IP cameras software recommendation around a home with android notifications

[mwm]

Hey,
I'm trying to put a low electricity use system of 4 IP cameras around the outside of the house so I'm likely to get one of those Intel NUC boxes that idle at 4 watts and hit a load at peak of 11 watts

I've been looking at demo documentation for the popular software packages like XProtect Go, Axxon Next and Blue Iris.

They all seem to cover the basics but my concern is with both the motion detection, ability to scrub through the changes, and useful notifications.

Light CPU usage for human detection
With motion shadows from branches are quite the pain so I was hoping that there would be some package that could be able to detect something human shaped or car shaped in the driveway. I'm worried about software that will need to do full decoding at 30 fps per camera absolutely hammering the CPU. Any suggestions for software that takes this into account?

Android app
I've been looking at google play screenshots for apps and strangely I haven't found anything similar to my use case?
I want to get one of those £50 awful tablets left plugged in running an app or service so when someone walks up the driveway the server software can detect it, send a notification to the tablet to wake up the screen and display the live feed from that camera. If worst comes to worst I could write that app myself provided the server software can be hooked from its trigger "there's a human shape walking up the driveway"

I haven't seen anything useful for phones though. They all seem to be live viewers? Would be nice to get a push notification based on the trigger when we are out and about. I really hope I don't have to build this myself :numbness:

Scrub through motion
Anyone have a favourite piece of software that will display an easy to use screen (windows or android) to list all the times significant motion was detected and help just show that from today? I don't think my mum will be able to handle a super complex UI that makes it hard to find who was in the garden through 8 hours of nothingness.


Thanks for any insight, I'm paralysed by choice here. I don't mind paying £50 for the software if it can do the above. Once I figure what software is best to use on the windows machine I can then work backwards and pick cameras that work well with it.

 

[Theendisnye]

Android app
I haven't seen anything useful for phones though. They all seem to be live viewers? Would be nice to get a push notification based on the trigger when we are out and about. I really hope I don't have to build this myself

I use blueiris to trigger an event in event ghost which then provides the logic on what to do next. One of the options is to run growlnotifier to send an alert to any ipad or iPhone running prowl. You could simplify that by using blueiris to trigger growlnotifier directly. I believe a similar option exists for android in the form of NMA (notify my android)

steve

 

[fenderman]

Blue iris can send push notifications direct to the android app. You may have trouble running it on a low power NUC, depending on the cameras and your settings.

 

[icerabbit]

(note: amateur here testing the waters with IP cams)

I'm still on a bit of a similar quest. Particularly interested in data scrubbing.

I've looked at the NUCs (as an alternative to Synology NAS which seems to stick to atom cpus that limit cam processing capability, and still charge a premium for old tech in this day and age) . One would probably need one of the core models to deal with the particulars of windows and multiple mp image feed processing.

Haven't tested blueiris, yet. Axxon Next, while they have a viewer profile, is rather complex, and going through the recorded data is a real chore. Doesn't matter if you're a geek or grandmother, it is a chore and laborious.

Notifications. As with anything (built in foscam, hikvision, synology surveillance) I'm getting so many false positives due to weather changes sun/clouds rolling through, rain, wind, dusk/dawn video noise before IR kicks in, ... that I've kind of given up on notifications for the time being. You have to set it on the sensitive side to have somewhat of a guarantee of motion detection. But, none of these things seem understand weather. Only pixel changes. On a super calm sunny day it'll work perfect and send that one notification when ups/fedex/... pulls up. On an average day with some clouds, and god forbid it rains for several hours, it would be like a landslide of SPAM.

Of course every install is different and in some cases you can have a very finely delineated field of view that isn't going to suffer much from false positives. Notifications might work for me with indoor cameras, while away from home ... but cheap camera video noise and sun/shade due to clouds would remain an issue.

I've tried to get axxon next setup on a big screen to show the thumbnail for every clip it stored, but it seems like it does a thumbnail for every motion trigger ... still need to play with it some more.

The easiest to review data - from the few things I've tried - is Synology surveillance, but of course $$$ for a unit, which in review will put 4 cams up at a time, I think, as it has a sidebar showing 4 colums. Only tried it with the one free license, it is now two free but I have to upgrade DSM & SS.

Anyway. Just my 2c, that notifications sounds better than practice for me.

 

[pcmcg]

I have NUC i5 (windows 8 pro) running IVMs4200 right now with 2 cams. The power usage really is around 7W idle. It goes up a little when its recording, not much. Playback over RDP will jump it to near 20W. I tried blue iris and each cam was using around 30% CPU, so I think you can't expect that to work. My end goal is to move to milestone X-protect system. The CPU usage with IVMs is like 1 or 2%. I can report back when I set up my 2 other cams to let you know how that changes. My current uptime on machine is 22.5 days w/ no issue.

 

[networkcameracritic]

The 4th gen i5 used in that NUC is a little faster than my first gen i3-540 processor, so they call it an i5 and way slower than a 4th gen i3 but certainly much faster than even the modern day Atom. Given that, I'm running Milestone XProtect as a server on my 1st gen i3-540, with 10 cameras, most are 3MP except for 2 that are 1.3MP. Most are using camera side motion detect and I'm running 10-15% CPU, maybe spikes to 20% if there's simultaneous recording. It jumps to about 60-70% when using the mobile app. Does not increase much when using Smart Client or the Web Client.

What would kill it is if you try an view 10 cameras at the same time, so I strictly use it as a server, and view the cameras via Smart Client from my desktop which is a 4th gen i7. Alternatively, you can set it up so it uses the sub-stream for live view and the main-stream for recording so that you can display more cameras from the same PC.

I do like the idea of the NUC for this, certainly small and efficient. What's the largest capacity hard drive that will fit? It says 9.5mm, but some 2TB drives are larger. Any thin 2TB+ drives?

 

[mwm]

. I tried blue iris and each cam was using around 30% CPU, so I think you can't expect that to work. My end goal is to move to milestone X-protect system. The CPU usage with IVMs is like 1 or 2%.

Is that 30% CPU per camera when recording/motion detection or per camera when trying to play back? Because if it consumes 30% just for recording/motion then I really want to avoid software that unoptomised.

What is IVM?

 

[networkcameracritic]

It's the capitalization that's off, I'm sure he meant iVMS (Hikvision's NVR software is called iVMS4200 PCNVR). It's not that it's not optimized, it's that lower end software tends to do motion detection on the PC, that means decoding each multi-megapixel h.264 stream at 30 fps and it's very CPU intensive. Software like Exacq, Milestone or vendor provided software like iVMS4200 lets the camera deal with motion detection and it just records, so CPU use is much, much, much lower. Milestone has a free version call Go with limitations like 8 cameras, 5 days recording are the major ones, Exacq does not have anything free, iVMS4200 PCNVR is free, but limited to Hikvision cameras only. The reason I switched from BlueIris to Milestone pay version despite the cost is computer cost, a trade off I found in favor of the software.

 

[networkcameracritic]

I'm sold on the Intel NUC concept, thanks for bringing that to our attention. I ordered the i5 NUC which is plenty of power for my 10 cameras with Milestone, a 2TB hard drive and 4GB RAM. My NVR PC throws off so much heat, it's crazy. My office is the warmest room in the house and I'm going to say that PC, plus my normal desktop, plus my Tivo, plus my PoE switch generate all the excess heat and I'm sure that heat comes at the expense of electricity usage. I can get the Tivo out of my office. Can't do anything about my desktop, has to stay but I'm confident the NUC will put out a small fraction of the heat the current NVR PC puts out. What's cool, since it's about 4x4", it can easily be hidden out of the way and hidden.

 

[icerabbit]

Can't wait to hear more about the i5 NUC performance and maybe additional specs. And, how it deals with things if it has to record from all cameras simultaneously; as I need a better test bed or zone in on final nvr solution.

(side story) Hikv cam 3 & 4 came in. Hooked up for testing. Direct view in browser is fine. Onto the test nvr pc with Axxon. It doesn't want to show any footage for them. Figured I could try the hikvision software (cheap ) Fired up iVMS 4200, added 4 cams. Now the Core2Quad averages at 60% CPU just running iVMS 4200 showing the 4 cams on screen. No recording yet, as it requires a separate dedicated hard drive (don't have an empty spare handy right this sec). 40% without live view. Some of the live footage is delayed by several secs (walk past cam 1 then 2, and on screen it'll show it in different order) so, I'm going to need to test on better hardware to move forward and deal with probably 8 cams 3mp hikvision running at 1920x1080. Especially if they're all going to send lots of data simultaneously when it snows, rains, ...

I know I will have to settle in camera detection too, which is fine, in trial I was letting syno ss or axxon do it.

Would like the ability to have one or more TVs or computers to display a mosaic of all installed cameras, as someone else is discussing. Leave the nvr in a safe place, then have an extra display on the computer as a monitor. Have the TV default to hdmi 1 with a live view of things.

 

[icerabbit]

For those interested. First look (for me personally) PC Windows Core i7 iVMS. If iVMS existed for a current mac I'd done this earlier

Running iVMS4200 v2 on a quad Core i7 3.4Ghz w 12GB RAM Win7 Home Premium SP1
4x 3mp cams at 1920x1080, nighttime b/w, indoor views, average quality (need to check settings per cam directly, I think)
Live view. 4-up / 2x2 on regular (full hd) monitor.

iVMS using 5-6% CPU & 350MB RAM, data i/o is 1% at 15mbps (nothing going on, b/w, ...)

System total: CPU 8-10%. RAM 25%

Which is an encouraging start.

Question remains what a dual core i5 will do vs a quad core i7, and what would happen in the daytime when 4-6-8 or so cams are either pushing lots of outdoor fine details at 2mp or 3mp; or all requesting to be recorded because it rains or so. Fortunately no snow this time of year I think I'd seriously have succumb to cabin fever if winter were that long

Anyhow, I'm eager to post some daytime numbers. Don't know what the recording hit is. IVMS requires a dedicated recording HDD which isn't here yet.

But if this continues to pan out well. I can see a fast Intel NUC approaching that'll be loaded up with some goodies, connected to the LAN and a batch of cameras. Time to hang the cameras, run the wires, plug it all in, end of research project and learning curve .

 

[adudley]

IVMS requires a dedicated recording HDD which isn't here yet.

Hi, iVMS 4200 version 1.03.00.04 doesn't need a dedicated HDD.

You 'can' use any hard disk with other data on, but it will completely fill that disk 'ready' for recording.

So you could just use your c: drive for testing if you like.


Do report back on how it's going. I'm thinking of using iVMS PCNVR too

 

[icerabbit]

Interesting. I did get iVMS version 2 and per the manual, page 32 in the PDF, it says the storage server drive has to be formatted before being accepted to record onto. Formatting is not something I want done to the primary drive, and hopefully they even prevent you from doing that!

Now, I could re-partition the primary drive (from 2 (C: and D: recovery) to 3), but I've had some bad experiences with that one too many times; doing it after the fact, and I don't need that on my plate. I like to do it to blank drives. So, I will probably dust off an external backup drive shortly to give recording and motion detection a go.

Update as far daytime iVMS.

Looking good. 4 cams up. Resource monitor says: iVMS = avg CPU 12% (hovers between 10-14), RAM 380MB (committed/reserved, 300 factual), network 750KB/s per outdoor camera, 120-200KB/s per indoor camera. Not at highest quality setting.
Entire system, with just Win 7, Firefox, iVMS and whatever goes on by default: 14-17% CPU 26% RAM (of the 12GB)
And, that 26% is mostly Windows. I see Firefox using 400MB, iVMS 350MB then svchost 200MB. The latter may tie into whatever iVMS is doing. In which case it'd be >500MB let's say for 4-up.

I haven't really seen a downside yet to iVMS. It is pretty straightforward. May need to look at the manual for a setup thing. Of course it only works with hikvision cameras. Can't hook up the little cheapo foscam ptz.

I will report back.

PS: One small thing that nags me is lack of UI screen adjustment, whether it is a fixed size popup to adjust some settings where stuff gets cutoff and you need to pan around inside of it to read and make adjustments; or lack of adjustment corners and re-sizable edges on the regular screen when it isn't full screen. I'm kind of stickler on that kind of detail. Design the UI so stuff fits. But loads developers do it, even MS & Apple have their issues.

 

[adudley]

Ahh, yes, the wording isn't so helpful. and I didn't risk it the first time neither. One word translated wrong in the above and boom, I've lost all my data.

but in the end, it was ok. it's not 'formatting' like we are used to. It's more 'take up all the space ready for recording' is what it actually means!

 

[icerabbit]

Ah, I see. A little translation error there perhaps. I didn't click through on it and pulled up the manual. Said. Nope. Not going there.

Axxon next just lets you reserve a block of however many GB you prefer or entire drives. Complicated software, many options, not that user friendly, didn't seem compatible with the two domes that I just got either.

Anyhow. I think it is good practice to separate out the recording stuff to a dedicated drive though and put less stress on the main drive. That is of course assuming that windows will allow the C: drive to spin down and rest while the NVR software is in RAM and recording motion to the slave drive. The fast nuc I'm envisioning can hold both a small ssd and laptop drive, which is probably the route I will go; and maybe strap it to back of a display via the vesa mount (though many monitors skip those now)

... still have to sort out remote viewing access too into iVMS, so the nvr can be one place and you can tap into from another computer. I have to play around more with ivms on the ipad & phone.