Lost in lala land!

[Hound Dog 911]

Very nice to meet you guys. Live here in Western MD. Retired fireman and my wife is starting to breed basset hounds. Our home is not large. Just a small rancher. Going to add a kennel area eventually this spring for the area where the puppies will be born. For now I'm just trying to build the foundation for our security. I have a Cisco 3750 48 port switch a buddy game me. It only does 10/100. I have a high end gaming system I can use until I can afford another box to run the camera system. Was considering using Blue Iris and building from there. Have read nothing good about Lorex or Night Owl.

I don't want to break the bank being I have a building to construct but my bassets are pricey and I'd like more for security other than my small arsenal. Suggestions welcome. I would be happy getting on my feet with 2 cameras and hope to have no more than 10 eventually. Many thanks for your time.

 

[looney2ns]

Welcome. You can't go wrong with these cams.
Buy once, cry once.
Dahua Starlight Varifocal Turret (IPC-HDW5231R-Z)
You will need a switch that provides Power Over Ethernet, (POE)

In a pinch, you can start out using the SmartPSS software that works with Dahua cams.
Or you can add and SD card into the cams, and have them record to the SD card.
Then you retrieve the recordings remotely.

 

[randytsuch]

Can you wire doors/windows/gates in your new dog nursery for sensors, and put in a wired alarm system?
Is this a building, or a gated area?
IMHO, an alarm system would be a better way to protect your investment, but not sure if you can set one up.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

I was looking at the hikvision camera's. Will 10/100 be enough to handle everything. The switch he gave me was a $3000 Cisco unit. It is PoE. 48 ports.

I will be putting some kind of security system in the kennel area. Cameras on each puppy area.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

Is there a huge difference between the visual quality of the camera you are recommending and the 4mp Hikvision line?

 

[looney2ns]

Did you read that thread I linked above? Lots of examples of that cam's abilities.
More MP isn't always better, it will do worse in the dark then most 2mp cams.
I'm betting the cam I linked above will stomp the Hik.

 

[randytsuch]

The Dahua starlights will give you a much better picture at night in the dark.
When you consider that's the most likely time for something to happen, well you decide.
At this time, Dahua gives you more for the money than Hiks, at least that seems to be the general opinion around here.

On the switch, if you look around you might be able to find a good, used POE switch on ebay for a good price.
10/100 is fine for the camera link, but you also need one of the 10/100 links to connect to your PC. All the data has to go from all of the cameras to the PC, so that is a bottleneck, and really should be a gigabit port. But it depends on how much data you're sending, which depends on how many cameras and their bitrate.

Since you have a POE switch and a PC you can use, it's easy enough to buy one camera, and try it out. It helps a lot to see for yourself how the picture looks, during the day and at night, depending on where the camera is installed. For instance, if the camera is too high, it might be hard to see faces because of the angle.

 

[looney2ns]

I'll bet that old Cisco is also a power hog compared to a newer POE switch.

 

[tangent]

I'll bet that old Cisco is also a power hog compared to a newer POE switch.

pretty much. Looks like from the specs it draws about 130-170W without any PoE load.

A newer more efficient smaller (fewer ports) switch would pay for itself within 2 years or less

 

[nayr]

FYI that $3k Switch only has a street value today of $50, its gonna consume more electricity than its worth in short order and make operating off a battery backup very expensive for very little runtime.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

Thank you everyone for input. Will read up more on your posts when I get home. Helping my brother in law gut and renovate a house. Wow it's been an adventure. But I'm learning quite a bit. Amazing what years of neglect will do. I'm a firearm guy and I believe in buy once cry once. Again I appreciate all the help. Thank you!

 

[Hound Dog 911]

I just built the gaming rig. It's pretty high performance. So I just need a hard drive. Looking at the WD Purple. How many TB should I get? Also will get an 8 port at least PoE switch. One camera. Probably the recommended one you posted. Going to get Blue Iris for the pc. You recommend that? Anything else?

 

[nayr]

specs of this gaming rig? While It could crush video games, its easier for BlueIris to crush it.

Gaming rigs make piss poor BlueIris servers, because discrete 3D graphics cards hurt performance over the onboard built in one.. and you also should not be dual purposing your NVR, surfing the internet from your NVR is the fastest way to get your cameras hacked and your video cameras will hurt your gaming just as bad as the gaming will hurt the video cameras..

You can buy a refurbished PC w/warranty for ~$300-500 tha'll run BlueIris on a typical residential camera count with ease while sipping on electricity.

I can just see it now; Late night gaming session you shut down BlueIris for extra performance, meanwhile someone steals your truck out front and you didnt record jack shit.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

Will have to dig the specs up. It has a built-in graphics chip I know. It has the Nvidia 1080 card in. Haven't tinkered with it for awhile.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

The gaming rig is strictly temporary. I don't want to tie it up for security.

 

[nayr]

BlueIris wont give you hardware acceleration with that NVIDIA 1080 card; more than likely you'll have to remove it for BlueIris, presuming this is a modern Intel system.. if its a standard cheap AMD gaming rig you wont get any hardware acceleration at all and decoding multiple HD video streams 24/7/365 gonna load that system to the brink and you'l be left choosing between cameras and games.

For a temporary purpose to evaluate BlueIris it might be suitable; just keep in mind that BlueIris's performance varies dramatically depending on your underlying hardware.. 10 cameras can crush a machine w/out hardware acceleration, while with the correct video subsystem the same 10 cameras will barely put any load on it at all.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

Graphics Card
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
Vendor
Micro-Star International Co ., Ltd.
# of cards
1
SLI / CrossFire
Off
Memory
8,192 MB
Core clock
2,076 MHz
Memory bus clock
1,288 MHz
Driver version
10.18.13.6881
Driver status
FM Approved

Intel Core i7-6700K
Reported stock core clock
4,000 MHz
Maximum turbo core clock
4,700 MHz
Physical / logical processors
1 / 8
# of cores
4
Package
LGA1151
Manufacturing process
14 nm
TDP
95 W
[paste:font size="4"]GENERAL
Operating system
64-bit Windows 10 (10.0.10586)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z170X-Gaming 7
Memory
16,384 MB
Module 1
8,192 MB G.Skill DDR4 @ 2,132 MHz
Module 2
8,192 MB G.Skill DDR4 @ 2,132 MHz
Hard drive model
500 GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB

 

[randytsuch]

Gaming rig should let you play with one camera though, and get a feel for things at least.
Blue Iris is available as a demo, but you don't have all features in demo version. But if you buy and install on your gaming rig, email them, they should let you transfer the license.
But you don't really even need blue iris for one camera, you can look at the camera's output with internet explorer, or with some other browsers and the right plug in. You need to log into the camera anyway, to set it up and get it going.

Randy

 

[nayr]

ok good, thats pretty decent.. now the big question if you get hardware acceleration is if that Nvidia card entirely disables the onboard graphics or if there is a way in the bios to enable them both at the same time.. on most systems its an either/or thing, but some will let you have both.

 

[Hound Dog 911]

What specs do you recommend or would a stand alone dvr be cheaper?