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    What switch(es) for 20+ camera system?

    Got it! I just finished looking at cable lengths on top of a building plan. It looks like I will want to run the northeast half of the building off the central point (only <1,000 feet in total direct to cams, longest run being only 175'), and I will install a secondary switch 150' southwest of...
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    Can the cameras connected to BI be on their own LAN coming off of the BI computer?

    Re: Can the cameras connected to BI be on their own LAN coming off of the BI computer I am just now replying because I have been trying to wrap my head around how this all works instead of asking basic questions where the answer is potentially under my nose. But I cannot seem to grasp it. So...
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    Is frame rate and compression to be set in camera or in BI?

    As I have been testing out the BI trial for the past few days, I added some public h.264 camera feeds to the software. When I tried to lower the frame rate in BI, the status monitor still shows the original frame rate. It happened for multiple cameras. Is this normal? Should frame rate be set in...
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    Should I consider anything other than Hikvision or Dahua?

    The old system was of so low resolution that it was not practical to pull footage of theft. So it was largely useless aside from occasionally monitoring employees. For this reason, we need new cameras anyway. While we have BNC cabling already in place, we need more than 16 cameras. Again, at...
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    Should I consider anything other than Hikvision or Dahua?

    I primarily need to find inexpensive cameras that will allow us to monitor the interior and exterior of our commercial facility. In the preexisting system, the eight interior cameras are cheap Swann N3960 units, and the exterior units, of which there are also eight, look similar. The occasional...
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    Should I consider anything other than Hikvision or Dahua?

    We've been running 16 of these in a large commercial facility that we own. The system...is actually no longer in operation. Furthermore, the resolution was never good enough to make out much. If you read the original post, you will see what type of system the cameras will hook into.
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    Should I consider anything other than Hikvision or Dahua?

    Yes, that is correct. My tests with BI yesterday show that 5 fps will be fine for most of the cameras. It appears as though 5 - 10 fps is the sweet spot for most things unless fast motion or narrow field of view is involved.
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    Should I consider anything other than Hikvision or Dahua?

    Should I be looking at brands other than Hikvision or Dahua? This will be for a 20+ camera Blue Iris system that will be replacing a relatively poor 16-camera analog Honeywell DVR system that is about five years old. I'm trying to keep the cost per camera to $100 or less, if not $75 or less. But...
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    What switch(es) for 20+ camera system?

    I am currently working on putting together a 20+ camera Blue Iris system, and I am wondering if I should be looking at specific PoE switches. I am also inclined to use two or three smaller switches rather than one big switch because our facility is nearly 400' wide and 260' deep. Is there...
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    What type of hard drive should I be using? WD Blue? WD Red? Something else?

    What type of hard drive should I purchase for my system's video storage? This will be for a Blue Iris system. I will likely be getting an 8TB drive in order to keep a month of data. In the 8TB world, there seems to be only two options: Seagate Archive @ $240 WD Red @ $320 The cost difference...
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    Need help putting together an 18+ camera system

    I just found some public h.264 camera feeds on the internet around 1MP in size and pulled four into Blue Iris @ 5 fps using DTD. CPU usage is nothing, bandwidth is so little at only around 150 kbps, and my boss is floored at the quality compared to our old system. He is also amazed at the...
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    Need help putting together an 18+ camera system

    1) Will a Dell Optiplex 3040 mini tower w/ 16GB RAM, i7-6700 Skylake Windows 10 Professional, and 128GB SSD be fine for this purpose? What size hard drive will I have to install into the machine to store, say, a few days of 1080p footage? 2) Is there anything wrong with recording at 15 fps vs...
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    Can the cameras connected to BI be on their own LAN coming off of the BI computer?

    I am not a networking expert, but I am slowly learning. Is there any way to separate the LAN of Blue Iris cameras from the rest of the office LAN? In other words, can the switch that connects to all of the cameras go into one LAN port on the BI computer, and then the port from an additional NIC...
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    Need help putting together an 18+ camera system

    I am in the process of picking out or building a surveillance system to monitor a 100,000 SF commercial facility. Blue Iris is one of the possible routes I could go. The new system will replace a preexisting 16-channel analog DVR system, which does not work very well because of the...
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    Best route to a 20-camera system? "All-in-in one" system? Blue Iris? Something else?

    Hello! After spending a few days reading through some threads, it is time that I post about my project. I am in charge of putting together an IP-based surveillance system to replace a low-resolution, 16-camera analog system. We will for sure be doing 18 cameras, but I cannot imagine doing more...
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