Say I do go BI. How do users access everything here in the house? Macbook Pro, Android tablet, casting to TV etc? Camera/BI UI .. all of it.

[NightLife]

I guess the title lays it out. Right now I'm still fighting with the Synology NAS and the Dahua camera, like a red headed bastard stepchild caught between two warring parents. And when google the various technical woes, I am definitely not alone.

But the nice part is that my wife and I can tune into the live feeds or watch recordings, and I can log into the various UI's to tweak settings. If I move over to BI, what will that look like .. being able to log into the live feeds or the recordings on an android tablet on wifi, or my wired macbook pro .. or have live feeds going on a 65" flat screen via chromecast (it's not the smartest or newest TV), and so on.

Painless or pita? In a perfect world I would set up the BI PC, and then never look at it again, and do everything as I do now .. on the MBP 16. I have an enduring hate on for windows since switching to Mac many years ago.


Thanks

 

[TonyR]

BI has a built-in web server, called UI3. If your device can open a browser, you can likely watch live feeds from BI using UI3. There are many threads on this that discuss iPad and Android usage and mounting options. There's also a versatile Android app called Tinycam that can stream from BI. Folks have sideloaded it onto Firesticks so they can stream BI on not-so-smart TV's. I put it on my Andoid-based Sony 65" 4K/3D smart TV and streamed BI to it.

I'll work on some relevant IPCT links for you that discuss such.

 

[TonyR]

BTW, UI3 was created by forum members @bp2008 and @ruppmeister and adopted by Blue Iris because it works so well. Many members use Fire tablets because they're relatively cheap and do such a great job with UI3. I forgot to mention you can also view BI's video clips using UI3.

Here's just the tip of the readable iceberg:

Blue Iris UI3​

​

[tutorial] UI3 Viewing Station with Android Tablet​

 

[NightLife]

Thanks Tony; I'll start reading up. The UI3 sounds like it may hold the key.

 

[sebastiantombs]

My wife uses it on her iPhone 12 all the time. Works really well both on the LAN and when out and about using a VPN for access.

 

[Mike A.]

BI is a great system but I wouldn't exactly call it painless for someone who doesn't have and doesn't really want to be running a Windows box. It would be a lot to set up for just one or a few cams. I'm sure that you could handle it and you'd have plenty of help here, but I'm not sure you'd like all that's going to require and it will bring its own host of issues. If you're planning to build out to a bunch more cams and use it more for surveillance vs wildlife purposes then makes more sense.

I'm not up on them but I know there are some VMS that run on the Mac. Maybe start there first. Probably still could use the Synology for back-end storage.

 

[TonyR]

BI is a great system but I wouldn't exactly call it painless for someone who doesn't have and doesn't really want to be running a Windows box.

Party pooper...LOL

 

[Flintstone61]

There was a time......when brand new and my HDD"S were stuttering and I was in the learning curve,,,,,,where i would mutter under my breath......it should be called Blue Virus
I din't have the luxury of sitting at the machine for any length of time at the Condo job, and It had no internet, so if I made a change to the night settings i'd be 24hrs before i could see if it was better or worse.
Coupled with WD Blue Drives with Shingled MAgnetic Recording performance problems, and intel graphic driver problems , I had a rough start.
but now...wwith an HP Elitedesk g4 800SFF it's painless. ( after you go thru the Pain)

 

[NightLife]

Talk about putting in your dues Flintstone, that must have sucked.

 

[sebastiantombs]

BI, being a pretty complex and feature rich application does have a learning curve. Heck, it even has a learning curve when a new version comes out. On the other hand that means that there is a constant stream of additions and improvements being made all the time. The price we pay for technology.

 

[Flintstone61]

Beats the living fuck outta NVR software interfaces. Pack a lunch if you need to seek out video from 18 cameras on a Hik or Dahua NVR. When it comes to the time it takes to find the suspicious activity, Blue Iris is golden. And getting the video together for the Police, or talking to the Condo resident that is a fuck up is very quick and definitive.

 

[samplenhold]

I do not totally agree with some folks saying that BI's learning curve is bad. Yes, if you want to take advantage of all of the options available, then you will have a lot to learn. When I first started with BI, I had come from QNAP NAS using Surveillance Station. All I wanted in the beginning was to have the cams record to disk and use the BI alerts. That was quite simple. As far as dialing in the cam's video quality options, that is all done in the cam's interface, not in BI. You would have to do that with either system.

Once I got the initial setup completed, I slowly experimented with all of the other BI options and also the new things that came along. There are lots of Youtube videos out there that explain quite nicely how to set up BI.

 

[Flintstone61]

Right. It's not hard to find 192.168.1.108 on a browser and get a camera running in BI. Select direct to disc, and substreams and set the recording and motion parameters, then you basically have a functional camera.