NVR vs BI

truglo said:
So my cameras arrived Wednesday, and I've been playing/testing them with BI since that evening. In one word... AWESOME!

I've got 3 assorted starlight cams going so far (from Empiretech@aliexpress... a mini dome, a turret, and a bullet... the ones that are highly regarded on IPCT). They're streaming at 25 & 30fps/h264/10kbps to my aging daily driver pc (i5-2500k/8gb) and it is averaging 30% cpu use. It seems to be working fine on the non-dedicated PC, but I ordered a standalone rig to be sure... I'm so impressed with BI already that it was an easy purchase decision for me. Maybe someday down the road I'll get a DVR as a 'secondary remote storage' to hide in my attic in case a thief makes of with the BI rig. If that happens now, I'll have to get SD cards out of the cams.

So far BI has everything I need with it's 'Object Detection' settings, and they are working very reliably. IIRC, many folks were having issues with their NVR missing the initial (critical) seconds of footage during IVS events. I suppose that could be limited by hardware latency (maybe a firmware fix someday?), and I noticed BI starts off behaving similarly with default settings. However BI has a 'pretrigger buffer' setting that lets me include however many seconds of footage before the event happens so every event includes every single juicy second of action. For example say I setup an object detector A<->B line (like dahua ivs), instead of just showing footage of me crossing that line, the event includes footage of me walking in to the room before I crossed it.

There are a whole lot of features in BI, but after playing around they are all easy for the average tech-oriented dude to tackle, and it's very nice to have them to begin with. I'm looking forward to using the digital I/O features to integrate my cams with the rest of my alarm system. There are turn key devices to do that, but I'm just going to use an arduino (got several laying around).

The only thing I haven't played with is the phone apps (waiting on my dedicated rig to arrive from ebay next week, then I buy BI full version and apps to go with it). However even without the apps I'm getting prompt emails and texts for events (you gotta setup 'push' delivery with gmail, then the emails come within seconds). The webserver also works great both at home and away (accessing remotely through openvpn); that feature, along with the sms and emails has already got many of my friends very interested. So if that's any indication, I'm sure the app will be easy breezy.

About the only complaint I can think of... having to setup the cameras through a browser. BI is controlling all the PTZ stuff itself (ir/exposure...), so after initial cam config (user/IP/...) the cam webpage becomes unecessary really.

Hope this helps folks on the fence,
Kev
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you might as well buy the app now..why not enjoy it..wont get used up...if you enable direct to disk and hardware acceleration you will see a drop in cpu consumption...
 
That is with direct to disk and hardware accel. Should it be much lower than that? This pc is a daily driver for my family so maybe that's clogging it up a little (cloud storage, email client, tons of web pages opened... not to mention my kids roblox accounts that they constantly leave running).

Ok, I will get the app and play with it tonight after work. I was going to do that this morning, but got caught up and figured there's no rush. With the weekend upon us, I need to get cracking on the app testing/config.

Kev
 
Update: Got the app working already... no problems with push notifications or access through my vpn.

Incidentally, after hooking up the app I noticed my cpu use says 57% (per blue iris, task manager says 65%). To be sure, I've got intel hd3000 onboard graphics, and bi main settings set to intel hdwr acc for both h264+post processing... all 3 cams are set to 'default' (ie enabled).

Kev
 
truglo said:
Update: Got the app working already... no problems with push notifications or access through my vpn.

Incidentally, after hooking up the app I noticed my cpu use says 57% (per blue iris, task manager says 65%). To be sure, I've got intel hd3000 onboard graphics, and bi main settings set to intel hdwr acc for both h264+post processing... all 3 cams are set to 'default' (ie enabled).

Kev
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are you running the demo?
 
Yes still running the demo... until next week. I didn't want to authorize it on the current pc because I didn't want to cause problems with getting it going on the new one.

Kev

Edit... forgot to mention, my power went out briefly today. When everything booted back up, bi lost all of the object zones I drew up. I did "export" settings earlier but haven't tried restoring them. Instead I just redrew my zones, but hopefully that doesn't happen again, and hopefully I can use my exported settings when my new rig arrives (that was my main purpose of exporting settings).
 
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truglo said:
Yes still running the demo... until next week. I didn't want to authorize it on the current pc because I didn't want to cause problems with getting it going on the new one.

Kev
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the demo does not properly support direct to disk that is why usage is high...(others have said this has changed, but I am pretty sure it hasnt)..you would have no problem activating on the new pc...just deactivate first on the old one..
 
Ah ok... any idea on the lost object zones? I am wondering if it had to do with permissions... I'm running it from a non-admin account.

Kev

Thanks btw... you've been on the spot helping me with bi!
 
truglo said:
Ah ok... any idea on the lost object zones? I am wondering if it had to do with permissions... I'm running it from a non-admin account.

Kev

Thanks btw... you've been on the spot helping me with bi!
Click to expand...
No idea about the zones...it should not revert regardless of what happens...always use an admin account...this avoids problems..
 
Ok I figured so much on the zone loss... keeping it off the admin account until my rig arrives, then it will be all admin. Now I will have to see about that direct to disk this weekend.

Woot... I am impressed with how powerful and easy to use BI is... even more impressive than my 7yo router handling all the mixed traffic with ipset, dns filtering, and vpns with paranoid 4kbit ssh keys lol. Some of the things the dvr dudes were saying had me kinda scared tbh. Glad I stuck with my gut feeling.

Thanks again fenderman!
Kev
 
truglo said:
Ok I figured so much on the zone loss... keeping it off the admin account until my rig arrives. Now I will have to see about that direct to disk this weekend.

Woot... I am impressed with how powerful and easy to use BI is... even more impressive than my 7yo router handling all the mixed traffic with ipset, dns filtering, and vpns with paranoid 4kbit ssh keys lol.

Thanks again fenderman!
Kev
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ideally, dont route the traffic via router, connect the cams and the blue iris pc to the switch..
 
Right now the cams are connected to the switch and the pc is connected to the router. When my dedicated rig comes I plan on reorganizing my net closet. Then everything will be wired to the switch.

It's all on the same subnet anyways; I use a firewall script with iptables to secure the cams from the net (so yeah I don't really need vlans and got a managed switch mostly for fun lol). I mentioned being impressed by the router since it handles the vpn streams so well on top of everything else. Could be because I'm using tls-crypt... hope I don't have issues with the router cpu when I setup my wife's iPhone with BI (afaik, tls-auth is currently the best ios gets... *laughs at apple addicts*).
 
I don't know if its been mentioned or not but the web viewer for BI actually works unlike most nvr's. You can make it even better with the ui2 viewer. I agree that Blue Iris is better in every way.

That being said if not for BI there would be a lot more hardware nvr users around. I'm also at the point where I don't pay attention to my cams unless there is something I need to check so the advantages of BI are a little less for me. I also like the dvd player size of a nvr and slightly less power usage.
 
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