Posting from Atlanta

[MarkAtl]

Hello:

I'm a new member. I live in a condo building in Atlanta, and am re-doing a security camera system in my building. There were 12 analog cameras. I am putting in 18 Axis cameras (Q1604, P3384, P3364, P1346, P1204, M3005, M3004). They are being recorded on a Synology NAS (continuous, not triggered). No overview software at the moment - basically I can look at the recorded files on the Synology.

Mark

 

[bp2008]

I wish you luck with that setup. Those will be a huge (and expensive) upgrade. I hope the Synology NAS is a good one, so it can keep up! What kind of hard drives did you put in it?

 

[MarkAtl]

I've got a Synology DS713+ NAS on the system. I've got a WD 4TB Red hard drive (single - not RAID yet). I'm intending to run all the cameras at 720p. Using 20% compression on H.264 with 5 frames/second, it stores over 2 weeks per camera with 175 GB dedicated to each camera. Currently with 8 cameras, the download traffic to the NAS is under 2 MB/s total, with 15% of the RAM and 4% of the CPU used. As I said, I'm just storing the video on the NAS. I'm not using the Synology Surveillance Station software. It is costly, but I bought all the cameras on a major bidding website, and waited for good prices - typically less than 1/2 of retail.

Mark

 

[bp2008]

Not bad. Since you are only using the NAS as a storage device and not an NVR, that keeps the CPU and memory load low.
I would have recommended a WD Purple drive as opposed to Red, but I am sure Red will do the job nicely. Purple is just better optimized for the kind of workload you get when recording lots of camera streams.
It looks like your cams are probably encoding between 1 and 2 Mbps each. That is probably fine for 720p video at 5 fps.

I don't know much about Axis, but it looks like they have some (free?) viewing software here: http://www.axis.com/products/cam_companion_software/index.htm

 

[Mike]

Welcome to the forum. Sounds like a nice setup. I have a DS713+ also and am very happy with it. I don't use it to record my cameras but it's very powerful and I can see it working well for your needs.

 

[MarkAtl]

Thanks for the reply.

From http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1210&utm_source=WD Red redirect&utm_medium=collateral&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=product, under Recommended use: "WD Purple is not recommended for use in NAS environments, please consider using WD Red hard drives for desktop RAID and NAS environments". I'm not sure why WD recommends the Purple drive for surveillance cameras, but not for a NAS.

The Axis Camera Companion software seems like a fine alternative, but it is limited to 16 cameras (per the Axis website), and I want to use 18 cameras. But I will look into it more - at least to play around with a few cameras. It does not appear to have a licensing cost.

As far as Axis Camera Station software goes, it is free to use on a single camera, but beyond that, it is about $75 to $100 per camera license. I'd have to use it some before I decided that was a good idea. And it requires a PC to run, and I think for storage, and I like the uptiime record of a NAS better.

Mark