I thought this might be of interest. I've been adding cameras gradually for about 5 years. I'm currently running 25 cameras of various ages and brands. Most are Amcrest 5mp turrets, but others include some older model 3mp Panasonic PTZ cams, 5x of Boavision 2mp mini PTz cams (digital zoom only) and, more recently, 3x "Real HD" 4k (8mp) mini eyeballs.
The secret to running this many cameras on a retired office-grade desktop computer? I run them at very low frame rates - 5fps for most of them and 10fps for the ones at the front door. For my needs, that's fast enough for security ID purposes - it's like taking 5 photos per second. With that load, I'm running typically at just under 50% CPU. That gives me plenty of headroom for situations where there's lots of recording going on - for example, when the lawn care crew descends on the neighborhood and there's 5 guys working in the yard at the same time while the trash trucks are collecting out front and Amazon is delivering more cameras to my home. I also use VBR (variable bit rate) on all of the cameras. That also greatly reduces the load. I don't run Sub Streams on any of my cameras, although that seems to be a BI recommended practice.
All of the cameras are hard-wired Cat6 POE and are powered off a 48-port 100MBS Cisco POE switch. I bought the switch (and a spare) on eBay about 5 years ago for $25 each when many corporations were moving from 100mbs to 1gbs switches. Cabling was a lot of work since most of the cameras are mounted below the soffit, about 10 ft from the ground. I run bulk cable and terminate both ends RJ45 after pulling to the camera location. I'm a senior, but I still am able to safely climb ladders. Fortunately, we have walk-in attics at both ends of our retirement home so much of the cable running can be done inside. It's still a PITA, but I have a good system worked out now. I have a network patch panel in the attic. All of the cables from the cameras terminate there, and secondary cables run down through a 4" dia. PVC pipe to the server room. The pipe was installed when the house was built in case Radon remediation was required. Our house tested negative so I had this pipe conveniently available.
Over the years, I've developed "snap-in" camera mounts that I use for cameras that are mounted on the vinyl siding. They're basically made from two parts: a piece of aluminum L and a piece of galvanized steel plate folded over in a vise to form a spring-like tongue that inserts into the gap between siding panels. The cables tuck in under the space behind the L. They make installing and moving the cameras much easier and don't need any holes drilled. They've been stable even in high winds. When I'm installing a new camera I often move it several times before I decide on the final location. If I need to bring the camera into the shop for maintenance, I can just pop it off the wall and unplug it from the RJ45.
The entire system is rock-solid. It runs for months with no glitches and little intervention. About once or twice a week, I restart BI. Over time, CPU consumption seems to gradually creep up above 50%. When it gets up near 60% I do a restart using Windows Services. It takes only about a minute. About every 2-3 months I reboot the server to clean up any degradation on Windows 10 Pro. (note: for the Boavision cameras that are not POE, I use an inexpensive POE splitter at the camera site, to break out power and video. That way the cameras are still powered by my Cisco POE switch with just one Cat6 cable. I also use those splitters in a few camera locations to power external LED IR floodlights for areas beyond the range of the camera LEDs to illuminate.)
My disk storage is a Seagate Skyhawk AI 8TB Video Internal Hard Drive. I use motion detection triggers (in BI only, not in the cams) but also record nearly all of the cameras full-time. That way, I get the alerts but have a full record of everything. I get about 10 days of recording, currently. It has shrunk down from 14 days as I've added more cams.
My server and switches are located in a "secret" room that I built in an area of our home where there was some dead space behind a drywall wall. I made an entry about 3 x 5' in size (I'm short
) that fits tightly back in place to conceal the doorway. Once in place, various tools and clothing hang from the panel to further disguise it. I rarely need to get physical access to the room, but a few times a year a camera will "hang" and won't restart by rebooting from UI3, so I go in the room and unplug/replug the offending camera on the Cisco switch.
At all other times, I access and maintain the server using Chrome Remote Desktop. That has been a tremendous help, since I can access the server from anywhere and control it as if I were sitting at the keyboard. I probably could use Cisco remote tools to fix the rare hung camera, but that hasn't been a priority.
I also want to comment on the Real HD 8mp mini eyeball cams. I bought one on Amazon about a year ago to experiment with 4K/8mp on my network. The image quality, both day and night, and audio is far better than any of my other cameras, including an Amcrest cam that cost 4x as much. It was advertised as 4K/8mp, but shows up on BI Camera Status as only 5mp The Real HD cameras show up as 8.3 MP. Using digital zoom on UI3. Did I mention that they are POE?
I bought a 2nd Real HD eyeball, but, after a torrential downpour, the sound went dead, The camera was mounted on an exposed SW wall, the direction from which most of our storms arrive, and with no soffit or other overhead protection. I returned it and the vendor quickly replaced it with no hassle. On the replacement, I crafted a small "igloo" from stick epoxy over the tiny opening for the mic. That's been running now for nearly a year with no further problems.
The only other problem I've had with these cams is that they were taking a lot of network bandwith - about 4X my other cameras even running at 8fps (the lowest setting). When I added a 3rd cam, it pushed my server CPU up to nearly 80% at idle - a show stopper. After some experimenting, I changed the Image Quality setting in the camera configuration from BEST to GOOD. That reduced the bitrate down to about 600-650 Kbs and dropped my CPU down to about 45-50% under normal daytime conditions. That works fine and the image quality is not noticeably degraded.
The secret to running this many cameras on a retired office-grade desktop computer? I run them at very low frame rates - 5fps for most of them and 10fps for the ones at the front door. For my needs, that's fast enough for security ID purposes - it's like taking 5 photos per second. With that load, I'm running typically at just under 50% CPU. That gives me plenty of headroom for situations where there's lots of recording going on - for example, when the lawn care crew descends on the neighborhood and there's 5 guys working in the yard at the same time while the trash trucks are collecting out front and Amazon is delivering more cameras to my home. I also use VBR (variable bit rate) on all of the cameras. That also greatly reduces the load. I don't run Sub Streams on any of my cameras, although that seems to be a BI recommended practice.
All of the cameras are hard-wired Cat6 POE and are powered off a 48-port 100MBS Cisco POE switch. I bought the switch (and a spare) on eBay about 5 years ago for $25 each when many corporations were moving from 100mbs to 1gbs switches. Cabling was a lot of work since most of the cameras are mounted below the soffit, about 10 ft from the ground. I run bulk cable and terminate both ends RJ45 after pulling to the camera location. I'm a senior, but I still am able to safely climb ladders. Fortunately, we have walk-in attics at both ends of our retirement home so much of the cable running can be done inside. It's still a PITA, but I have a good system worked out now. I have a network patch panel in the attic. All of the cables from the cameras terminate there, and secondary cables run down through a 4" dia. PVC pipe to the server room. The pipe was installed when the house was built in case Radon remediation was required. Our house tested negative so I had this pipe conveniently available.
Over the years, I've developed "snap-in" camera mounts that I use for cameras that are mounted on the vinyl siding. They're basically made from two parts: a piece of aluminum L and a piece of galvanized steel plate folded over in a vise to form a spring-like tongue that inserts into the gap between siding panels. The cables tuck in under the space behind the L. They make installing and moving the cameras much easier and don't need any holes drilled. They've been stable even in high winds. When I'm installing a new camera I often move it several times before I decide on the final location. If I need to bring the camera into the shop for maintenance, I can just pop it off the wall and unplug it from the RJ45.
The entire system is rock-solid. It runs for months with no glitches and little intervention. About once or twice a week, I restart BI. Over time, CPU consumption seems to gradually creep up above 50%. When it gets up near 60% I do a restart using Windows Services. It takes only about a minute. About every 2-3 months I reboot the server to clean up any degradation on Windows 10 Pro. (note: for the Boavision cameras that are not POE, I use an inexpensive POE splitter at the camera site, to break out power and video. That way the cameras are still powered by my Cisco POE switch with just one Cat6 cable. I also use those splitters in a few camera locations to power external LED IR floodlights for areas beyond the range of the camera LEDs to illuminate.)
My disk storage is a Seagate Skyhawk AI 8TB Video Internal Hard Drive. I use motion detection triggers (in BI only, not in the cams) but also record nearly all of the cameras full-time. That way, I get the alerts but have a full record of everything. I get about 10 days of recording, currently. It has shrunk down from 14 days as I've added more cams.
My server and switches are located in a "secret" room that I built in an area of our home where there was some dead space behind a drywall wall. I made an entry about 3 x 5' in size (I'm short
) that fits tightly back in place to conceal the doorway. Once in place, various tools and clothing hang from the panel to further disguise it. I rarely need to get physical access to the room, but a few times a year a camera will "hang" and won't restart by rebooting from UI3, so I go in the room and unplug/replug the offending camera on the Cisco switch.At all other times, I access and maintain the server using Chrome Remote Desktop. That has been a tremendous help, since I can access the server from anywhere and control it as if I were sitting at the keyboard. I probably could use Cisco remote tools to fix the rare hung camera, but that hasn't been a priority.
I also want to comment on the Real HD 8mp mini eyeball cams. I bought one on Amazon about a year ago to experiment with 4K/8mp on my network. The image quality, both day and night, and audio is far better than any of my other cameras, including an Amcrest cam that cost 4x as much. It was advertised as 4K/8mp, but shows up on BI Camera Status as only 5mp The Real HD cameras show up as 8.3 MP. Using digital zoom on UI3. Did I mention that they are POE?
I bought a 2nd Real HD eyeball, but, after a torrential downpour, the sound went dead, The camera was mounted on an exposed SW wall, the direction from which most of our storms arrive, and with no soffit or other overhead protection. I returned it and the vendor quickly replaced it with no hassle. On the replacement, I crafted a small "igloo" from stick epoxy over the tiny opening for the mic. That's been running now for nearly a year with no further problems.
The only other problem I've had with these cams is that they were taking a lot of network bandwith - about 4X my other cameras even running at 8fps (the lowest setting). When I added a 3rd cam, it pushed my server CPU up to nearly 80% at idle - a show stopper. After some experimenting, I changed the Image Quality setting in the camera configuration from BEST to GOOD. That reduced the bitrate down to about 600-650 Kbs and dropped my CPU down to about 45-50% under normal daytime conditions. That works fine and the image quality is not noticeably degraded.
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