jrmymllr

My VMS (Xeoma) has a motion detect setting where you can choose to detect differences between frames, or the accumulated background. What each method fundamentally does makes sense to me, but I was wondering if anyone has good experience/knowledge of the pros and cons of each method. Right now I'm using accumulated background which seems to work ok, but never got around to doing an in depth study.

I was using accumulated background for a few weeks and was getting frustrated with it. I assumed it was better, but it seemed to pick up too many false events, didn't catch the ones it should have, and had trouble at night. Additionally, having the motion detection ignore any movement less than 0.5s, something I thought would be useful, didn't seem to work well with accumulated; turning on that feature made the motion detector miss nearly everything unless the sensitivity was turned way up. Since going back to frame-by-frame and ignoring events less than 0.5s, things seem to be working better so far. The sensitivity doesn't have to be turned up quite so much, it's not triggering on every rain drop, and motion at a distance is detected fairly easily. Will try google searching with the keywords you mentioned.

you will not see wires running on your brick. You simply need to hire a professional to properly run the ethernet INSIDE the walls. You are asking for trouble with wifi. Do not do it. I agree. As an engineer and electronics/computer enthusiast who has dealt with various communication systems, wireless always leaves too much variability. I run across too many people who think wireless is ideal no matter what the application, but this is plain wrong. Wireless is only better if having a wire is a total deal-breaker. My paranoid "what-if" mind also tells me that it would be too easy for someone to disrupt communication with a wi-fi jammer if they knew the OP's cameras were wi-fi. Hard-wired cameras will not let you down. As for wireless......are you a betting kind of person?

Thanks for the reply, and sorry for my late reply. It's amazing how little information there is out there about this. What you said makes sense, but there must be reasons to use frame-by-frame. I'm using accumulated background now, also known as background subtraction, and it seems fine but have not yet fully investigated the frame differences method.

This seems fairly straightforward, but why do you think it'll affect the Mac file server? If you're using a dedicated computer for the VMS and saving the video streams on that Windows computer, it's not going to affect the Mac.

Yikes, yeah the Axis I'm sure is much better than the Hikvision I mentioned. But then again the Hikvision is 1/6 the price.

I have used only a few IP cameras, but FWIW, I have several DS-2CD2332-I and really like them.

Strictly speaking yes you can't go wrong with this advice. But I also use mine as a Samba and DLNA server, which uses almost no CPU and is mapped to a different drive. Works great and eliminates another computer/network device.

Non-PC based: You're stuck with what it is. If a firmware update is available that addresses security concerns, great. I doubt this happens often though. PC-based: You have much more control over it. If the VMS running on the host OS is commercial/non-open source, you're at their mercy, but I have a feeling these products will have a better chance of being secure. My reasoning is that many Linux/Windows based VMSs are developed by companies that are much more open and willing to fix security issues if reported. And if the VMS you have is that bad, the hardware isn't tied to the VMS; switch to a different VMS! This is especially easy if you're running a trial of the VMS. Also, the security of the host OS will perhaps be of less concern since these are constantly patched. I'm not an installer, just a hobbyist. But this is why I'll never buy another commercial DVR/NVR. Plus it's really cool to be able to use the host PC for other purposes while it's running the VMS.

I have Xeoma 15.10.22 running on Ubuntu Server, and typically use the client on Windows. It works quite well, but there's one thing that is starting to drive me nuts: The times in the archive are one hour behind. This issue makes no sense to me because the server's time is correct. The timestamp on each respective video capture MP4 is correct. Even the time of the last motion detect event on live view is correct. I have watched live view until something trips the motion detect, noted that the time given on live view is the correct time, then went into archive and looked at the event and the time is wrong, one hour early. I've been back and forth with Xeoma support on this, and while they are helpful, I thought this would be a simple thing and feel this must be a bug. But then why hasn't such an obvious issue been discovered already? I have verified the timezone and DST settings are the same on the server and client computer, and even changed both to UTC (on Xeoma support's advice) to no avail. The only way to make the archive time correct is to set the client computer's timezone to one that is one hour ahead of me. Does anyone use Xeoma, and do you have this issue? EDIT: I don't know if anyone cares, but when I upgraded to the new just released version, this problem went away. Shame on Felenasoft for not knowing of this bug they had already fixed.

FWIW, I use a 240GB SSD in my PC-based NVR. 3 cameras, 2048x1536 10FPS. 5 GB is for Linux/apps, the rest for motion detect video storage. Your results will vary of course, but in about 5 days I'm at 16% usage so that's roughly 1 month of storage.

It really depends on what you want, but I'm finding it difficult to buy any more HDDs. Despite the higher cost of SSDs, I like the silence, low power, and high speed. So my advice is if you don't want to pay for an SSD, buy a HDD. Simple as that. However, SSDs do have a limited number of writes, but I'm finding this to not even be much of a concern.

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.

I agree to"longstory". 960H has become very cheap & worth of your every cent... You do not need HighEnd IP Cameras. You do not need to bring on Cannon when you need to skill a roach. Why pay more? You're funny. I've used both a good analog (CNB) camera with Fujinon lens and a 3MP eyeball (Hikvision) camera. Now, the CNB was purchased a few years ago and prices have come down across the board. Still, I paid less for the Hikvision in 2015 than the CNB in 2010. I still have the CNB in storage and hooked it up to a TV to compare. In comparison, the IP camera is PHENOMENAL. Combined with the fact that the IP camera plugs right into the same network switch as everything else, not having to buy a capture card, and all configuration is over the LAN makes this choice easy. Why buy a cannon to kill a roach? Because the cannon is not much more and kills the roach every single time. For a new install, anything but IP seems plain stupid.

Ahh, hence the reason he previously suggested to not use IP cameras. I just installed a few IP cams they are are awesome.

It depends on what you want, but a good lens and good night vision won't do much good if the resolution is low. The other reason is a good 1080 camera is so cheap there's really no excuse not to.

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?

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.

I'm listening. What are ZM's limitations, other than the mentioned difficulty in configuring? EDIT: I've been looking more closely at Xeoma and I'm very interested, especially since I can get the Lite version for $20 and disk space requirements for archive seem to be much lower than ZM.

What is your problem?

The blue iris mobile app is 10 dollars not 15. It is far superior to zoneminder...60 dollars is nothing for a vms... The zoneminder app is 4 dollars if you want remote event viewing... I just installed 3 Hikvision IP cams and am building a rack server that will run Zoneminder. Although I'm open to running Windows on it and something like BlueIris, I feel much better if it runs Linux. Although $60 is pretty cheap for VMS, I've developed an expectation over time that software should be free. The nice thing about a PC-based DVR is it can do anything and be anything, unlike a off-the-shelf NVR/DVR.

I have three Hikvision DS-2CD2332-I cameras coming and am planning on building a computer as the NVR. I understand that the video can easily be sent to the NVR and processed for motion detection. However, with IP cameras having their own motion detection that likely is more efficient, it would be nice offload this to the camera and scale down the DVR computer. Is anyone familiar with how this can be done, or what VMS software can do this? At this point I don't know if the VMS NVR will run Windows or Linux, but I can deal with either one. As for the VMS, free or low cost is preferred since I'm using this on my house.

I just got some DS-2CD2332-I cameras and am on Advanced Configuration/Image/Display Settings screen, and am trying to change the Day/Night Switch settings. Where's the save button? This is crazy. The other tabs have it. I change the Sensitivity and it won't stay, because there's no save! There's some good screenshots on this webpage: http://www.pddesign.com.au/blog/articles/2014/how-to-setup-hikvision-surveillance-with-blueiris-pg02.php#.VignIdWrTmg Go down to where this text is: "HOT TIP: For better Infra Red results at night turn Smart IR on. To do this go to the Image Section, Day/Night Switch and change Smart IR to ON". It's the screenshot right below that. If I change Switch Day and Ni.... to scheduled, it will say "Saved" at the bottom, but I want auto switch and I want to change the Sensitivity. What am I missing that's obvious? EDIT: I got it. I needed to install "webcomponents.exe" from the camera and use IE.

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.

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.