Request Ideas for cameras for BI?

Bluediamond

Bluediamond

Young grasshopper
Aug 30, 2019
79
13
Florida
Hello Everyone,

Just want to start out by saying, this is amazing the fact that there is a community here to assist with BI is incredible. I bought the FULL version of BI last night, I am in the processes of creating a nice system for my home but know zero about brands and quality to look for. I have read the reviews here on his camera Dahua 40212TNI 2MP 12x Starlight PTZ Network Camera, Built-in Heater, True WDR, IVS - Newegg.com and I am thinking of picking up two of them for my setup.

What I am looking for is 30fps if possible and the best IR for the price of not breaking the bank. Could really use good night vision. There is so much out there that I could really use the ideas and opinions of this community to point me in the right direction before spending thousands on stuff that may or may not work.

Current setup:
  • Dell T310 Server with 32Gb of RAM, Xeon X3470 running on WS 2019 Standard with x4 3TB drives in a RAID 10
  • DLINK 10port POE switch

What I am looking for:
a total of
  • x5 Cameras Total
  • x1 has to be a PLZ (i would need to buy a small POE+ switch for it)
Note: The rest can be anything but preferably good bullet cameras or something I can mount on roof corners.

Again, I want to say thank you for your opinions and advice on this matter.

Thank You,
 
Last edited:
Realize that just asking for camera recommendations without a good definition of what you are trying to achieve is not very promising. So you are looking for 6 total. What are your expectations for each of those cameras? Are you just trying to get a wide-angle overview of your property (I assume you are talking about outside since you mentioned roof mounting)? One would recommend different cameras in that case as opposed to if you were trying to ID faces of perps. So you really need to understand your property, it's vulnerabilities to intrusion, and what your expectations of video are.

Going with 30fps is about double what most here run for security cameras. Bullets are really not recommended for most outdoor positions due to spiders loving the IR light and web building over the lenses. Most prefer turrets for outdoors. What is your outdoor lighting now? Can you install more? It is nice to have good lighting such that cameras with good low light performance can stay in color mode at night.

There are several Dahua cameras that a lot of folks here like. Search the forum for reviews of them.

Checkout the Wiki at the top of the page. Under there is the Cliff Notes. Read that also. Others will chime in here. For my part, you are where I was about a year ago. My system is still evolving and I am up to 18 cameras, indoors and out. Not finished yet. As one runs the system for a while, one realizes that even with careful planning, your understanding changes over time. before you go and buy all 6 cameras, buy one and test it around your property. Get to understand what it can and cannot do.
 
Welcome, 1st suggestion get with forum vendor @EMPIRETECANDY he is the BEST source here for cameras and a great resource, support our vendors here and for example, I’m in FL and Andy shipped me 5 cameras from Hong Kong to my door in FL in 36 hours! Cut back to 15FPS and read the Wiki on setting up BI to get the most out of it. Read read read then invest.
 
:welcome:
----------------------------
Welcome to the forum.

The recommendation is to use a standalone system for BI. It is not necessary to use a raid. Have you every tried to recover a raid on a running system ?

That xeon processor is 10 years old , a room heater and an an energy pig. It does not have an embedded GPU for video acceleration that is used in BI. Loo at replaceing that computer.

Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris | IP Cam Talk
----------------------------
My standard welcome to the forum message.

Please read the cliff notes and other items in the wiki. The wiki is in the blue bar at the top of the page.

Read How to Secure Your Network (Don't Get Hacked!) | IP Cam Talk in the wiki also.

Quick start
1) Use Dahua starlight cameras or Hikvision darkfighter cameras or ICPT Night eye cameras (https://store.ipcamtalk.com/) if you need good low light cameras.
2) use a VPN to access home network (openVPN)
3) Do not use wifi cameras.
4) Do not use cloud storage
5) Do Not use uPNP, P2P, QR, do not open ports,
6) More megapixel is not necessarily better.
7) Avoid chinese hacked cameras (most ebay, amazon, aliexpress cameras(not all, but most))
8) Do not use reolink, ring, nest cameras (they are junk)
9) If possible use a turret camera , bullet collect spiders, dome collect dirt and reflect light (IR)
10) Use only solid copper, AWG 23 or 24 ethernet wire. , no CCA (Copper Clad Aluminum)
11) use a test mount to verify the camera mount location. My test rig: rev.2
12) (Looney2ns)If you want to be able to ID faces, don't mount cams higher than 8ft. You want to know who did it, not just what happened.
13) Use a router that has openVPN built in (Most ASUS, Some NetGear....)
14) camera placement use the calculator... IPVM Camera Calculator V3

Cameras to look at
IPC-HDW2231R-ZS Review-Dahua IPC-HDW2231RP-ZS Starlight Camera-Varifocal
IPC-HDW5231-ZE Review-Dahua Starlight IPC-HDW5231R-ZE 800 meter capable ePOE
IPC-HFW4239T-ASE IPC-HFW4239T-ASE
IPC-T5442TM-AS Review IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED (Full Color, Starlight+)
IPCT-HDW5431RE-I Review - IP Cam Talk 4 MP IR Fixed Turret Network Camera
DS-2CD2325FWD-I

My preferred indoor cameras
DS-2CD2442FWD-IW
IPC-K35A https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/review-dahua-ipc-k35a-3mp-cube-camera.37581/#post-373517


Read,study,plan before spending money ..... plan plan plan
Test do not guess
 
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samplenhold said:
Realize that just asking for camera recommendations without a good definition of what you are trying to achieve is not very promising. So you are looking for 6 total. What are your expectations for each of those cameras? Are you just trying to get a wide-angle overview of your property (I assume you are talking about outside since you mentioned roof mounting)? One would recommend different cameras in that case as opposed to if you were trying to ID faces of perps. So you really need to understand your property, it's vulnerabilities to intrusion, and what your expectations of video are.

Going with 30fps is about double what most here run for security cameras. Bullets are really not recommended for most outdoor positions due to spiders loving the IR light and web building over the lenses. Most prefer turrets for outdoors. What is your outdoor lighting now? Can you install more? It is nice to have good lighting such that cameras with good low light performance can stay in color mode at night.

There are several Dahua cameras that a lot of folks here like. Search the forum for reviews of them.

Checkout the Wiki at the top of the page. Under there is the Cliff Notes. Read that also. Others will chime in here. For my part, you are where I was about a year ago. My system is still evolving and I am up to 18 cameras, indoors and out. Not finished yet. As one runs the system for a while, one realizes that even with careful planning, your understanding changes over time. before you go and buy all 6 cameras, buy one and test it around your property. Get to understand what it can and cannot do.
Click to expand...

I appreciate the input. I will take a look at those cliff notes I have looked over my house a dozen times and have located the spots I want to start with and they are located in the corners of certain parts of my home. I know this is one of those things that ones you start it's ever evolving.

Lighting conditions for the cameras would be as followed:
x1 Camera would be in total darkness
x1 Camera would have a motion detect flood directly beneath it. (this would be the PLZ)
x2 Camera's will have plenty of lighting for Color Night Vision.
x1 Camera would have lighting by another motion detected flood directly in front of it a couple feet away.
upload_2019-8-30_22-43-40.png
 
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ThomasPI said:
Welcome, 1st suggestion get with forum vendor @EMPIRETECANDY he is the BEST source here for cameras and a great resource, support our vendors here and for example, I’m in FL and Andy shipped me 5 cameras from Hong Kong to my door in FL in 36 hours! Cut back to 15FPS and read the Wiki on setting up BI to get the most out of it. Read read read then invest.
Click to expand...

Thanks Thomas, I will, I been reading none stop hence why I wanted some ideas on what cameras have been good to them. I realize 30fps is a bit over kill as I would be very happy with 15fps on 2k.
 
SouthernYankee said:
:welcome:
----------------------------
Welcome to the forum.

The recommendation is to use a standalone system for BI. It is not necessary to use a raid. Have you every tried to recover a raid on a running system ?

That xeon processor is 10 years old , a room heater and an an energy pig. It does not have an embedded GPU for video acceleration that is used in BI. Loo at replaceing that computer.

Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris | IP Cam Talk
----------------------------
My standard welcome to the forum message.

Please read the cliff notes and other items in the wiki. The wiki is in the blue bar at the top of the page.

Read How to Secure Your Network (Don't Get Hacked!) | IP Cam Talk in the wiki also.

Quick start
1) Use Dahua starlight cameras or Hikvision darkfighter cameras or ICPT Night eye cameras (https://store.ipcamtalk.com/) if you need good low light cameras.
2) use a VPN to access home network (openVPN)
3) Do not use wifi cameras.
4) Do not use cloud storage
5) Do Not use uPNP, P2P, QR, do not open ports,
6) More megapixel is not necessarily better.
7) Avoid chinese hacked cameras (most ebay, amazon, aliexpress cameras(not all, but most))
8) Do not use reolink, ring, nest cameras (they are junk)
9) If possible use a turret camera , bullet collect spiders, dome collect dirt and reflect light (IR)
10) Use only solid copper, AWG 23 or 24 ethernet wire. , no CCA (Copper Clad Aluminum)
11) use a test mount to verify the camera mount location. My test rig: rev.2
12) (Looney2ns)If you want to be able to ID faces, don't mount cams higher than 8ft. You want to know who did it, not just what happened.
13) Use a router that has openVPN built in (Most ASUS, Some NetGear....)
14) camera placement use the calculator... IPVM Camera Calculator V3

Cameras to look at
IPC-HDW2231R-ZS Review-Dahua IPC-HDW2231RP-ZS Starlight Camera-Varifocal
IPC-HDW5231-ZE Review-Dahua Starlight IPC-HDW5231R-ZE 800 meter capable ePOE
IPC-HFW4239T-ASE IPC-HFW4239T-ASE
IPC-T5442TM-AS Review IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED (Full Color, Starlight+)
IPCT-HDW5431RE-I Review - IP Cam Talk 4 MP IR Fixed Turret Network Camera
DS-2CD2325FWD-I

My preferred indoor cameras
DS-2CD2442FWD-IW
IPC-K35A Review-Dahua IPC-K35A 3mp Cube Camera


Read,study,plan before spending money ..... plan plan plan
Test do not guess
Click to expand...

SouthernYankee, I wanted to say your reply was perfect man thank you for those cameras that is exactly what I was looking for Ideas.

I am quiet aware of how old my system is as I was the one that deployed them for my company about 11yrs ago. You see I am a System Administrator for my company, despite not having a embedded GPU an internal PCIe card was added to compensate. I cant complain as its a Quad core with 32Gb or Ram its own RAID Controller and of course what sets this Tower apart from the rest of them Hot Swap-able HDD bays making it a breeze for raid recovery on a running system also these drives are SAS SED drives.

I will most definitely take a look at the cliff notes, and can assure you my Network is no cake walk to hack but appreciate the concern man.

I am trying very desperately to avoid a standalone system as to not face the same predicament NVR's are great for a bit then dropped by the company and are left with a box you cant update and eventually have to though in the trash. This is why I choose to host it my self with BI as eventually move it all to a mini rack I am building with Oddly enough older style r710 and r410. Keep in mind that all of this equipment was given to me for free by my company on our last move.
 
Last edited:
Bluediamond said:
SouthernYankee, I wanted to say your reply was perfect man thank you for those cameras that is exactly what I was looking for Ideas.

I am quiet aware of how old my system is as I was the one that deployed them for my company about 11yrs ago. You see I am a System Administrator for my company, despite not having a embedded GPU an internal PCIe card was added to compensate. I cant complain as its a Quad core with 32Gb or Ram its own RAID Controller and of course what sets this Tower apart from the rest of them Hot Swap-able HDD bays making it a breeze for raid recovery on a running system also these drives are SAS SED drives.

I will most definitely take a look at the cliff notes, and can assure you my Network is no cake walk to hack but appreciate the concern man.

I am trying very desperately to avoid a standalone system as to not face the same predicament NVR's are great for a bit then dropped by the company and are left with a box you cant update and eventually have to though in the trash. This is why I choose to host it my self with BI as eventually move it all to a mini rack I am building with Oddly enough older style r710 and r410. Keep in mind that all of this equipment was given to me for free by my company on our last move.
Click to expand...
These old servers will cost more to run than buying an efficient used modern system.
 
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fenderman said:
These old servers will cost more to run than buying an efficient used modern system.
Click to expand...

I don't disagree but before I invest in something more modern I want to start playing around and understanding the mechanics the camera world is all very new to me and don't want to spend to much to fast.
 
Bluediamond said:
I have looked over my house a dozen times and have located the spots I want to start with and they are located in the corners of certain parts of my home
Click to expand...

That's great. See you found the IPVM Camera Calculator. It is very helpful.

It looks like you have thought about it a lot. Realize that cameras placed up high will not ID a face. Most state that 7 feet is about the max for IDing a face, and that is zoomed in to the area where one gets enough pixels to make that ID. Most perps wear hoodies or ball caps.

I take it that the crossing views at the bottom left are to cover your driveway. That is a good idea to cover with more than one angle. On my driveway I placed two Dahua IPC-HDW5231R-ZE varifocal cameras (from @EMPIRETECANDY ), one on each side of the garage door. They are good low-light cameras and have provided a face ID on a car door checker that the police said "Yeah, I know that guy". I have enough lighting in the area that I run them in color mode at night. The nice thing about a varifocal camera is that you can test it out and set the zoom to an appropriate value depending on the exact location.

Relying on motion floods for security cameras has pitfalls. Some cameras cannot react quickly to the sudden change in light and take a few seconds to adjust exposure and then a few more to adjust focus. Sometimes that can mean missing the action or chance to ID a face.

Since you are placing a camera on the left side looking towards your front, you might consider moving the backyard overview to that same position but pointing it to cover more of the yard. It would be easier to run two cables to one spot than to run one to two different spots. I have a similar setup covering my side and back yards. I use two of the same cameras mentioned above. My side yard can ID a face at the side door, AC compressors, and at the electric and IT box on the side of my house. The one facing the pool is not meant to ID a face, more of an overview to watch the yard and pool. Consider placing at least one camera to cover your pool door at a position to ID a face. That is probably the most vulnerable point in your home.

What ever you decide, do not buy a bunch of cameras at once and install. Buy one or two and use a temporary setup to see what they show. A lot of us use a 2x4 in a 5 gal bucket of gravel. Mount the camera and move it to where you think you want it. Test walk it at day and night. See if you can ID yourself with a ball cap on.

When you say a PLZ camera, do you mean a PTZ (Pan Tilt Zoom)? Why a PTZ? What will that gain you in your system? Unless you are at the monitor to move it, it stays in one position. Some do use it zoomed out and expect it to zoom in on motion, but unless you spring for a really expensive one, they are hit or miss on working well. Others can chime in here as I personally do not have experience on this. Just repeating what I read here on the subject.

The nice thing about having a dedicated Win10PC to run BlueIris (BI) is that you do not need to worry about the hardware obsolescence issue that you mentioned with an NVR. BI will continue to be upgraded. If it evolves to go beyond your current hardware, with your experience you could upgrade specific parts on the PC to cover it. Having a dedicated box for BI with nothing else running on it allows it to run 24/7 without much of your input. I have Windows updates turned off and do them when I have the time. So I choose when the cameras are down.

Most folks here would recommend hard drives that are designed for surveillance, like WD purple drives. RAID is really not necessary since you will probably not want to keep video for more that a few weeks anyway. If something happens that you want to keep, you can spool those recordings to some other drive.

There is nothing wrong with using your system to test things out first. But if BI does not seem to respond well or you are having issues, realize that it probably is the hardware and not the software. Don't get discouraged by that initial issue.


PS: Hope you are OK from Dorian.
 
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it is ok to start out with an old computer, but please plan on a replacement. Look at passmark benchmark cpu rating and you will see that the Zeno proces it is underpowered compared to I5 and I 7 processors from 3 years ago. Also these I5 / I7 procesors have GPU processors.

A side note: Motion lights blind the cameras when they come on. You may miss the action as a result of the light. Use a fixed IR light or a fixed LED white light.
 
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samplenhold said:
That's great. See you found the IPVM Camera Calculator. It is very helpful.

It looks like you have thought about it a lot. Realize that cameras placed up high will not ID a face. Most state that 7 feet is about the max for IDing a face, and that is zoomed in to the area where one gets enough pixels to make that ID. Most perps wear hoodies or ball caps.

I take it that the crossing views at the bottom left are to cover your driveway. That is a good idea to cover with more than one angle. On my driveway I placed two Dahua IPC-HDW5231R-ZE varifocal cameras (from @EMPIRETECANDY ), one on each side of the garage door. They are good low-light cameras and have provided a face ID on a car door checker that the police said "Yeah, I know that guy". I have enough lighting in the area that I run them in color mode at night. The nice thing about a varifocal camera is that you can test it out and set the zoom to an appropriate value depending on the exact location.

Relying on motion floods for security cameras has pitfalls. Some cameras cannot react quickly to the sudden change in light and take a few seconds to adjust exposure and then a few more to adjust focus. Sometimes that can mean missing the action or chance to ID a face.

Since you are placing a camera on the left side looking towards your front, you might consider moving the backyard overview to that same position but pointing it to cover more of the yard. It would be easier to run two cables to one spot than to run one to two different spots. I have a similar setup covering my side and back yards. I use two of the same cameras mentioned above. My side yard can ID a face at the side door, AC compressors, and at the electric and IT box on the side of my house. The one facing the pool is not meant to ID a face, more of an overview to watch the yard and pool. Consider placing at least one camera to cover your pool door at a position to ID a face. That is probably the most vulnerable point in your home.

What ever you decide, do not buy a bunch of cameras at once and install. Buy one or two and use a temporary setup to see what they show. A lot of us use a 2x4 in a 5 gal bucket of gravel. Mount the camera and move it to where you think you want it. Test walk it at day and night. See if you can ID yourself with a ball cap on.

When you say a PLZ camera, do you mean a PTZ (Pan Tilt Zoom)? Why a PTZ? What will that gain you in your system? Unless you are at the monitor to move it, it stays in one position. Some do use it zoomed out and expect it to zoom in on motion, but unless you spring for a really expensive one, they are hit or miss on working well. Others can chime in here as I personally do not have experience on this. Just repeating what I read here on the subject.

The nice thing about having a dedicated Win10PC to run BlueIris (BI) is that you do not need to worry about the hardware obsolescence issue that you mentioned with an NVR. BI will continue to be upgraded. If it evolves to go beyond your current hardware, with your experience you could upgrade specific parts on the PC to cover it. Having a dedicated box for BI with nothing else running on it allows it to run 24/7 without much of your input. I have Windows updates turned off and do them when I have the time. So I choose when the cameras are down.

Most folks here would recommend hard drives that are designed for surveillance, like WD purple drives. RAID is really not necessary since you will probably not want to keep video for more that a few weeks anyway. If something happens that you want to keep, you can spool those recordings to some other drive.

There is nothing wrong with using your system to test things out first. But if BI does not seem to respond well or you are having issues, realize that it probably is the hardware and not the software. Don't get discouraged by that initial issue.


PS: Hope you are OK from Dorian.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the post outstanding info, and appreciate your concern on the storm. Can never be to ready for those but I been a Floridian all my life and Ann as ready as I can be. To address the hardware I current have a Lenovo ThinkCentre M800 with a 6th Gen i7 that most probably be the T310’s replacement it’s also a couple years old but much more modern.
 
Last edited:
SouthernYankee said:
it is ok to start out with an old computer, but please plan on a replacement. Look at passmark benchmark cpu rating and you will see that the Zeno proces it is underpowered compared to I5 and I 7 processors from 3 years ago. Also these I5 / I7 procesors have GPU processors.

A side note: Motion lights blind the cameras when they come on. You may miss the action as a result of the light. Use a fixed IR light or a fixed LED white light.
Click to expand...

Hey SouthernYankee,

As I was explaining before I might set it all up again on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M800 with a 6gen i7 not the best but I think enough for what I need on the cameras and BI. http://psref.lenovo.com/syspool\Sys...kCentre M800 Tower/ThinkCentre_M800_Tower.pdf

Thanks for the input on the motion lights that makes total sense. Might see what I can do about lighting there then.
 
samplenhold said:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DYLFYQM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Got 2 of these. Nine cameras on each. Get about 28 days of recording 24/7. Super quiet and cool running.
Click to expand...

looney2ns said:
I'll reiterate Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris | IP Cam Talk
Click to expand...

Gotta agree, read read read. When you’re sick of reading it, read it again and that goes for the entire Wiki and camera reviews and especially many great reviews by @looney2ns. Most folks don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.
 
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ThomasPI said:
Gotta agree, read read read. When you’re sick of reading it, read it again and that goes for the entire Wiki and camera reviews and especially many great reviews by @looney2ns. Most folks don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.
Click to expand...

ThomasPI I must be ahead of the game then because that pretty much all I do is read not because I like educating myself on a daily basis but because reconnaissance is part of my actual job. Although I did not buy two of those I did purchase one of them. And will drop it in the Lenovo system when I get it and shift over to that box as requested. I also maxed it out on ram so it’s sitting on 64GB of DDR4 ram the OS is of course on an a 500Gb SSD. I do plan maybe in the future grabbing another 10TB drive but just didn’t want to spend 400bucks ok HD’s atm.

Just made this purchase from @EMPIRETECANDY
to start: (Hoping they are English Versions)

upload_2019-9-1_21-14-32.png
 
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So I ended up getting a total of x5 Camera's from @EMPIRETECANDY

x2 IPC-HDW5231R-ZE
X3 IPC-HDW4831EM-ASE

I was wondering what if anyone else had some reviews they would share with me on experiences with these cameras as there are is not much reviews on the HDW4831EM-ASE especially and seeing the two side by side in the dark the picture looks so much nicer the the HDW5231R-ZE to me, but I am a total noob on the matter and could continue to use the experts opinions on the matter.

The x2 IPC-HDW5231R-ZE will be criss crossing each other for the driveway.
The x3 IPC-HDW4831EM-ASE will be for the primiters around the house one of the three will be dedicated for Face Recognition at the back entrance of my home. No more than 8ft above the door.

I really have enjoyed tremendously reading from this forum over the last couple of weeks or so. Amazing people here.

Thank you all.
 
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