Newest new member :)

[teamRAVEGREEN]

Alright Looney, thank you, I'm squared away!

Other status (if anyone cares) received switches, disk. Setup VPN. Purchased/Installed BI to play around with.

I should receive cable and cameras tomorrow or Thurs. Next steps are to play around with cameras/BI, test placements and explore cabling routes.

 

[teamRAVEGREEN]

Tonight I put an SSD and the WD Purple drive in my 'test' BI computer and loaded a fresh copy of Win10. Got the larger of the two PoE switches going and I also got BI installed and 'working', but not really configured. Finally, I was able to get one of the 5231 cameras in the system and began messing around with settings and such and that brings up a question - I've noticed that when I set the max frame rate for the camera in BI the setting doesn't seem to stick. I'm thinking I might have to set that on the camera itself? I also noticed there were duplicate date/time overlays, one from the camera, one from BI (fixed that). I'm wondering what other settings I need to set in the camera vs in BI...

Off to watch a few of @Dasstrum 's BI videos before bed - this community is awesome!

 

[looney2ns]

Tonight I put an SSD and the WD Purple drive in my 'test' BI computer and loaded a fresh copy of Win10. Got the larger of the two PoE switches going and I also got BI installed and 'working', but not really configured. Finally, I was able to get one of the 5231 cameras in the system and began messing around with settings and such and that brings up a question - I've noticed that when I set the max frame rate for the camera in BI the setting doesn't seem to stick. I'm thinking I might have to set that on the camera itself? I also noticed there were duplicate date/time overlays, one from the camera, one from BI (fixed that). I'm wondering what other settings I need to set in the camera vs in BI...

Off to watch a few of @Dasstrum 's BI videos before bed - this community is awesome!

Most all settings relating to quality need to be setup in the camera and not BI. Bi only eats what it is feed.

 

[teamRAVEGREEN]

Can't believe it's almost been a month since I last updated this...

Some status:
- Cable run and two cameras permanently mounted near front door.
(1) IPC-HDW5231R-Z higher up watching approach and (1) IPC-HDBW4231F-AS at the front door
- Blue Iris is up and running and I'm getting more comfortable with settings/setup of camera. I need to play around with camera configurations some more to fine tune settings (triggers /alerts / exposure, etc), but I'm getting there.
- I've got another IPC-HDW5231R-Z which I will try to mount this weekend for front yard/driveway
- Two more cameras coming after Andy is back from holiday
- I've run through my first 1000 ft. of cable (not just for cameras) and have ordered another box. I'm pretty proud of myself as I haven't had a single bad cable/termination
- As I approach 5 cameras I've decided I better make the jump to a new device for BI before I get too comfortable with my 'temp' computer and as of yesterday I've picked up a new (used) device to function as my permanent BI NVR: I5-6400, 8Gb RAM, Win10 - I'm hoping this will be enough for 6-8 total cameras.

A few pics:

Front door IPC-HDBW4231F-AS - I would have liked to get this back into the corner some more but I couldn't figure out a good way to do it because the corner is solid. I think ultimately I try and find a universal mounting block for my siding (7") and place it in the corner, covering the hole and giving me a few more inches to move closer to the corner.

I've since adjusted the angle of this camera - you now see none of the wall and less of the ceiling - but here is a shot of me shortly after I got it mounted:

You can see my IPC-HDW5231R-Z

Here's the IPC-HDW5231R-Z mounted:

And an example shot/view from yesterday:

There seems to be enough ambient light at night from my porch and garage lights and this camera doesn't want to go into night vision, so I think I'm going to need to mess around with schedules or something to force it - I'm assuming it's going to give me a little bit better of a picture, but I need to mess around with it some more.

Guess that's it for now! Please let me know if you have any tips/suggestions/critiques for my setup so far.

Thanks again for all the help.