jrmymllr 0 Posted November 2, 2015 This will be quick, but since I looked for information before buying hardware and couldn't find much, I wanted to share what I now know. I installed three IP cams (DS-2CD2332-I) and wanted a PC based NVR for flexibility. However, I didn't have much idea as far as the CPU horsepower required, and wasn't sure what VMS I would use. I really wanted to use Linux but would have accepted Windows if compelling enough. I put together a mini-ITX based system with a Celeron G1840 and 8GB DDR3. An i3 was just so much more expensive and I had a hunch the Celeron would handle it. Long story short, I tried Zoneminder. I'm an open-source fan, and while it seemed to work, I was turned off by the massive number of JPGs it dumps on the hard drive and high CPU usage. I was doing motion detection on 352x240 stream and saving the higher resolution stream and it still struggled. Normally I like lots of configuration options, but ZM was just overwhelming and confusing. I decided to try a Xeoma. A 4 camera license was only USD20, but it's straightforward and just works. The best part is the CPU usage is quite reasonable. Doing motion detect on all three cameras at 640x480@10FPS and direct saving the high resolution stream, 2048x1536@10FPS, direct to disk is averaging a load of a little under 0.5, which is 25% since the CPU is dual core. There are big spikes when I remotely review recordings, but that's ok. It also turns out 2GB RAM may have been more than enough, but RAM is cheap so oh well. This system is also a file server and only consumes 20W according to my Kill-a-watt, however accurate that thing is. So for anyone wanting to set something up, this configuration works very well and didn't cost a lot. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
zr1 0 Posted November 3, 2015 Thanks for the review - 20W is real good for doing those functions. A single-drive NAS can be 7-20W by itself. I do enjoy my kill-a-watt Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
