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  1. Left Coast Geek

    New and Overwhelmed

    pfSense feels way better integrated to me than OpenWRT or DDWrt. but it requires a 2-4GB x86 CPU with 2-4 cores and it doesn't handle wifi at all well, so you need separate wifi access points (I'm using Ubiquiti APs). I run pfSense on a APU2D4 mini board, which has a quad core 1Ghz AMD "Neo"...
  2. Left Coast Geek

    New and Overwhelmed

    i prefer to use a VPN to make BI accessible from outside my LAN. the ideal setup from a computer security perspective, you have your internet connection and your firewall router, and your LAN. your BI NVR system has two NICs, one connected to the LAN, and another with a private static...
  3. Left Coast Geek

    and this is why I'm not bothering with AI or Deepstack, and just using simple motion detection

    ah, I'm not doing anything with alerts, just triggers for motion capture recording
  4. Left Coast Geek

    and this is why I'm not bothering with AI or Deepstack, and just using simple motion detection

    oooh, oops, I had to re-edit that video as I messed up the clips in it.
  5. Left Coast Geek

    and this is why I'm not bothering with AI or Deepstack, and just using simple motion detection

    keep watching him, he's motionless for nearly a minute just behind the car then flies off
  6. Left Coast Geek

    New and Overwhelmed

    p.s. I had some first gen Arlo cameras, they were even worse than the Nest system. they ate CR123 batteries for lunch (4 batts per camera 3-4 times a year), and they used PIR motion sensing so they nearly always trigger way too late. All 4 sit on my bookcase in the 'rejected junk' shelf.
  7. Left Coast Geek

    New and Overwhelmed

    a pretty good choice for a business grade refurbished PC to use for BI is a HP EliteDesk 800G2 SFF (not Mini), with a core i7-6700 (fastest CPU supported in that generation). these are showing up in good quantities on ebay etc as they come off business leases. they are about 3 years old...
  8. Left Coast Geek

    BI silly feature wish

    It would be cool if you could configure the stereo balance for live audio playback on a camera by camera basis... I have two cameras enabled to monitor audio, one at each end of my house, the rest only record audio but don't play it in the all camera live view... it would be really cool if...
  9. Left Coast Geek

    What dash cam are you using?

    if you had to enter a pin via the tiny 2-3 button controls of one of those cams every time you turn it on, chances are, you won't have it recording every time you drive, which is the whole idea, they are supposed to be fully automatic, start car, they record.
  10. Left Coast Geek

    What dash cam are you using?

    When I had a dashcam (they all seemed to die within a year), I used to just pull the uSD card out and stick it in my PC to read the vids, seemed much faster than messing with wireless downloads. re encryption, pretty hard to see how a camera could do that in a secure fashion, as if it has the...
  11. Left Coast Geek

    Trouble powering a new IR illuminator

    the IR LEDs are probably a lot more tolerant of low voltage and/or noise on the power supply.
  12. Left Coast Geek

    Trouble powering a new IR illuminator

    hmm, that should be within range, barely, unless its noisy. setup the same way, and put the meter in AC Volts, and you shouldn't see more than maybe 0.1V AC
  13. Left Coast Geek

    Trouble powering a new IR illuminator

    that was with everything connected, and the IR light forced on ?
  14. Left Coast Geek

    Trouble powering a new IR illuminator

    I would measure the voltage as close to the devices as practical with and without whatever loads plugged in. an extra 1:2 coax power splitter would suffice, stick this inline, insert your volt meter's + probe into the end of the spare male plug, and touch the - lead to the side of the barrel...
  15. Left Coast Geek

    Strong Enough Computer

    I've had motherboards die from bad capacitors, and I've had power supplies die for much the same reason. most of these were 'good' brands (Antec and similar PSUs, Asus motherboards, etc). these systems were on SmartUPS or equivalent high end UPS systems so power surges weren't an issue...
  16. Left Coast Geek

    Trouble powering a new IR illuminator

    IMHO, watch out for speaker wire on amazon, a LOT of it is NOT AWG, it is some bogus chinese gauge. I bought what was supposed to be 12 gauge speaker wire and turned out to be much closer to 14, and further, the strands were aluminum with a thin copper coating. I try and only by cable by a...
  17. Left Coast Geek

    Advice on Camera Choice - 2 Cameras, 180 degree FOV

    Dahua (and empiretech andy) has these lovely wall mount brackets for their turret cams, there's two versions, the 203 and 204, one is for a 3-screw mounted camera, and the other for a 4-screw mount. whiel in my picture, the wire is external, you can of course, feed it right through the wall...
  18. Left Coast Geek

    How much bandwidth does a particular camera use - How do I calculate it?

    scrounge most any old Windows PC with at least a core i5-3xxx just for playing around, get 1 or two cameras to evaluate, I recommend the EmpireTech IPC-T5442T-ZE, and a cheap 4 port PoE switch, hook all this up and install the Blue Iris evaluation copy to play with it and see how it all works...
  19. Left Coast Geek

    How much bandwidth does a particular camera use - How do I calculate it?

    note that the majority 4K (8Mpix) cameras tend to have smaller pixels, so have poorer low light capability at the sorts of shutter speeds needed to prevent motion ghosting. Right now, a 1/1.8" camera chip with 4Mpix, such as the Dahua/Loyota IPC-T5442T-xx series have the best IR night vision...
  20. Left Coast Geek

    How much bandwidth does a particular camera use - How do I calculate it?

    my better cameras are 5 MPixel at 15 fps, and are running around 8000 kbit/sec, which is 1 MByte/sec. I tried lower data rates, but the video looked messy, with pixelation. 10 of these would come close to saturating a 100baseT link.
  21. Left Coast Geek

    Is there a Blue Iris equivalent for Linux?

    I wonder what the NVR vendors use as their basis, surely they don't all write their own from scratch. I am assuming that the majority of the NVRs are linux based
  22. Left Coast Geek

    Is there a Blue Iris equivalent for Linux?

    I just did some googling and stumbled on Shinobi, which runs on Linux (or Mac or Windows). there is a free community edition, and a more frequently updated licensed version. has anyone tried this?
  23. Left Coast Geek

    Swann security systems ?

    Ok, its a 16 channel coax system, the DVR is a Swann DVR-4575, using 16 1080p coax cameras with PIR motion detect, probably PRO-1080MSB. Only 4 cameras are dead, so my first guess is, its just a power supply issue, those 4 cams are likely on their own wall wart with a splitter, so I just...
  24. Left Coast Geek

    Catalytic Converter Theft on Nextdoor

    I've got a couple Ryobi lithium 18V tools, and for my uses they are fine (a drill-driver, a small rotary handheld saw, and a angle grinder). I had an older Dewalt drill (nicad powered) that was a workhorse, but the batteries were dying, and I won the Ryobi drill + saw in a raffle, so I...
  25. Left Coast Geek

    Catalytic Converter Theft on Nextdoor

    Since 2005, Milwaukee is a brand and subsidiary of Techtronic Industries, a Hong Kong-based company, who also owns AEG, Ryobi, Hoover, Dirt Devil, and Vax.
  26. Left Coast Geek

    Passive PoE options for SD49225T-HNI and other similar OEM models

    the 100m length for ethernet has nothing to do with PoE, it was baked into the frame timings back when things were 10Mbit on coax and twisted pair, and related to the round trip CSMA/CD (carrier sense multiple avoidance/collision detect) timing window and gap between ethernet packets. signals...
  27. Left Coast Geek

    Swann security systems ?

    ok, turns out, the access my wife has is just an image uploaded to the lodge's website, and not the actual NVR.
  28. Left Coast Geek

    Swann security systems ?

    my wife volunteered me to help the local Elk's Lodge debug their security camera system that died last month. I know nothing about it yet other than that its from Swann, and has at least 4 cameras. I don't know how old, I don't know if the cameras are PoE or analog. I'm going to try and at...
  29. Left Coast Geek

    Losing signal on all cameras randomly after BI 4 to 5 upgrade....

    i was running 5.5.1.2 yesterday, today I updated to 5.5.1.3 just for laughs.
  30. Left Coast Geek

    Is ColorVu any decent or more of a gimmick?

    I've avoided any dome cameras, and so far just have some bullets and mostly turret/eyeball cams. I like the turret form factor but I guess I can't get really long FL in that, because I want a 20mm or longer lens for my driveway entrance camera.
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