Gimmons
Getting comfortable
I've been slowly building my security system. I started by sorting out the camera coverage, and recently, I have been getting Blue Iris going, mostly to my satisfaction.
Initially, I set up motion detection with zone crossings in Blue Iris, and it worked well during the day, but at night, the headlights of every car driving by triggered the system. I thought about getting a thermal camera, but was advised by wittaj and bigredfish to try IVS, one of the in-camera motion detection systems in many Dahua cameras. I did, and it works very well.
In my reading of other posts, I see that there's some confusion on how to set it up, so briefly, this is what I learned that I didn't see clearly stated in other posts.
1. Turn off all other motion detection in both Blue Iris and the cameras. I have three cameras covering my driveway, and two of them, an Empiretech 4K-T Color and an IPC-HDBW5441F-AS-E2 "boobie camera," have several layers of motion detection, of which IVS is only one. Under the video settings, I had to disable motion detection, which automatically disabled smart motion detection. All you want is IVS, which is found in the Events settings.
In Blue Iris, you want to go to the settings for each Onvif camera, then into Trigger settings and uncheck Motion Sensors, but do check ONVIF/camera events. Under the Video tab, click Network IP Configure and use the Find/inspect to get the settings. It will probably give you generic Onvif camera settings rather than Dahua specific settings. That's ok. Make sure your RTSP settings include 'proto=Onvif' if the camera is an Onvif camera. Check the 'Get Onvif Events' box for Onvif cameras.
Here's something that may not be obvious. One of my cameras is built in to the VTO (VTO2202f-p...) intercom. Blue Iris detects it as an Onvif camera, but the Onvif content is all related to its access control functions. For non-Onvif cameras, don't include 'proto=Onvif' in the RTSP settings, and don't check the ONVIF/camera events box. Also don't check the Motion sensors box under triggers. Instead, sync the non-Onvif camera to one of your Onvif cameras, and let the other camera turn it on. If you have the Onvif settings on, you will get an 8000 error (general failure error) in the ONVIF/camera events Configure detail.
2. Sync your cameras clocks to the NTP time server. If your camera has a different time than Blue Iris sees, you'll get an error.
3. I don't think it was an issue for me, but just to be safe, reset your Onvif password in the camera to match your camera password. I don't think Blue Iris has a setting to handle a different Onvif password.
So that's what I learned as of June 2023. Hopefully it will help someone else figure out how to get IVS going. My neighbors headlights no longer cause false triggers. Now I just have to come up with another reason to buy that thermal camera.
Initially, I set up motion detection with zone crossings in Blue Iris, and it worked well during the day, but at night, the headlights of every car driving by triggered the system. I thought about getting a thermal camera, but was advised by wittaj and bigredfish to try IVS, one of the in-camera motion detection systems in many Dahua cameras. I did, and it works very well.
In my reading of other posts, I see that there's some confusion on how to set it up, so briefly, this is what I learned that I didn't see clearly stated in other posts.
1. Turn off all other motion detection in both Blue Iris and the cameras. I have three cameras covering my driveway, and two of them, an Empiretech 4K-T Color and an IPC-HDBW5441F-AS-E2 "boobie camera," have several layers of motion detection, of which IVS is only one. Under the video settings, I had to disable motion detection, which automatically disabled smart motion detection. All you want is IVS, which is found in the Events settings.
In Blue Iris, you want to go to the settings for each Onvif camera, then into Trigger settings and uncheck Motion Sensors, but do check ONVIF/camera events. Under the Video tab, click Network IP Configure and use the Find/inspect to get the settings. It will probably give you generic Onvif camera settings rather than Dahua specific settings. That's ok. Make sure your RTSP settings include 'proto=Onvif' if the camera is an Onvif camera. Check the 'Get Onvif Events' box for Onvif cameras.
Here's something that may not be obvious. One of my cameras is built in to the VTO (VTO2202f-p...) intercom. Blue Iris detects it as an Onvif camera, but the Onvif content is all related to its access control functions. For non-Onvif cameras, don't include 'proto=Onvif' in the RTSP settings, and don't check the ONVIF/camera events box. Also don't check the Motion sensors box under triggers. Instead, sync the non-Onvif camera to one of your Onvif cameras, and let the other camera turn it on. If you have the Onvif settings on, you will get an 8000 error (general failure error) in the ONVIF/camera events Configure detail.
2. Sync your cameras clocks to the NTP time server. If your camera has a different time than Blue Iris sees, you'll get an error.
3. I don't think it was an issue for me, but just to be safe, reset your Onvif password in the camera to match your camera password. I don't think Blue Iris has a setting to handle a different Onvif password.
So that's what I learned as of June 2023. Hopefully it will help someone else figure out how to get IVS going. My neighbors headlights no longer cause false triggers. Now I just have to come up with another reason to buy that thermal camera.
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