Questions on Blue Iris functionality and remote connection

[StuG_IV]

Hello, long time lurker here, have read many, many posts and finally have the budget means and time to slowly set up a proof of concept system. I have tried searching for the particular questions but am having a hard time finding conclusive answers.

Current situation:

• I will be buying a single 5442 varifocal for initial setup and further camera purchase but my questions are unrelated to that.
• Also have a lenovo desktop that fulfills basic requirements for the time being.
• I was thinking of going the dual nic route but am open to suggestions.
• As of now I have some cables that are already run to final locations but can add more withouth too much hassle (have prior experience running lots of cable and doing drywall)
• I am a pretty tech savvy person and just landed a job in a company that does a lot of av/it installations so could get help from very experienced networking people, along with the experience I hope to also accrue, as such I believe that with enough head bashing I can setup everything.

My questions/worries, please correct me if wrong.

• From what I gathered the only way to remotely and safely connect to the BI machine is to have the phone (both an IOS and android device) connect to the VPN and then and only then be able to actually login and view everything.
• If I understand correctly the router needs to be able to use open vpn or l2tp/ipsec
• You will not receive any notifications through the BI app if the phone is not connected to the home network or the aforementioned vpn. Is there a way to at least receive notifications and then maybe go through with the manual connection?
• This needs to unfortunately work with my parents so if some app can automatically connect them to the vpn as required it would be awesome but teaching them is not a huge hurdle.
• I'd prefer the app over ui3 for ease of use but teaching both is again not something impossible to achieve, looking forward to suggestions on this.

Quick recap: Pretty much how do I make it as simple as possible for my parents to receive notifications on movement and remote camera viewing.

Thank you to anyone than can chip in, you can also just tell me to lurk more or point me towards some article I might have missed.

 

[wittaj]

Welcome! Glad you took the time to study up and learn!

Without being connected to VPN when away from home, you will still get BI app push notifications, they just won't have the picture.

And yes it is free VPN you host like OpenVPN. It is not a paid VPN. Or you use ZeroTier if the router doesn't have VPN hosting abilities.

That is why many of us use the Pushover app instead ($5) as it allows a picture whether you are local or remote. Most cases you can tell by the picture it is nothing to be alarmed about. The few times there is, then you VPN in and open up the app or UI3.

If the idea of turning on the VPN and then opening the app is too much, then set up the mobile devices to automatically connect to the VPN once off local LAN. Then you will also get the pics from the BI app.

 

[StuG_IV]

Thanks for the super rapid response, pushover seems like a good solution to figure out very rapidly what to do. I'll check it out in depth! I'll try searching on here and on google but If you have a creator or article that helped you set it up it feel free to drop it.

Wouldn't having the device automatically vpn through the house route all of the phone's internet traffic through the vpn or is only the required ip adress tunneled through. You might have hit a weak spot in my still scarce knowledge, as soon as I'm done with uni I'm aiming to get my ccna through the company.

 

[wittaj]

Yes, if the phone is connected to the VPN, then all the phone internet traffic would be routed thru that VPN when away from the local LAN. Many here do that anyway and not trust the cellular or public wifi for secure connections. In some instances you may find the speed is even faster going thru the VPN than using the cellular service.

Here is the link with all the details on Pushover. You can do this route and use the API or for quick and simply use the pushover email they provide you when you setup the account. I used the email flavor because it was simple and quick, but have migrated to the API for the more customization.

Send Pushover notifications with pictures and hyperlinks

I've figured out how to send Pushover notifications with pictures and hyperlinks from Blue Iris Actions without using external scripts. This approach uses curl and the Pushover API, and provides functionality similar to that recently described for Telegram . EDIT (5/16/2022) - For those who...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[StuG_IV]

Yes, if the phone is connected to the VPN, then all the phone internet traffic would be routed thru that VPN when away from the local LAN. Many here do that anyway and not trust the cellular or public wifi for secure connections. In some instances you may find the speed is even faster going thru the VPN than using the cellular service.

Here is the link with all the details on Pushover. You can do this route and use the API or for quick and simply use the pushover email they provide you when you setup the account. I used the email flavor because it was simple and quick, but have migrated to the API for the more customization.

Send Pushover notifications with pictures and hyperlinks

I've figured out how to send Pushover notifications with pictures and hyperlinks from Blue Iris Actions without using external scripts. This approach uses curl and the Pushover API, and provides functionality similar to that recently described for Telegram . EDIT (5/16/2022) - For those who...

ipcamtalk.com

Thanks, looks like I might have some night reading ahead!

 

[Mike A.]

Wouldn't having the device automatically vpn through the house route all of the phone's internet traffic through the vpn or is only the required ip adress tunneled through.

Depends how it's set up. Typically you'll have the option to route all of the client's traffic over the VPN or only that destined to whatever network with external traffic destined elsewhere not sent through it (e.g., Internet). Generally, I route everything through mine mostly so that I have centralized ad/site/tracking blocking that I run for my network and an encrypted connection no matter where I am. The main disadvantage is lower throughput depending on what's handling the encryption but generally fine for streaming video. Also marginally higher data and battery use though I've not seen any notable practical difference.

 

[StuG_IV]

Depends how it's set up. Typically you'll have the option to route all of the client's traffic over the VPN or only that destined to whatever network with external traffic destined elsewhere not sent through it (e.g., Internet). Generally, I route everything through mine mostly so that I have centralized ad/site/tracking blocking that I run for my network and an encrypted connection no matter where I am. The main disadvantage is lower throughput depending on what's handling the encryption but generally fine for streaming video. Also marginally higher data and battery use though I've not seen any notable practical difference.

Do you have any keywords I can search for to better study the subject?

 

[Mike A.]

Try split tunnel. How you do it for a given VPN server/client will differ.

 

[CCTV Zilla]

You will get push notifications but you can't access the server without vpn.

I'm using Tailscale free plan which allows linking 25 devices together.

Connected my pc and my phones to my tailscale network.

I made the alerts folder of my blue iris shared on the network so I can download whatever video/photos I need to my phone.

This way I can access the alerts both via the app or the shared folder using phones that doesn't have the app installed.

Tailscale is super easy to setup, doesn't take more than 5 minutes to set everything up.

 

[StuG_IV]

I'll check both of those out, thanks!