First, I’ve got to say a big “thank you” to everyone who has posted here. Reading the WIKI, posts, comments, etc. has made me much more knowledgeable about installing, maintaining, and tweaking a system. I wanted to share something with those of you who are using a Macintosh computer.
Having not heard about this amazing site and contributors, I made a mistake in having a professional come out and install my system. It was nothing too fancy: Dahua NVR and several Dahua turret cameras. My issue is that I am a Macintosh user. I wanted to be able to access the recordings over the computer, but the company who did the work has mostly PC customers. I asked them the owner of the company if SmartPSS would seamlessly work with my Mac. “Oh yeah, no problem. It will work great.” However, no matter what I tried, I could not keep my computer (iMac 5K 4Ghz with 64 GB ram) from crashing, locking up, stuttering, etc., while trying to work with the application.
The installer kept telling me that I should get a PC, as they have had no problems with that platform. It kind of bugged, after having shelled out several thousand dollars for the system that it wouldn’t work with my still very functional iMac. Hmmm, ok then. I installed BootCamp on my Mac, purchased a copy of Windows10 off eBay and booted up the Windows version of SmartPSS. I found that it worked better than the Mac version, but it still wasn’t passing the test. It was lagging, if more than one camera was showing. Moving onward, I took the plunge and bought a miniPC just to run the SmartPSS software. Making progress now. Much snappier response. It was at this time that I found your site. Oh man, what a find! The answers to every question I had in my brain were there for me to discover. One other thing became apparent: I was over-charged on everything that was installed. I don’t mind the labor costs I paid because they did a very nice job, but the mark-up on the cameras and NVR was almost comical. I said to myself: “Why the heck didn’t I do this myself?”
The discovery of “Andy” on your site led to start swapping out my Dahua turret cameras with some IPC-T5442T-ZE’s and some others with SD49225XA-HNR PTZ's. Now we’re cooking! The miniPC was a great help in making the settings with the Dahua config tool. “Deep-IVS anybody?” No way I would have known that had I not discovered this site. So, after replacing the cameras and making sure they were working well, I decided to take the plunge and buy a new Mac with the M1 chip. As I found out with the experience of running SmartPSS on the iMac with an Intel processor, Dahua has not updated the app (that works with Intel chip Macs) in more than two years. All of their effort has gone into the M1 version. I’ll tell ya, this M1 based version is fabulous. Now I can open every camera window, and the computer works flawlessly. The fan NEVER clicks on. If you are a Mac user, don’t fight trying to get SmartPSS to work on your Intel-based Mac. Either switch over to a PC or think about upgrading to a newer Mac with the M1 processor. It makes a huge difference. Once again, thanks for letting me join your forum and providing me the info that I so desperately needed.
Having not heard about this amazing site and contributors, I made a mistake in having a professional come out and install my system. It was nothing too fancy: Dahua NVR and several Dahua turret cameras. My issue is that I am a Macintosh user. I wanted to be able to access the recordings over the computer, but the company who did the work has mostly PC customers. I asked them the owner of the company if SmartPSS would seamlessly work with my Mac. “Oh yeah, no problem. It will work great.” However, no matter what I tried, I could not keep my computer (iMac 5K 4Ghz with 64 GB ram) from crashing, locking up, stuttering, etc., while trying to work with the application.
The installer kept telling me that I should get a PC, as they have had no problems with that platform. It kind of bugged, after having shelled out several thousand dollars for the system that it wouldn’t work with my still very functional iMac. Hmmm, ok then. I installed BootCamp on my Mac, purchased a copy of Windows10 off eBay and booted up the Windows version of SmartPSS. I found that it worked better than the Mac version, but it still wasn’t passing the test. It was lagging, if more than one camera was showing. Moving onward, I took the plunge and bought a miniPC just to run the SmartPSS software. Making progress now. Much snappier response. It was at this time that I found your site. Oh man, what a find! The answers to every question I had in my brain were there for me to discover. One other thing became apparent: I was over-charged on everything that was installed. I don’t mind the labor costs I paid because they did a very nice job, but the mark-up on the cameras and NVR was almost comical. I said to myself: “Why the heck didn’t I do this myself?”
The discovery of “Andy” on your site led to start swapping out my Dahua turret cameras with some IPC-T5442T-ZE’s and some others with SD49225XA-HNR PTZ's. Now we’re cooking! The miniPC was a great help in making the settings with the Dahua config tool. “Deep-IVS anybody?” No way I would have known that had I not discovered this site. So, after replacing the cameras and making sure they were working well, I decided to take the plunge and buy a new Mac with the M1 chip. As I found out with the experience of running SmartPSS on the iMac with an Intel processor, Dahua has not updated the app (that works with Intel chip Macs) in more than two years. All of their effort has gone into the M1 version. I’ll tell ya, this M1 based version is fabulous. Now I can open every camera window, and the computer works flawlessly. The fan NEVER clicks on. If you are a Mac user, don’t fight trying to get SmartPSS to work on your Intel-based Mac. Either switch over to a PC or think about upgrading to a newer Mac with the M1 processor. It makes a huge difference. Once again, thanks for letting me join your forum and providing me the info that I so desperately needed.
