What is a good recommended BI system?

B

bfollowell

Young grasshopper
Dec 11, 2015
81
22
Evansville, IN
I've wanted to put in some cameras for several years now. My wife finally came to me a few days ago and asked me to look into it. She knew I wanted to look into building my own Blue Iris system. My question concerns how powerful a system I will need to run it. I see people describing their systems and mentioning 32GB of RAM, SLI 1080Ti graphics cards, I9 processors and they sound like they're describing the top of the line professional gamer's rig. I'm hoping I'll be able to get by with something a little more down to earth.

We'll probably start with a couple of cameras and I could see us eventually having five or six 2-4MP cameras. Would a system running an I5-8400 with 8 or 16GB be able to do a decent job with that number of cameras? What about the GPU?

Any advice would be most appreciated as I'm just starting out. I know I'll learn as I go, but I'd really rather not buy the wrong things or equipment I don't need and wind up making a lot of expensive mistakes.

Thanks.
 
bfollowell said:
I've wanted to put in some cameras for several years now. My wife finally came to me a few days ago and asked me to look into it. She knew I wanted to look into building my own Blue Iris system. My question concerns how powerful a system I will need to run it. I see people describing their systems and mentioning 32GB of RAM, SLI 1080Ti graphics cards, I9 processors and they sound like they're describing the top of the line professional gamer's rig. I'm hoping I'll be able to get by with something a little more down to earth.

We'll probably start with a couple of cameras and I could see us eventually having five or six 2-4MP cameras. Would a system running an I5-8400 with 8 or 16GB be able to do a decent job with that number of cameras? What about the GPU?

Any advice would be most appreciated as I'm just starting out. I know I'll learn as I go, but I'd really rather not buy the wrong things or equipment I don't need and wind up making a lot of expensive mistakes.

Thanks.
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You dont need or even want 1080ti cards...even the i5-8400 is overkill for your load. Not sure where you are reading that info, but there are only a few folks with i9 setups and they have many high res cams.
For your load, you can easily run 6x2mp cameras (and you dont want 4mp, 2mp starlights or low light cameras are superior to most 4mp cams) on a 100 dollar i5-3570 system. No need to build anything. Buy an hp 8300 with an i5-3570 and windows 10. If you want to bump it up a bit, buy a prodesk/elitedesk i5-6500 for 200 or less...you can barely buy an windows license for these prices.
 
fenderman, I love your response! That's just what I was hoping to hear!

I'm one of those gamer's that drools all over the latest hardware. I just sweet talked the boss into letting me build a new I7 gaming rig last fall, so I really wasn't wanting to spend that kind of money again on a dedicated surveillance rig. I was hoping to look at the latest entry-level HP/Dell desktop rigs and going with one of those. Those machines usually come with onboard graphics though. Would that be good enough for us or should I look at a low-end dedicated GPU like an Nvidia 1030 or 1050?

Thanks again for your response. You've just helped me breath a big sigh of relief.
 
bfollowell said:
fenderman, I love your response! That's just what I was hoping to hear!

I'm one of those gamer's that drools all over the latest hardware. I just sweet talked the boss into letting me build a new I7 gaming rig last fall, so I really wasn't wanting to spend that kind of money again on a dedicated surveillance rig. I was hoping to look at the latest entry-level HP/Dell desktop rigs and going with one of those. Those machines usually come with onboard graphics though. Would that be good enough for us or should I look at a low-end dedicated GPU like an Nvidia 1030 or 1050?

Thanks again for your response. You've just helped me breath a big sigh of relief.
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You dont want nvidia graphics, intel hardware acceleration is not only superior to nvidia for blue iris, but uses much less power and is free.
See ebay for the business class systems i mentioned ...honestly, a 100-200 dollar machine will be more than enough, then in 2-3 years you can upgrade to an i9/10/11/12 etc//
The business class machine will also come with windows pro to allow for more control over updates...
 
Hey fenderman, would you recommend Foscam as a decent camera brand to start out with? I've already seen your comments on Reolink, so I know your thoughts on them. I'm considering a Foscam R4 Pan/Tilt camera for inside and a Foscam FI9901EP Bullet camera for outdoors on our porches by our entry doors.
 
OK, it looks like Dahua and Hikvision are the cameras of choice for most people for BI use. Does anyone know if either brand makes a camera similar to the Foscam R4? I really like this form and the fact the it pans and tilts. I'm not certain what you would call this form factor. It's almost like an inverted dome, but not. I'd really like a couple similar to these for inside use, especially for in my great room on my built-ins.

Thanks.
 
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I started with Foscam years ago - biggest purchase mistake I've made! It's pretty rubbish.
 
tsutton said:
I started with Foscam years ago - biggest purchase mistake I've made! It's pretty rubbish.
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Well, yeah, like I said, I get that. Thanks for your comment. That's why I'm considering Dahua and Hikvision. I would really like something similar to the Foscam R4 in form factor though. Does anyone know if either brand, or any other reputable brand, makes anything similar? I'm not having any luck finding it if they do. Mostly, what I'm finding in that form factor are no name, cheap imports, or companies like ReoLink and Foscam, which both seem to be pretty poorly thought of.
 
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bfollowell said:
Well, yeah, like I said, I get that. Thanks for your comment. That's why I'm considering Dahua and Hikvision. I would really like something similar to the Foscam R4 in form factor though. Does anyone know if either brand, or any other reputable brand, makes anything similar? I'm not having any luck finding it if they do. Mostly, what I'm finding in that form factor are no name, cheap imports, or companies like ReoLink and Foscam, which both seem to be pretty poorly thought of.
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for indoors only: Review-Dahua IPC-A46 4mp indoor PT cam.
 
sspeed said:
Also, as a sidenote, whichever system you get, consider running the free version of ESXi and running BI as a VM. That way you can add or subtract resources as needed and use the hardware for other uses as well. Configuring BI is very much about tweaking settings and finding what works best. Things such as Direct-to-disc recording (amongst other things) can make a huge difference on CPU usage.
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BI and any such software should be ran on a dedicated computer, and not in a VM.
 
sspeed mentioned that the Amcrest are re-branded Dahuas. So, is that the case for all of them, or only some of their models? I'm assuming that, if everyone seems to think highly of Dahuas, the same could be said of Amcrest. You know what they say about assuming though.

Thanks for the link to the Dahua IPC-A46 review looney2ns. I'll check it out.
 
bfollowell said:
sspeed mentioned that the Amcrest are re-branded Dahuas. So, is that the case for all of them, or only some of their models? I'm assuming that, if everyone seems to think highly of Dahuas, the same could be said of Amcrest. You know what they say about assuming though.

Thanks for the link to the Dahua IPC-A46 review looney2ns. I'll check it out.
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The problem is amcrest does not sell the good dahuas, like the starlights.
 
sspeed said:
Shrug, Blue Iris in a VM works well for me, as it does for many others. In this day and age fears of VMs are unfounded.

Here's what I use.

13 Cameras all set to their max FPS and bit rate (the times I've needed video, faces are crystal clear, max is 2688x1520 at 30fps)
Direct to disk recording, adding overlays with BI
7 seconds pre-trigger video
Windows 10 Pro
8 vCPUs
12GB memory
ESXi 6.7
Running on a consumer motherboard (i7-6700 @ 3.40GHz)
Pinpoint motion detection going to SSD, more broad motion detection going to platter, all on the consumer SATA controller (no dedicated controller card)
This particular VM running about 46% CPU with console minimized, bumps to around 76% CPU with console open and live viewing.

The other VMs on the host are my Untangle (my router), a domain controller and a Linux machine for monitoring the UPS.
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In this day and age when pc's are cheap, its insane to run a vm...Any vms should be run on bare metal and alone. They will be 100 percent stable.
 
sspeed said:
The Foscams I have work just fine, and actually pretty well. I wouldn't buy them any more, the US distributor ship no longer sells Foscam. They sell re-branded Dahuas called Amcrest. Can't say I blame them, when I tried to work with Foscam overseas it was messy and they didn't seem easy to work with.

If I can give you any advice, whichever brand you go with, try to stick with that brand. It makes configuring the devices so much easier (Dahua and Amcrest use the ConfigTool that can batch change many settings). Sometimes it's "fun" to have different vendors, but it will drive you nuts in the long run.

I also like bullet cameras over domes, I seem to get a bit better picture and they are more aim-able.
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foscams are utter garbage and amcrest is owned by the same scammers that were US foscam distributors. Avoid both. No reason to stick to one brand, that is on of the benefits of BI, normal users dont need to batch configure anything.
 
sspeed said:
One of the things I like to batch configure is the daylight savings settings, NTP settings and/or GMT adjustments. Not a big deal with a couple cameras, but it gets real annoying with a dozen. With something like the Dahua ConfigTool you can also go in and change the stream settings for all of your cameras without logging into the web interface of each and every camera. As far as I know, there is no way for me to configure any of that through BI.
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You are talking about folks who are installing 5-10 cameras and they are done with it...this is not a daily thing. Would take them longer to download install and learn the config tool than to change the settings manually.
 
I purchased a prodesk i5 6500 with a 500gb ssd, 8gb memory and windows 10 pro from ebay for 200.... Migrated from a nuc 4250 for 8 cams... Works great.
 
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