Need advice: Stay with Dahua+SmartPSS or move on?

[chicoDaMan]

Background: For many years I’ve used Dahua DVRs plus SmartPSS on the Mac. I like the technical capabilities and functionality of SmartPSS, despite some obvious flaws, and hate most of the crappy phone apps available to access these units.

Outside motion detection is problematic but I use separate sensing devices I build (motion detectors, switches, etc.) to momentarily break a video stream to have the DVR send me an email as an alarm function. Works great.


So my house recently burned down. I just bought bought a new house, and it’s now time for a new video surveillance system.

I‘ve tried researching the current state of above-dummy-level surveilance systems but it’s gotten quite confusing. Lots of brands and systems, very hard to evaluate the Mac/PC or phone control apps without owning the hardware.

Can anyone point me to a decent tutorial, or provide a succinct summary of what I should look at, as a possible replacement for the Dahua/SmartPSS combo? Or would I be best off staying with what I know and am comfortable with (yes, I’m aware of the Dahua security situation…ugh…)

I prefer local storage to cloud-based systems, paticularly subscription-based.

I’m very comfortable with tech and prefer something that gives me control over many parameters.

Thanks in advance for any advice….

 

[wittaj]

Blue Iris with the latest Dahua cams will give you all the control you need.

 

[looney2ns]

Study this: Cliff Notes

 

[chicoDaMan]

Good stuff, thanks.

Looking into Blue Iris. I cringe about running Windows-based servers...I've done plenty of them in the past, the OS is such a resource pig, the hardware sucks way too much electricity...but the app looks very promising. Will investigate.

Cliff Notes...wow, fantastic compilation! Exactly what I was looking for, as far as catching up on what's going on in this area.

Your responses much appreciated.

 

[wittaj]

You turn off Windows updates and then it is simply a better performing NVR and fairly maintenance free.

Many of us have ran both an NVR and a computer for BI and some of us run them concurrently. The BI computer uses less power than my NVR, and many here have seen similar things. YMMV.

 

[chicoDaMan]

You turn off Windows updates and then it is simply a better performing NVR and fairly maintenance free.

Many of us have ran both an NVR and a computer for BI and some of us run them concurrently. The BI computer uses less power than my NVR, and many here have seen similar things. YMMV.

OK, thanks, that's interesting.

Up to now I haven't used an NVR, just DVRs with HD-CVI cams. Like I said, I want to evaluate what's going on these days vs. what I've been doing over the past 15 years or so. All this input is good, it lets me know what directions others have taken and what they're doing at present...

 

[TundraCam]

Have you looked at Security Spy?