Motion detection on camera or NVR

[jrmymllr 0]

I'm considering a 2-3 camera (to start) IP camera setup for my house. I'm good with electronics, computers and networking, but there's a few things I'm not sure of.

 

Something like a $100 Hikvision or Dahua megapixel dome seems like a reasonable choice, although I haven't made up my mind. The big question is the NVR. I would lean towards building a rack-mount computer to put into my rack in the basment and run Zoneminder on it. I'm a big fan of open source and standard hardware since it can be made to do virtually anything, vs. buying a commercial NVR which is as-is.

 

As I understand, a good deal of horsepower is required since the computer needs to decode each camera, analyze each frame, and recompress to save to disk. However many if not all IP cameras can do their own motion detection. This is the focus of my question since it would offload a lot of work from the NVR. How does this work? How does the camera communicate to the NVR that it detected motion, and do they all do it similarly? Or is this such a non-standard function that it isn't similar between cameras at all?

 

I would be open to a commercial NVR if it was cheap enough, since a good Zoneminder box would run about $300 - $400. Any recommendations on 8 ch NVRs that are less than this?

[Linwood 0]

I'll share my experience as it may be similar. I ended up with 6 3mp Hikvision cameras, 5 of the dome (DS-2CD2332-I) and one bullet. I am running zoneminder on a 5 year old (+/-) I7 system. It was my personal desktop that I replaced about 2 years ago, and copes fine doing both recording and motion detection, with a bit caveat -- I'm only running 4 fps and only recording 2fps. But it manages fine at about 30% load.

 

I did a lot of searching on software systems, indeed I am only partially settled on zoneminder.

 

I wanted a manufacturer independent software because, while I bought all hikvision, I suspect they are on the "junk" side of the equation in terms of reliability and expect to replace them periodically if they fail -- and by then it might not be Hikvision. I did not want to get locked in. This eliminates many of the hardware NVR's and all the manufacturer free software including Hikvision. (My junk comment notwithstanding, I bought them one by one to gain experience, and continued to be happy with them so far, though I have little experience with other brands).

 

The software side is really tough, especially if you want relatively low cost. The horsepower requirements vary widely depending on recording technique. Zoneminder grabs JPEG frames from the H.264 stream from these cameras, and saves the jpg itself, not the video (there is work being done to save video instead). This is somewhat costly in terms of performance, and very costly in terms of disk, but has some advantages later as accessing jpeg's can be done easier in some ways than a video stream (in particular systems struggle to access very recent video as it might be in the same physical file as it is still recording).

 

Some programs now allow the video stream to be copied to disk without transcoding, this makes for very fast recording, though if you are viewing as it records you may still be transcoding -- some (Xeoma for example) allow you to view the substream from the camera while recording the primary (or vice versa).

 

In my searching (limited to cheap or free) I frankly did not like any of them a lot, but my preferred three were Xeoma, ZoneMinder, and Blue Iris. Of these the latter was the most polished, the most plug and play while still having a lot of features, and well supported both by fans and supplier. It was however, a windows only system and quite CPU intensive, with no good way to separate client and server or otherwise spread the load. And I really wanted linux.

 

Xeoma, a niche brand little known, was a big surprise -- it was pretty complete and simple, and had both linux, windows and android clients and server versions, and you could easily separate them. It was also completely packaged, meaning not much tinkering required to make it work -- well, more than that -- it does not let you tinker, it had almost no configuration options. It is very much a "trust me to do the right thing" product. Note I said configuration -- what drew me to it was it had an innovative and very powerful technique for setting up activity - motion detection, email, alerts, uploads, etc. Graphical and workflow oriented. Takes a bit to get used to but very cool.

 

ZoneMinder, which is where I have spent most of my time, is tinker's heaven. Don't like something just reprogram it. There's a ton of stuff there, lots of contributed code and techniques. But it is also a typical many-year's-old open source project, with lots of old techniques and bad practices embedded deep, including lots of half-done migrations, so you find the same result in different places done in completely different ways (e.g. serving up one jpeg to the web). But, if you like to program, it works, it is free, and it is pretty easy to change things, especially UI things.

 

Other interesting software I tried includes Xprotect GO (5 day limit on free version storage), AxxonNext (1TB storage limit), iSpy (arcane limits on remote access without $). All worth a look as well as Zoneminder, Blue Iris and Xeoma.

[jrmymllr 0]

I'll share my experience as it may be similar.

 

Thanks for your informative reply.

 

I did run across the Hikvision dome cameras you mention, and they looked like a pretty good deal. Just a few years ago something like this would have pushed $300USD, now they are under $100.

 

Sounds like the safe thing to do is put together an NVR computer, and then anything can be run on it, Linux, Windows, ZM, BlueIris, etc. I saw someone on Amazon mentioned that the Hikvision camera will dump to a NAS, but then that doesn't work very well for remote monitoring.

[Linwood 0]

I'll share my experience as it may be similar.

 

Thanks for your informative reply.

 

I did run across the Hikvision dome cameras you mention, and they looked like a pretty good deal. Just a few years ago something like this would have pushed $300USD, now they are under $100.

 

Sounds like the safe thing to do is put together an NVR computer, and then anything can be run on it, Linux, Windows, ZM, BlueIris, etc. I saw someone on Amazon mentioned that the Hikvision camera will dump to a NAS, but then that doesn't work very well for remote monitoring.

 

Yeah, I saw dumping to NAS in their options but never tested it.

 

I didn't address in-camera motion detection vs in the VMS. The hikvision cameras have pretty sophisticated motion detection (both line crosing and areas, with various fine tune), but making it compatible with VMS software is another issue. I looked briefly and think I could script something easily for zoneminder (in Zoneminder you can connect to a specific port and send a string that says "put this camera in alarm for X seconds with this comment"). Some like Blue Iris say they support "many" cameras motion detection natively but do not list which ones (that I could find).

 

How much this helps I do not know. The transcoding, storage and playback (if you do live monitoring all the time) is a pretty hefty piece. I have followed the kiss approach so far and left it in zone minder. My cameras are outside, and frankly motion detection is more about "flag areas you might be interested in reviewing" than useful as any kind of real alarm -- everything from bugs flying in front of the camera at night, to an lizard walking across the lens, to lighting, to fast changing shadows to rain can trigger an alarm. I just do continuous recording and not worry much about it.

 

Your main problem as you will see is a chicken and egg one, unless you just want to over-spec the system hugely. Some (Zoneminder) take huge amounts of disk, others do not. Some (Blue Iris, ZoneMinder) are more CPU intensive. And you can vary this a lot depending on what you need (e.g. lower frame rate). You might got into this thinking 4 fps is fine, and decide later you want smooth video at 24fps or so, and that can dramatically change your requirements (not just hardware, but you might have to shift from ZoneMinder to a product that natively records the stream). What I did was run for the first 2 months or so, as I added one camera at a time, was run in a HyperV VM and test different software, but also monitor resource requirements. It also lets you take snapshots of the setup at a particular point so you can roll back and try again without starting from scratch.

[Boogieman 1]

Not sure why you think the hikvisions will fail..Ive had a bunch of them running for years with no issues.

If you dont want to use hikvisions free ivms, you can buy an i5 haswell machine for 300 dollars...run blue iris and you can easily do 15fps at 3mp for 8 cams....no reason to settle for 2fps...

[Linwood 0]

Not sure why you think the hikvisions will fail..Ive had a bunch of them running for years with no issues.

If you dont want to use hikvisions free ivms, you can buy an i5 haswell machine for 300 dollars...run blue iris and you can easily do 15fps at 3mp for 8 cams....no reason to settle for 2fps...

 

Perhaps my assumption was flawed (and remember I said I kept buying them). It is just that they are relatively cheap, and while expensive certainly does not equate to long life, cheap has a much stronger correlation to short life. But I hope you are right, and I am quite happy with mine.

 

To the OP, if you haven't noticed, read up on firmware updates and Chinese models (all are made in China but some are for US markets and can be updated, some are China and need to be hacked to update; many of the cheaper ones are China variants hacked and if you try to update firmware they brick. Not that there's a need necessarily to update firmware if using on a VMS system especially).

[jrmymllr 0]

Not sure why you think the hikvisions will fail..Ive had a bunch of them running for years with no issues.

If you dont want to use hikvisions free ivms, you can buy an i5 haswell machine for 300 dollars...run blue iris and you can easily do 15fps at 3mp for 8 cams....no reason to settle for 2fps...

 

Perhaps my assumption was flawed (and remember I said I kept buying them). It is just that they are relatively cheap, and while expensive certainly does not equate to long life, cheap has a much stronger correlation to short life. But I hope you are right, and I am quite happy with mine.

 

To the OP, if you haven't noticed, read up on firmware updates and Chinese models (all are made in China but some are for US markets and can be updated, some are China and need to be hacked to update; many of the cheaper ones are China variants hacked and if you try to update firmware they brick. Not that there's a need necessarily to update firmware if using on a VMS system especially).

 

Based on what I've read here and other sources, I feel quite confident buying that Hikvision model. Good to know about the F/W updates though. I did notice that someone on Amazon asked if it was the US model; now I know why they asked.

[Linwood 0]

Based on what I've read here and other sources, I feel quite confident buying that Hikvision model. Good to know about the F/W updates though. I did notice that someone on Amazon asked if it was the US model; now I know why they asked.

 

Yeah, and in one "product" on Amazon, different sellers will sell English vs Chinese models, so it is very seller specific and you can't go by the answers in the question. Honestly I do not know how important it is -- I have 4 English and 3 non-English region units. I got the English versions from SafeGuard Designs and Netview, and they cost a bit more. Note that even if you get the legitimate retail US version, they may still be through grey channels and not supported by the manufacturer, but only by your seller. But one reason I bought from Amazon is it's easy to return at least in the first 30 days (and I did have one arrive, work for 8 hours, and fail completely -- no hassle whatsoever on return).

 

I've got mine running on 3 different versions of the firmware and can't really notice. It probably is more relevant if you used camera control software (Axxon for example insists on trying to reprogram your camera, for example in ZoneMinder if you tell it to rotate 90 degrees it just rotates the image, in AxxonNext it reaches into the camera and tells it to change it).

 

Oh... if you get them and want to know if they are US versions, don't go by the prtHardInfo to tell if it is really the US version, the hacked firmware also report English there. This is the best way I've found to tell (after telnet/sshe into the camera of course):

 

VAR=`dd if=/dev/mtd5ro skip=1620 bs=1 count=1 2>/dev/null` ; if [ $VAR == $'\002' ]; then echo Chinese ; elif [ $VAR == $'\001' ]; then echo English ; else echo Unknown; fi

 

Found that over on another forum and so far seems reliable.

[jrmymllr 0]

Just wanted to mention that I finally decided to install cameras, and found what I believe to be your website with a very thorough description of several VMSs. Very helpful. I have been thinking Zoneminder all this time, but today changed my mind and will instead try Xeoma first. The excessive disk space and CPU requirements of ZM scare me a bit, and Xeoma Lite is dirt cheap for 4 cameras and evidently is a cinch to set up. The lack of a really good Android client and lack of management via web browser is not great, but none of these free/budget systems are perfect either.

 

I've got a Celeron G1840 / 8GB DDR3 based rack computer that should work fine if I'm doing motion detection on low res streams and use high-res to save to disk. If that doesn't cut it, which I hope it does and thinking it will, I can replace the CPU.

 

I'll report back once I get to use it.