^^^ Those are awesome numbers. It really shows that Blue Iris is most efficient by recording D2D and enabling "hardware decoding" per camera. Using the HW decoding feature in conjunction with any regular Intel processor that supports Quicksync drops the usage significantly. It really allows for a great bang-for-the-buck system build.

For those who are debating in the future between a standard i7 Quad-Core or some sort of hexacore, octacore, decacore Extreme/X/Xeon with discrete graphics, save your money and stick with the cheaper option w/integrated Intel GPU. BI is designed to be most efficient with Quicksync so there is no benefit from extra CPU cores or a high end NVIDIA or ATI GPUs at all.

 

Anyone that may be intersted in an Arlo-Q camera you can get one right now for under $100. Amazon has them for $120 right now which BestBuy will price match and right now if you use Visa Checkout you can get $25 off $100. Camera should come out to between $96-100 based on your local tax.

 

Make sure whatever camera you buy doesn't have default password set by the factory that can't be changed. Also make sure that you do change the default password on the camera or it will end up here.

https://www.insecam.org/en/bycountry/US/?page=1

 

3MP outdoor bullet POE

$85 shipped with code H6WMP3KA

 

^^^^ meh, that is only for the black camera. Go to ebay and make a best offer for $85 if you want the white one. Just picked up 2 @ $85/each shipped via ebay.

 

So I received the Amcrest IP3M-954E POE cams today and mounted/installed one. However, I can't get it to record "direct to disc" in Blue Iris. Not sure what is going on, going to have to research this one. Otherwise, it works as advertised. I'm not really sure I can tell a difference in resolution between this 3MP camera and my 1MP cams, but it was dark outside before I got it running, so maybe hard to tell?

Without "direct to disc", the one cam doubles my CPU usage from ~16% to ~32%, so that's not great....

 

Installed this kit last week, it's pretty decent for what it's worth.

.

Closet rig




Live view from my phone

 

^ Not bad at all.

 

Stupid bees. It appears I have a nest near my front door camera. I have gotten 12 alerts in the last 2hrs from the motion sensor in my front door camera and they are all of bees flying in front of it.

 

bees or wasps?

 

Probably wasps or yellow jackets.

 

Hey Colts, there's someone at your door

bzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzz

 

Must be gatrs wife

 

 

Wtf?!

 

 

 

I hope bees, wasps, or whatever else is buzzing your camera ruin it!

 

https://flash.newegg.com/Product/9SI...WP_11_03242017

1MP / 1080P Amcrest for $64 shipped. Best price I've seen on these. Great deal. I have 7 of these and no issues so far.

 

Anyone used one of these "hacked" Hickvision 4MP POE cams?

https://flash.newegg.com/Product/9SI...=WP_3_05122017

 

^^^^^ never mind:

https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/backdo...cameras.17523/

 

If you have a Hikvision cam, make sure you update the firmware ASAP. If you bought a "grey market", hacked Hikvision cam, you're screwed:

https://ipvm.com/reports/hik-backdoor

 

what exactly does that mean?

 

I'm considering a Ring 2 but my concern is the walk up to my house it from the side. Plus a Ring 2 doesn't pick up someone when they walk up to my driveway correct? If I put it on the outside pillar I might get fined by my HOA and it'll look meh.

 

Ring has a floodlight that you can install above the garage that might do the trick!

 

That's pretty badass. I want to replace the floodlight anyways

https://ring.com/floodlightcam

 

Right?!? Do it!!!

 

Pretty badass, I just recently replaced my motion light that had a black and white camera with an SD card with a non-camera LED one, wish I had known about this coming out

 

Arlo has released the Arlo Pro 2 wireless cameras and they have a released solar panels that can be used with them to keep the battery in the camera charged. This has me really interested in the cameras now for use the entire way around my house. I have about 7 places I want to put wireless cameras to cover my entire property. The only issue will be if I get wireless coverage well enough for it and also if the other issue is the system can only record from 5 cameras at one time. Adding 7 wireless cameras would put me at 10 cameras total which means it would only be able to record from half of them at any given time. Running wired cameras for the entire house doesn't seem possible since I don't have attic space over the entire house.


https://www.theverge.com/circuitbrea...nnounced-1080p

 

I know this thread has changed from the initial question but having cams is great, especially when I'm out of town and my wife is home by herself. The dogs, for whatever reason, bark so much more when we aren't both home so now, she just pulls up all the cams and can check everywhere, right from where she is.

I think it also encouraged our construction crews not to piss in our yard as often.

 

Just picked up a Ring 2 and range extender, hoping it warms up this weekend so I can install

 

I have 2 of the Arlo Pro cameras working right now. I was hesitant to add more until I tested battery life, as I didn't want to be charging batteries constantly. They have been working for a month and both cameras are reporting 100% battery life. That said, I toggle them on/off while I am away via smartthings. I'd like to add 2 more cameras, and when I do, I'll probably get the charging station and some extra batteries, so it'll just be a matter of swapping batteries when the time comes.

Re wifi: One camera is mounted to the shed in my backyard looking back at the house. It is about 40' through the house from where my router is located, and then another 45' through the yard.

 

We are in the process of looking for a doorbell cam or some sort of SIP video intercom for a new home we're building. One of the options is the Ring Elite. It appeals because it can be wired via PoE or connected over 5ghz. (I'm not a big fan of 2.4Ghz WiFi connected cams due to interference issues).

Does anyone have real life experience that can provide detailed feedback on the Ring Elite unit?

 

Just went to the Ring store the other day and saw the Elite in person. PoE is pretty awesome! For a new home, It'd be a no brainer as you would just run the Cat 6 straight to the box. For older homes/retrofits, it poses more of an issue. Also the $500 price tag is a bit tougher to swallow but you can't beat a direct connection!

 

The price is definitely not ideal given the lack of significant improvements or added features of the Elite compared to the Pro... big price gap between Elite and Pro then there's also the optional subscription fees on top of that.

Perhaps this is something we'll have to test prior to deployment at the new home just to get an idea of whether it is worth the cost or head in a different direction.

 

PoE would be really nice and I have it close to where our ring is now but that is pricey! Could you look at putting an extender as close to the bell as you could to keep it running? I know the one by our gate reports weak wifi but it has never failed.

 

Well coming to give an update on my Arlo-Q cameras. After a recent software update for the cameras, their website, and their mobile app my cameras have become all but useless over 75% of the time. My front door camera is set to a 30 second recording recording but is making recordings sometimes up to 2hrs long. My camera in the room with my dogs is set for a 2min recording and the other day I had one last over 4hrs. The worst part about this is that the video doesn't even last that long. It only last a few seconds and then freezes on play back and you just get a long audio recording then. Turning off audio recording doesn't fix it either. This has been going on for over a month now with Netgear being aware of the problem but no fix has been released. The weird thing is it affects some of my cameras more than the other. The living room and dog room camera seem to be the most affected where as my front door camera seems to still work about 75% of the time. The other two rarely work at all. I get sound and motion notifications but the video clips recorded based on them can't be viewed.

I guess trying to go the easy way with wifi cloud based cameras so I didn't have to cut a bunch of holes in my walls to run cables wasn't worth it. At this point I am going to do research on a hardwire camera systems that can support around 12-16, have good night vision, and probably 4k video for some of the cameras so you can actually read license plates if needed. No need for all cameras to be 4k though. Then to find software that can do motion based recordings so I am not saving full 24hr CCTV video footage.

 

I'm sorry to hear that. I have Arlo Pro cameras (getting ready to add some Pro 2 cameras as well). So far they've been working fantastic except for picking up the same cat and raccoon en route to the neighbor's garbage cans every night. A recent update has caused something pretty effing annoying with the app. On an alert, you go to the app and it says your session is expired.... which means you have to close the program and then open it up again... so if you're trying to catch live action, you're SOL because of those extra steps. Hopefully they get that fixed soon.

I can't relate to your recording problems because the Pro cameras don't have the functionality you're talking about. My cameras record motion (period). There is no option to record for a length of time.

 

It took Netgear about a week to fix the issue I mentioned in the previous post.

I have a new issue now with Arlo and Smartthings integration. Basically, my rules randomly revert to factory settings rendering Arlo as a security system useless. Every time I notice it, I have to go into the app and recreate all the rules and camera names. It lasts for a while, and then it wipes it on me again Netgear has yet to even recognize it's an issue. Based on this and the last headache, I would not recommend Arlo/Netgear to anyone.

 

This sounds like an issue I had long ago when they first released the SmartThings integration. I ended up removing my cameras from SmartThings and I use IFTTT to arm and disarm my cameras based on the state of a virtual switch that I created in SmartThings. It has been much more reliable this way for me at least.

I am still having my above issue with my various cameras. I am pretty sure it is a coding error just can't figure out whether it is camera or the online part. However, if I pull power and reboot the cameras once a week it seems to be helping. I am also tempted to take my christmas tree light smart plugs and repurpose them for the time being to turn off for 60 seconds and back on once a week for each one of my cameras so I can stop manually doing it.