Multiple Cameras on Multiple Monitors

[sharma81]

Hello to all the community,
I'm Andrew and i'm writing from Italy.

I'm looking for advice on free or commercial software for my company. We produce cardboard and recently we installed sound insulation in our production machine.
Before it was easy to monitor the production, operator could hear noise and just needs to watch what's happening. Now with insulation we must install some cameras to monitor the production since there is no noise and no point of view. It's mandatory a system with low latency since if paper breaks of jams in a 5 seconds could create a real disaster that needs 20-30 minutes to restart the machine. If operators are able to stop the machine immediatly when thei notice the jam in 1-2minutes they can recover and restart.

To monitor the entire machine (it's more or less 80meters long) we need about 16ipcams.. the problem is that free and commercial software support up to 256 cams BUT on a single monitor and our need is to have realtime view of all cameras splitted on 4 monitors.. I tried to install 4 different software (1 software for 1 monitor with 2x2 grid of cams) but we have problems of latency because software sucks a lot of cpu power and even with a powerful pc (i7) the cpu usage jumps to 100%.

Since i'm interested in just realtime view I already tried to low fps and to disable any recording/elaboration/alarms of images from software and cameras firmware without success.
Network is independent and runs at full gigabit. Cameras are Atlantisland A11-UX915 A-BPVM

I'm looking for advice of a free or commercial software that allows this kind of usage..

 

[looney2ns]

Most any IP based camera will have latency issue's of a few seconds. If you need true real time viewing, you will need to use analog cameras such as:

HDCVI Cameras - Dahua International

HDCVI Cameras

www.dahuasecurity.com

 

[DsineR]

And a recorder to capture & view cams, some 16 channel options here:

HDCVI Recorders

HDCVI Recorders

www.dahuasecurity.com

 

[sharma81]

a few seconds is not a problem with digital camera.. at the moment i'm interested in multi-monitor view up to 4 monitors

 

[bp2008]

Try Blue Iris. But be aware that when running it in demo mode (unregistered), it will have heavier CPU requirements due to the "direct-to-disc" recording feature not being active.

But for truly low latency you need an analog camera system, or multiple of them. I don't know if HDCVI is actually low latency or not.

 

[sharma81]

It support multi monitor?

 

[bp2008]

Yes, Blue Iris lets you right click a camera and open it in a "desktop frame". You can then drag other cameras into that frame, and move the frame onto another monitor. You can make as many of these frames as you want.

 

[bp2008]

You'll want to connect monitors to a discrete graphics card ideally (not onboard Intel graphics) because CPU usage is a bit higher if you connect to the Intel onboard graphics.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Heck, if he goes with BI, just get some cheap tablets, group the cameras as needed in BI, and view the groups where appropriate using UI3.

 

[samplenhold]

It's mandatory a system with low latency since if paper breaks of jams in a 5 seconds could create a real disaster

a few seconds is not a problem

So which is it? Not catching the jam within 5 seconds is a real disaster or it is not a real disaster? IP cams will impart a few seconds of delay, say 2-3 seconds on a good day. I have seen longer delays. That gives the operator only 2-3 seconds to identify a problem while scanning multiple cams on multiple monitors and then acting on the issue.

As @looney2ns and @bp2008 have stated, you really need to look at analogue cams.

 

[brianegge]

Amcrest has their Video Wall functionality built into their PC apps. I think it's free and works with most cameras. You could connect four monitors to one PC, run four videos feeds per monitor. Buying four low end NVRs would probably cost less than a dedicated PC and cost less as well.

You could train AI model to recognize known failure conditions in the machine, if the humans tend to get bored watching 16 cameras all day. When a camera has a failure, you save the image and train the model to flag those types of images. Machines are very good at repetitive tasks, and humans are good at looking at the output of the machine to determine if it's really a problem or not. You could also train it to listen to the cameras audio streams. You can see if it might work by adding a few images or audio clips here: Teachable Machine

 

[fenderman]

Amcrest has their Video Wall functionality built into their PC apps. I think it's free and works with most cameras. You could connect four monitors to one PC, run four videos feeds per monitor. Buying four low end NVRs would probably cost less than a dedicated PC and cost less as well.

You could train AI model to recognize known failure conditions in the machine, if the humans tend to get bored watching 16 cameras all day. When a camera has a failure, you save the image and train the model to flag those types of images. Machines are very good at repetitive tasks, and humans are good at looking at the output of the machine to determine if it's really a problem or not. You could also train it to listen to the cameras audio streams. You can see if it might work by adding a few images or audio clips here: Teachable Machine

You are confused about the price of a dedicated pc. 100 bux.
Amcrest makes nothing, they are using dahua smart pss, it does not work with most cameras, you must use a dahua rebranded camera.

 

[eggsan]

Had you consider re-engineering the design of the machine to include (add-on) a system for detecting the jamming? The design could include something like an automated photo-sensor to detect the malfunction and stop the machine + buzzer to alert the operator

 

[brianegge]

You are confused about the price of a dedicated pc. 100 bux.

What $100 PC runs Windows and can drive 4 4K monitors? Seems a high end NUC is $800. To work with any cam you probably want BI.

 

[fenderman]

What $100 PC runs Windows and can drive 4 4K monitors? Seems a high end NUC is $800. To work with any cam you probably want BI.

You are confused. Nothing was every said about 4k cameras let alone 4k monitors. His needs are simple.

 

[brianegge]

You are confused. Nothing was every said about 4k cameras let alone 4k monitors. His needs are simple.

Presumably a single monitor with 16 cams won’t work. If you are going to buy 4 monitors, why would you not get 4K ones? You can then display 4 1920x1080 feeds.
Please describe what you are recommending along with the link to buy.

 

[fenderman]

Presumably a single monitor with 16 cams won’t work. If you are going to buy 4 monitors, why would you not get 4K ones? You can then display 4 1920x1080 feeds.
Please describe what you are recommending along with the link to buy.

Why would you need 4k monitors running 1080p feeds when you will be displaying the substreams on the matrix. You do understand that the NVR's display the substreams not the main streams when in matrix view? Blue iris also has this capability but also has the option to display the main stream if you have enough pc resources. You can easily do this with a cheap system.
You dont need my help to search ebay. There are a million threads

 

[sharma81]

interesting, i'll test as soon as possible. The camera already has a discrete gpu so i think will work

 

[smole]

For separate monitor stations you can use Raspberry Pi's with rpisurv on them (1 Pi per monitor).

The Pi's can be fed streams from a DVR (analog cams) or from an NVR/Blueiris pc (IP cams).

 

[catcamstar]

It may just be me, but from the original use case, I note down that, with a specific noise, the machine needs to be stopped. It's true that when paper is flying around, a visual confirmation by the camera's on multiple screens is a plus, but ample camera's with microphone can detect (peaks) in noise too, and send out an alarm (through IO outputs), hence the machine can be stopped immediately, in an automated way (eg relais through dead-man's-switch). The operator can then visually check the screens to see what's going on. If this is too complicated, a stand-alone mic on a raspberry pi can already do the trick.

For the cams, NVR/BI, screens/tablets, lots of tips can be found above.

Just my 2c!
CC