So what next?

[Dave82]

Ok so I finally bit the bullet and purchased a refurbished Hp Elitedesk i5 6500 with windows 10 installed, 8gb ram and a 128g SSD. I am yet to by a WD purple drive for storage but will get to that soonish.

I am now waiting on a pair of IPC-HDW4231EM-AS Dahua starlights to arrive in the post, hopefully be here next week.

I have put an 8 port (4POE) TP-Link gigabit switch in my roof connected directly to my modem/router and the new computer which will have BI installed. I have a nighthawk R7000 connected to my modem as an AP doing all my wireless and other networking tasks.

I have downloaded BI demo onto the new computer and had a bit of a look around but obviously can't do much intill I get a couple of cameras.

Once the 2 cameras arrive is it just as simple as connecting them vie ethernet cable to the switch and doing a search for them via IP address in the BI software to get started?

 

[looney2ns]

Plug ONE camera at a time into your POE switch.
You computer needs to be on the same IP range as the cams.
Open a browser, type in the address 192.168.1.108, press enter.
You will get a screen that tells you to change to a strong password. Write down said password.
Answer a couple of questions, advice to to answer no.
You now should see the webgui of the cam.
Click on settings>Network>tcp/ip.
Chose mode static, change IP address to something other than 108. Write down the IP you entered.
Click Save.
Repeat the above with the next cam. don't use the same IP you used in the first cam, increment it one digit at the end.

Add a cam in BI, enter the IP address for the cam you want to add.
Enter user name and password for the cam. Click Find/Inspect.
Repeat for next cam.
You should be good to go.

 

[Dave82]

That's awesome advice cheers for the run down. Just one thing about the IP addresses for the cameras. I'm guessing I should start about 20 or 30 steps above how ever many devices I have in my house to avoid any future conflicts with the router assigning the same IP address to something else.

 

[looney2ns]

That's awesome advice cheers for the run down. Just one thing about the IP addresses for the cameras. I'm guessing I should start about 20 or 30 steps above how ever many devices I have in my house to avoid any future conflicts with the router assigning the same IP address to something else.

The router won't do that.
But, typically its good practice to setup a range in your router for the DHCP server to use. Such as 192.168.1.3 threw 192.168.1.100 as an example.
then use the Ip's above that for ones you set to static...and you want your BI server and all cams set to static to lessen problems after a power failure or such.

 

[Dave82]

As you can see I am very very new to any type of networking. Honestly if the routers didn't half set themselves up I would still be in a world of pain. I'm slowly figuring it out.

I currently have a tp link Wi-Fi modem/ router with the Wi-Fi disabled in the ceiling. I'm using a netgear r7000 in AP mode connected via Ethernet cable that does all my Wi-Fi and wired home networking. So any other computer in the house has a wired connection to this router.

I have the bi server hard wired to the switch and the switch wired to the tp link router. This keeps the mess of wiring all up in the ceiling.

I'm currently not entirely sure if both routers have the dhcp enabled or not as any time I have tried to disable one I lose my network but leaving them alone and just running the netgear genie on setup send to have it all sort it out for itself.

 

[Dave82]

Ok so cams are all plugged in and functioning. I will get to installing them soon. Just another quick one, how do I set my blue iris PC to have a static IP. Just checking that it is in properties IPv4 settings and change from dynamic to static and just set IP as necessary.

 

[Dave82]

OK I think I get the IP address section, what about the DNS settings. Do they need to be something specific?

 

[looney2ns]

Ok so cams are all plugged in and functioning. I will get to installing them soon. Just another quick one, how do I set my blue iris PC to have a static IP. Just checking that it is in properties IPv4 settings and change from dynamic to static and just set IP as necessary.

How to Assign a Static IP Address in Windows 7, 8, 10, XP, or Vista