Alternative to DMSS?

S

Soundchasr

Young grasshopper
Feb 26, 2020
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PA
Hi All:

I have Dahua cameras and an NVR at my vacation home. I've been using them for a couple of years. I'm not too fond of the DMSS app. It's just a lot of work to do pretty much anything. Even when I know there was an event it's tedious to find. I've thrown a couple Wyze cameras down there so I can check on things quickly.

My question is - are there any alternative apps/programs to monitor and access the cameras on the Dahua NVR?
 
Are you wanting to monitor with a computer or smartphone?
 
For remote access with a phone I'm no help other than agreeing DMSS isn't all that good. I use a computer.
 
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JustInTime2020 said:
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For something other than DMSS, you can use any of the free or paid apps on your phone. Simply go to the Playstore and type in Security Camera and look at one that you think meets your needs.
 
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wittaj said:
For something other than DMSS, you can use any of the free or paid apps on your phone. Simply go to the Playstore and type in Security Camera and look at one that you think meets your needs.
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Do you have any specific example that works with Dahua? Searching for "Security Camera" in the Play Store brings up things like Ring, Eufy, Blink, etc. None of those would work.
 
It has been awhile since I have gone that route, but I think Tinycam, IP Cam Viewer, Onvier, etc. can pull in those feeds.
 
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wittaj said:
I got tired of the slowness and trouble finding stuff with DMSS, so I went to Blue Iris and never looked back. I feed the NVR into BI.
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I'm not familiar with Blue Iris. Based on your description (feeding NVR into BI) is it something that runs on a PC? If it fixes all the DMSS issues, I'd definitely look into it.
 
Soundchasr said:
I'm not familiar with Blue Iris. Based on your description (feeding NVR into BI) is it something that runs on a PC? If it fixes all the DMSS issues, I'd definitely look into it.
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Yes Blue Iris is basically an NVR that is on a computer. Then you don't use DMSS at all.

BI has a 15 day trial, so download it and give it a try. Within 30 min I knew it blew away DMSS and I haven't considered an NVR since then. It has way more flexibility and abilities to set things up.

There are several threads here comparing NVR to BI.
 
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JustInTime2020 said:
Is there an alternative with computer ?
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I use an NVR so have nothing to say about BI, either pro or con.
Using a remote computer, you need to set up access to your NVR's network by using a VPN, a P2P app, or port forwarding that is widely recommended against.
With a VPN, you can access the NVR's web interface remotely, or access smartPss running on a computer on the NVR's network. I find smartPss to be more useful.
With P2P, you can enable the NVR's P2P feature and access it by running smartPss on a remote windows computer.
Alternatively you can use a P2P based remote desktop app and access a windows computer running smartPss on the same network as the NVR.

I have used both the NVR's P2P, and a remote desktop app. With the NVR's P2P and smartPss on the remote end, it works but performance is slow if you don't have a high speed uplink connection on the NVR end, or a high speed connection on the remote end. The remote access app I use is Team Viewer. At least several others on the forum are using zerotier. TeamViewer does a great job of striking a balance between video quality and performance on lower speed connections, which I often use. On the NVR network end I set up a low power mini PC running smartPss on windows. When I'm away, it and the NVR are the only devices running on the home network, and I also enable the NVR's P2P as a backup. Another important advantage for me when using TeamViewer, is the remote computer can be running linux. If connecting to the NVR via P2P, the remote computer has to be running windows because there's no linux version of smartPss.

Lots of different ways to solve the problem if the remote device is a computer.
 
wittaj said:
Yes Blue Iris is basically an NVR that is on a computer. Then you don't use DMSS at all.

BI has a 15 day trial, so download it and give it a try. Within 30 min I knew it blew away DMSS and I haven't considered an NVR since then. It has way more flexibility and abilities to set things up.

There are several threads here comparing NVR to BI.
Click to expand...

Most important is the app. Is it easier to find and view clips?
 
Most of us use the native app that comes with BI called UI3 and not the paid app (But you do need BI running on the computer for it to work).

I have found it way easier to find and view clips on UI3 than any NVR I ever had.
 
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I like this quote,
"I've been using BI for five or six years. I just tried, for a laugh, the Dahua PC based NVR. Comparing the two it's like a rotten lemon to the sweetest peach you've ever eaten."
 
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