Hello, I've been using IP cameras for just at 10 years, starting with a bunch of refurbished dlink and linksys cameras in 2006 monitored on webcamxp. Some of them are still working today, though I gave up on webcamxp some time ago.
I'm now in the process of setting up blue iris with new cameras, but will reuse some of the old cameras in well-lit, short distance areas (like the garage which has automation rules that turn lights on whenever any entrance to it is opened).
I bought a couple of gray market hikvision cameras, one with the multilingual firmware and another without... bricked the second trying to downgrade and unbricked it back thanks to instructions posted here. Guess it's not a big deal since Blue Iris will be my interface beyond initial setup. But I'm still in my 30 day return window, so it may still go back. In the meantime I've queried a couple of Amazon sellers about guarantees on firmware versions, will PM milkisbad after this post and have been looking at Nelly's as well.
Looking at a total of around 10 cameras, 4 inside pointing at entrances, 1 in the garage and another 4 or 5 around my 1.5 acre yard, starting with the three gates... probably the last two watching the front and back porch.... possible a couple more to cover everything else in between.
I'm still shopping for a decent PC to run Blue Iris, as I'm not using it in eval mode on my laptop. I was going to get a used dual processor quad corps xeon server, but the rack in my wiring closet won't hold anything that deep, so now I'm looking at some used/off lease dell optiplex i7's in the 3ghz+ range... so far looks like that max a 16GB ram and 2HDDs, despite there being 2 sata3 and 2 sata2 connectors.. maybe they can't all be used at once.
I'm now in the process of setting up blue iris with new cameras, but will reuse some of the old cameras in well-lit, short distance areas (like the garage which has automation rules that turn lights on whenever any entrance to it is opened).
I bought a couple of gray market hikvision cameras, one with the multilingual firmware and another without... bricked the second trying to downgrade and unbricked it back thanks to instructions posted here. Guess it's not a big deal since Blue Iris will be my interface beyond initial setup. But I'm still in my 30 day return window, so it may still go back. In the meantime I've queried a couple of Amazon sellers about guarantees on firmware versions, will PM milkisbad after this post and have been looking at Nelly's as well.
Looking at a total of around 10 cameras, 4 inside pointing at entrances, 1 in the garage and another 4 or 5 around my 1.5 acre yard, starting with the three gates... probably the last two watching the front and back porch.... possible a couple more to cover everything else in between.
I'm still shopping for a decent PC to run Blue Iris, as I'm not using it in eval mode on my laptop. I was going to get a used dual processor quad corps xeon server, but the rack in my wiring closet won't hold anything that deep, so now I'm looking at some used/off lease dell optiplex i7's in the 3ghz+ range... so far looks like that max a 16GB ram and 2HDDs, despite there being 2 sata3 and 2 sata2 connectors.. maybe they can't all be used at once.
