Will ReoLink cameras work with a pc?

mg1109

mg1109

n3wb
Nov 17, 2025
2
0
Pleasanton, CA
Currently, i am on a tight budget when it comes to IP cameras. I already have an optiflex 7010 lying around (2014 mode, intel i7 - 3770 and 16 GB ddr3). I am planning on buying 4-8 Cameras for my home without nvr. Would i be able to use my PC as a NVR replacement? (This pc doesn't turn off, stays on all the time for my NAS as well). It has 4 TB storage.
 
Yes you could use a VMS like Blue Iris, just keep in mind Reolink is one of the cameras that don't play well with BI, nor is night quality any good.

You would be better off to buy fewer but better cams.
 
what are some other cameras that will work well with such configuration (note: we want night vision, infrared, motion and person detection as well as AI features as well). Can you suggest some other brands as well?
 
I am certainly not an authority, but I would like to add that I have not had any problem with Reolink cameras in Blue Iris. I have four of them, including one solar Wi-Fi model,, and I am very happy with them. They trigger well, and are easy to tune. I will, however, absolutely agree that they are NOT great at capturing fast vehicles in the dark. The latest model Altas is very good at low light, but does not have enough processing power to really capture good images. It triggers well, but that's not the same thing.

Just wanted to offer another data point, not trying to start any arguments.
 
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Sergeant82d said:
I am certainly not an authority, but I would like to add that I have not had any problem with Reolink cameras in Blue Iris. I have four of them, including one solar Wi-Fi model,, and I am very happy with them. They trigger well, and are easy to tune. I will, however, absolutely agree that they are NOT great at capturing fast vehicles in the dark. The latest model Altas is very good at low light, but does not have enough processing power to really capture good images. It triggers well, but that's not the same thing.

Just wanted to offer another data point, not trying to start any arguments.
Click to expand...
Show us a video with motion from this cam.
 
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Fyi depends on the Reolink model, some do not work with ip standards
 
About what we would expect to see from a reolink....

Post the BI status page that shows the info below including the totals and sub info as that usually shows us how well the camera actually works with BI.

1763946219078.png
 
I'll get that info in a minute, but since I am too lazy to do a screen shot of the Linux PC I monitor on, here is a photo of it. My intent is to show the relative night vision of the slightly older PTZ TrackMix POE vs the new-ish Altas (even the solar Wi-Fi model). You can actually see the gate fence and driveway, with no added light, either visible or IR. I was feeling kind of impressed with it, until I found this site and started looking at the better things... Hey, as my last girlfriend said - 'When you know better, you do better'.
 
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Yeah, it is easy to by impressed with static images. What brought me to this site was one too many incidents and all my big box store purchases over the years never producing the money shot.

Amazing how well the consumer market has marketed us to believe that clean captures at night are not possible....
 
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I'm not sure how well you'll be able to read this image. LMK - if you care to - both if you can see the data of the top camera - the Driveway-1 listing - and if you have any thoughts about how I can improve it's performance. Other than replacing it with three Dahua's, I mean. Which I am about to do, once I get more feedback on my other post here!
:)

BI-Cam-Status-20251123-01.jpg
 
Yea so the key dropping to 0.33 is a classic feature of ANY cheap camera that plays with the settings to force a bright static image. That, and the KEY doesn't match the main and substream and the main bitrate is way lower than the substream bitrate.

The BI developer has said for best performance, the KEY should be 1.00 (which means the FPS and iframes match), but no worse than 0.50.

If you are using BI for motion detection, that KEY means any object that is in and out of your motion zone within 3 seconds could be entirely missed as a triggered event. If you are using the camera to trigger the BI alert, then it isn't an issue.

There probably isn't anything you can do to improve that image with that camera.

The problem with the consumer grade cameras like a Reolink is that they are designed to produce a nice bright static image, but that comes at a cost of motion blur, which is what you are seeing. That is just a way of life for any camera you can buy at a big box store.

You need cameras that you can set parameters like shutter speed and the camera accept and honor them.

So the difference between a better camera like say a Dahua and a Reolink or some no-name camera on Amazon is that you can set parameters on the Dahua and it will hold. If you set parameters on these other cameras that would result in a darker image the algorithm internally says "idiot alert" and it won't let you set parameters that the firmware thinks will result in not displaying a nice bright image. Don't believe me, set the shutter to 1/10,000 at night and the image should be completely black. It won't with the reolink...or any cheap camera. It will override your 1/10,000 shutter and favor a bright image. It is a good test to determine how good the camera really is.
 
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I appreciate the information. I am looking to buy two of these: EmpireTech IPC-B52IR-X3 1/2.8" CMOS 3 × 2 MP Triple-Sight Perimeter Pr for pointing down the road left and right from my driveway; along with one of these: EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-B180 Dual 1/1.8" CMOS 2×4MP 4K Full-Color Dual- to point straight down the drive past the mailbox, wanting to capture 180 degrees.

If you - any of you - feel like making any recommendations, I'm all ears.
And - OP - I apologize for hijacking your thread!
 
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Sergeant82d said:
I appreciate the information. I am looking to buy two of these: EmpireTech IPC-B52IR-X3 1/2.8" CMOS 3 × 2 MP Triple-Sight Perimeter Pr for pointing down the road left and right from my driveway; along with one of these: EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-B180 Dual 1/1.8" CMOS 2×4MP 4K Full-Color Dual- to point straight down the drive past the mailbox, wanting to capture 180 degrees.

If you - any of you - feel like making any recommendations, I'm all ears.
And - OP - I apologize for hijacking your thread!
Click to expand...

I will answer in your other thread.
 
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