Scaling Blue Iris Remote Viewing across multiple sites

[eggtimer]

I have two sites with Blue Iris connected cameras. I only have one Blue Iris server and as such am now running into bandwidth caps and UL rate limitations that are preventing me from expanding the remote site. I'd like to place a second Blue Iris server locally to help scale but am unsure of how to configure Blue Iris so that remote viewing via the app and Windows UI is seamless.

Is what I'm trying to do even supported by Blue Iris?

 

[Matthew Hudnall]

If your issue is getting feedstock from a remote site to your main site then reduce your frame rates and edit one of the 3 streaming profiles to cap the bandwidth based on your upload bandwidth. If your issue is related to multiple remote users not being able to consume your feeds due to bandwidth limitations, then that is a different story.

For that situation, changing stream frame rates for remote viewing will be helpful as will capping the upload of the mp4 rtsp stream, but you inherently are just bandwidth constrained. Your option then would be to purchase a larger internet connection or purchase a cloud-based streaming proxy service like Wowza. With Wowza, you stream your rtsp outputs of BI to their cloud servers and then they provide urls for re-streaming the content out. This is only recommended though if you are trying to serve the cam streams to 10, 100, or 1000+ users as it is costly. I set this up for the State of Alabama to stream all the rtsp feeds of the traffic cams in the state through a central website called AlgoTraffic.com. Your use case may be different though and an Internet upgrade may solve your issues depending on the number of users involved.

If you are not maxing out the CPU on your BI server due to multiple streams then adding anothe BI server won’t really help. Based on your post it is uploading bandwidth related, so beyound tweaing framerates and capping upload, increasing your internet plan or going with a re-stream service if you are trying to serve a LOT of users are your best solutions.

 

[eggtimer]

Thanks for the reply Matthew. The specific constraint I am having with this site is related to having two sites with limited bandwidth (rural area). I'd like to run two instances of BI specifically to allow for local motion detection without having to push the video over the WAN (until viewing is required). The problem with this is that I loose the ability to manage both sites over the same BlueIris App. Seems like this maybe an issue with the lack of aggregation of management/viewing functionality in the Blue Iris clients (http and iOS app).

Does the Blue Iris App allow aggregation of server instances and their cameras for the purposes of occasional remote viewing and archival footage access? If not, I would agree that your suggestion of pushing the video over the WAN (this is what I am doing today) is the only answer. It just seems wasteful and limiting to scale the platform while keeping your infrastructure complexity and costs to minimum. Also, if not, seems like a good opportunity for a 3rd party client/app to allow for this.

 

[fenderman]

Thanks for the reply Matthew. The specific constraint I am having with this site is related to having two sites with limited bandwidth (rural area). I'd like to run two instances of BI specifically to allow for local motion detection without having to push the video over the WAN (until viewing is required). The problem with this is that I loose the ability to manage both sites over the same BlueIris App. Seems like this maybe an issue with the lack of aggregation of management/viewing functionality in the Blue Iris clients (http and iOS app).

Does the Blue Iris App allow aggregation of server instances and their cameras for the purposes of occasional remote viewing and archival footage access? If not, I would agree that your suggestion of pushing the video over the WAN (this is what I am doing today) is the only answer. It just seems wasteful and limiting to scale the platform while keeping your infrastructure complexity and costs to minimum. Also, if not, seems like a good opportunity for a 3rd party client/app to allow for this.

The app allows you to view multiple servers...you just can't view them both simultaneously... simply select the server you wish then login...