my installer (He gonna be no happy probably) to quote me for the 18 Dahua cameras previously suggested with a POE switch and wire pull/drop install costs. We will plumb the cameras into a POE switch on an isolated network and run them into BI on remote form factor windows device. We can then employ MFA to access the BI server from anywhere/anytime. In my mind this will work perfect. What do y'all think?

 

[bp2008]

I asked my installer (He gonna be no happy probably) to quote me for the 18 Dahua cameras previously suggested with a POE switch and wire pull/drop install costs. We will plumb the cameras into a POE switch on an isolated network and run them into BI on remote form factor windows device. We can then employ MFA to access the BI server from anywhere/anytime. In my mind this will work perfect. What do y'all think?

I also recommend isolating the Blue Iris machine from the rest of your office network as much as possible. There's no reason for it to be able to make outbound connections to anything in your office. All remote access to Blue Iris will be through remote desktop or similar, or Blue Iris's embedded web server which is just any TCP port of your choice. Both of these are things you could easily allow via a firewall rule at the router while blocking other traffic between networks.

Note that Blue Iris's built-in web server does not support HTTPS natively, but you can run an HTTPS reverse proxy server on the BI machine to ensure all traffic on the wire is encrypted if you like.

 

[ipcam_Griz]

Anybody able to do the quick math on suggested level of device I am going to need to run 18 cams on BI on: CPU size | RAM amount | HDD size?

 

[looney2ns]

Anybody able to do the quick math on suggested level of device I am going to need to run 18 cams on BI on: CPU size | RAM amount | HDD size?

16 gb ram is good, 32gb is better.
Hard drive size depends on how long you want to retain video, I would start with at least one 8tb Wd purple drive.
This pc has room for two HD's and appropriate cpu: Link
Also see this: Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris

 

[looney2ns]

You can also calculate here: Calculating Required Hard Drive Size