IP camera NVR solutions that play nice with OH?

I’m just wondering what solutions people are using for NVR’s? I’m looking for something that can motion detect and record 8 cameras (I have elp 1881’s they only allow 1 connected client RTSP’) and also stream each channel into habpannel. In the past I used zone minder it’s litterally the only solution i could actually get a stream into habpannel with. But I find zoneminder to be unreliable and the system im currently running it on is questionable(it was gifted to me “if i could get it to work”).

I’ve thought about getting a qnap nas it has nvr functionality but you have to license nvr functionality by the amount of channels, which is a huge turn off as their units are pretty pricy to begin with. But on the otherhand it could also replace my pi3 that runs OH.

Anyways what is everyone else using for their security cams and how are you getting your sreams into habpannel?

Does it have to be NVR? I use Blue Iris with 20+ cameras. BI has MQTT and REST capabilities. It has streams you can put on your HabPabnel. Works very well with my OH needs, especially with the motion triggers. When BI detects motion, it POSTs to my OH. OH then does the rest. BI has both iOS and Anrdoid apps also.

I’m investigating Shinobi since a couple of weeks. so far it runs really well. I can stream cams to OH, but I found out it’s more convenient (due to bandwidth limits) to just send a jpeg to OH. it’s sufficient for me to check weather conditions, eg. to see if I have to get up earlier in the morning for snow shoveling.
there’s a nice API to arm/disarm motion detection for every single camera and also one to count motion alarms.
the only challenge I have is tuning of motion detection parameters to minimize false alarm. from what I see from friends with other solutions (from more expensive to professional) is that they all have to deal with the same issues. snow, wind, rain, mosquitos, light changes, clouds, night to day changes… cause a lot of motion detection failures.

Yup That’s what I do too. On my HabPanel, I only pull the images one every 5 seconds on the “all” group. And once every 2 seconds on the “more real time” groups.

For motion detection, the thing I love about Blue Iris is its configuration. You can set zone crossing, make and break times, amount of movement in pixels, contrast, etc. I once had too many false alarms on a camera pointed at a window with a tree outside. Just imagine on a windy day LOL. Zone crossing eliminated most of false alarms. Quite a feat! I’ve been a Blue Iris user since version 1 :slight_smile:

if you don’t mind I’d like to ask a few questions about your setup:

  1. What kind of system are you running blue iris on(processor,memory)?
  2. How many cameras and what s the resolution?
  3. what kind of frame rate do you get in the recorded videos?
    4.I know you said you pull an image every few seconds, but can I get full video in habpannel?
    I was looking into Blue iris a while back after getting frustrated with eyespy and ZM so it would be interesting to hear more.
  • I7-6700 12gb Ram but only roughly 6-8 used by BI.
  • Used to run i7-2600 for 15 cameras before it choked… well not really but CPU was close to 80 all the time. Newer CPUS are more efficient powerwise that’s why I upgraded. Turned the old PC onto an HTPC so nothing was wasted :slight_smile:
  • Nvidia Gtx 1050 Ti since BI supports both Intel QuickYnc and well as CUDA HW acceleration. I might remove the GPU since I still have CPU headroom.
  • Direct-to-disk, records only on trigger
  • My CPU hovers around 40% with no encoding (no user watching) and around 50 on 1 client.

25 cameras, minimum 2MP (my daily)
I turn some cameras on/off based on use (like when I record my 3d prints, etc)

I only record 15fps since anything higher than that does not make a difference. I run this system at home, not a casino. But my total resolution of all cams is around 600MP, and 6000 kbps. Some less important cameras are on 10fps.

Yes. Bi has live streams, per camera, per group, etc. I use per group, it’s less encoding when viewed at once.

System is semi-dedicated for BI. I run other stuff in
the box. Anything you do, make sure you get an Intel QuickSync capable CPU to take advantage of the HW acceleration