elevatedthinking

Hello all, I am looking to install a new CCTV system for a home residence. It will be a basic setup with approximately 4 cameras covering the house from different angles. They will be on the side facing the driveway, cvering the front door, the back door and perhaps one more angle. I don't have a specific budget, but maybe in the 500 range for a full setup? Or less if I use an existing computer as an NVR? Years back, at a different residence, I setup Hikvision domes - DS-2CD2122F, using an i5 computer based NVR. It worked great, and I even have a done left over despite hearing not so great things about Dahua as of late. Since then, I am sure technology has changed in the CCTV world as fast, if not faster than everywhere else. For my sort of purpose, what cam options are recommended? Would it be recommended to use a prepackaged NVR system, or create my own using a computer. Is Blue Iris still the software of choice for this? Thanks for your help. I'm a bit rusty with this.

Hello all, I am currently trying to help a friend who has come into ownership of an establishment which is fully networked / wired and is running properly. There are a half dozen Axis CCTV cameras running throughout the building. Upon a first walk through of the building, The cameras all appear to be wired into a switch (I assume PoE) located in the network room. An employee mentioned that at one point he was able to power on a TV monitor in his office and see all 6 cameras as one would expect. I haven't been able to reproduce this yet. Since this is mostly a black box scenario, I don't have in depth knowledge (yet) of how the network is setup and what tools are being used, I am unsure of the best course to map everything out. Some things that came to mind were to plug into that PoE switch and run an Nmap scan in an attempt to detect the IP's of the Axis cameras that were connected. This seems like a logical way to locate the cameras, but it left me thinking about how I would figure out what NVR system is being used? I couldn't think of a way to identify the NVR system on the network outside of trying to identify it via the Nmap results. I see that Axis offers an IP Utility that would most likely show the connected cameras, however it doesn't appear to run under linux. While it's not impossible to use a Windows machine to perform these tasks, I was hoping to stick to Linux when possible. I would be curious to hear what sort of methods that you would use to start to understand the network layout. I understand this post may be lacking a lot of required information, I can add more info as I discover it. I appreciate any advice on techniques to carry out such a task! Cheers!

So after some thought, it seems more practical to invest a little more upfront into a CPU that will draw less energy over time. Ideally I would go for an i7 but I just can't swing that in my budget. I am already over budget, lol. These things add up fast. I am thinking an i5 3750. Using your numbers of being able to support 14MP, that should be sufficient for some time. And in the future, if I need to upgrade, I think this rig will hold it's value a little better. Maybe thinking that just makes me feel better Despite researching pretty much daily, I still don't feel completely up to speed with hardware. This is something I have pieced together, but it's hardly specialized for CCTV. By this I mean is this mother board overkill? If the Intel HD onboard graphics can render the substreams, then I would assume I don't need a gpu? Also, besides an additional NIC, I can't really think of what I would need all the PCIe slots for so maybe this is overkill? Side note, was the 14MP number you posted regarding *playback* or *recording*? If I am understanding things correctly, the recording aspect isn't where the workload is at it's highest? Anyways, I will quit rambling, here is the setup. All input would be much appreciated! ---Side note: I will only have a couple Hik 3MP cams to start with, but will eventually be expanding so I am trying to leave plenty of room for expansion with this build. I already have a 2TB Seagate to start with. *D'oh* Forgot to mention I am planning on using Blue Iris, although I will be testing Milestone...just not sure I like only being able to save 5 days of video. PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks CPU: Intel Core i5-3570 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($194.99 @ Newegg) CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.98 @ Outlet PC) Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($124.98 @ Outlet PC) Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($69.98 @ Outlet PC) Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Microcenter) Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($34.99 @ Newegg) Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($17.25 @ Outlet PC) Total: $532.16 (Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.) (Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-18 16:00 EDT-0400)

Could you use an alternate linux distro and create some NFS shares and use those as the destination of the Hik recording? Thanks for the info about VLC and all of this other information, exciting to start playing with this

OK just wanted to double check, seems like a good solution to use in the mean time while trying to sort out the final NVR PC. To clarify, have you gotten it to work where you can reboot the cam/nas and it will resume using the old shares where video was stored prior to reboot? It looks like you said by removing the quota value you have been able to get around that issue? Also, are there other pieces of software that could be used just for playback of the video recorded to the nas?

I will be looking to use a similar solution for the time being. I ordered a DS-2CD2032 bullet to toy with but haven't decided on a NVR setup yet. I will be using the built in NVR capabilities of the Hik and hopefully setup an older Core 2 Duo box with Ubuntu and something like NAS4FREE. Any thoughts come to mind that would prevent this from working? Do you think using the Hik's built-in NVR would decrease performance or lifespan of the camera itself? I don't know how much of a workload that will place on the camera.

Thanks for the reply, I hadn't even ventured into the capture card department yet. I assumed the majority just go straight to their NIC and then recorded to a drive. What is the advantage of using a card like the Aver? Does it allow for more throughput? Great info regarding the difference in CPUs, thanks for that. I suppose you always get what you pay for, I am just trying to find an affordable way to get this done. I agree, the difference in price will be made up given 6-12 months of use. Really interesting the relationship between power consumption and cpu utilization and that it's not linear as one may assume. I'll keep digging, the 3750 sure seems like a solid choice and will no doubt leave room for some upscale down the road. Based on how fast even *I* have seen the IP Megapixel field change in the last 6 months since I started learning about it, there will no doubt be some huge leaps in the near future. Having a PC that has room to allow for those changes will be of value as well.

Did the IR strips happen to arrive?

Hello all, I am trying to put together an affordable PC based NVR system that will be recording four 3MP IP cams. It will record to a local RAID at first, but would like to eventually expand to record to a NAS. Important note: I am not sure which NVR software I will be using. I would like to demo both BlueIris and Milestone Xproject. I haven't been very in touch with computer hardware lately, and was hoping people could chime in with their thoughts. I was considering the AMD FX-6100 3.30 GHz CPU Anyone have any experience with the FX series or this specific chip? From the research I have done so far (minimal) there seems to be really great feedback. I was hoping to try to figure out how it operates both BlueIris and Milestone as this will be a software based NVR. I was looking @ pairing this CPU with a Gigabyte AM3 760G mobo and 4GB of DDR3. So how does AMD perform vs Intel in these sorts of battlegrounds? Are there limitations within the CCTV world of using one vs the other? Thanks.

So that means that the value used to identify the language of the cam is part of the hardware itself? Seems logical since it took the Chinese firmware and still didn't update the lang

Can you check to see if the firmware version is currently the same as the previous version prior to tftp'ing? I haven't poked around too much with this, I guess I am asking whether you can see a version number or something to see if it took

sounds like a fun project, let us know your findings!

Are they warrantied anywhere from Aliexpress? I mean having to send it back for whatever the shipping fee may be, $75 even, would be better then being completely out of luck trying to recoup anything I am going to research the firmware issues, wonder if it can be worked around?

Yeah that is what I am thinking, but these strips below the cams, with that V-groove pointing out away from house I like the sound of that...but even just the low-midrage quality IR strips are super expensive. This seems like a solid alternative if it works. Really excited to see how it performs.

I gotcha, I live in a really rural area. I don't have cams setup, but I fear the IR will attract swarms of bugs. Any experience with this? I thought I could maybe put these strips somewhere away from the house so if the bugs are going to swarm, they swarm away from the house...