BI Licensing & Subscription Model

rfj

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My understanding was that the BI licensing works as follow:

  • For every major version upgrade (like 4.x to 5.x) you have to pay the upgrade fee.
  • When you upgrade you get one year if the "slow" support
  • After the 1 year expires you won't get support anymore but you still get updates for that particular major version

However, for a while now I am not able to install new updated anymore. Somebody indicated that my last point, i.e. you still get updated after 1 year, is no true anymore. Is that indeed the case? In other words, BI moved to a subscription model. Do I understand this correctly?
 

wittaj

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You can do any updates up to the expiration date on your order (1 year).

BI has always said that but it wasn't until around May 2020 or so that they started to enforce it.

I wouldn't call it a subscription because you can choose to not pay the $30 and stay on the latest version available to you or pay the $30 and get updates as they happen for the next year. Many people here are still running version 4 with no trouble.
 

rfj

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Thank you for the confirmation. My wife bought a Wansview Q5 cam and my current version of BI 5.x doesn't have a profile for this cam (only Q3). Apparently a newer version of BI does support the Q5. I would have thought that I can add the Q5 manually but it just doesn't work (maybe it's just because I don't know how to do it).
 

wittaj

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BI just takes video feeds. Either it works or not.

The profiles you are referencing really don't mean much. Almost all of my cameras are set to generic in BI.

Simply add camera and type in IP address and user and password and hit find/inspect button and let BI find the right setup. It may say your camera make/model or it might not
 

rfj

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That's exactly what I did. Add camera. Find/Inspect. I know the camera has IP 192,168.1.252 so I selected that IP. User and password was changed to what I entered in the local app configuration of the camera mobile application. The rest I left at default. No luck. The app mentioned rtsp:/[username]:[pwd]@192.168.1.252:554/live/ch0 so I tried that for "Main stream" and I also tried "/live/ch0" as Main Stream but none of that works.
 

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You might look at your older camera and use the same string, just different IP
 

rfj

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It's my first Wansview camera so I don't have a reference. I tried to copy it from my other Hikvision cams and just adjust the username and pwd but that doesn't work, either.
 

anijet

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Do you have it wired or are you trying to setup wireless?
 

rfj

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It is a cloud based cam but in the mobile application you can enable ONVIF which I did. You can also set the username and pwd. And you can set the rtsp port which by default is 554. I tried the website @IAmATeaf provided and pasted that URL into Camera Properties->Video->Configure...->Main stream but that didn't help. In BI Media/videoRTSP port is set to 554 and Discovery/ONVIF port is set to 8899 which is also what the camera is set to.
 

wittaj

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Even though it says ONVIF compliant, it doesn't mean it will work. I have read on an amazon review that the Q3 works in BI but the Q5 doesn't:

Q: Does this work with blue iris? Someone said yes and someone said no
A: Sorry, it doesn't work with Blue Iris.
By Wansview
 
As an Amazon Associate IPCamTalk earns from qualifying purchases.

rfj

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Indeed, Wansview does says on Amazon that it doesn't work with BI but that answer was 2 years ago. BI does list the Q5 in their cameras, though. Not in the version I have but I assume it should be possible to manually configure it.
 

sebastiantombs

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You know what happens when you "assume". It is more than likely that somewhere along the way a revision to BI included support for that camera. Since it was produced after the version of BI you are running was written it's not all that surprising that it doesn't work.
 

wittaj

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And even if it does, it may not have all functionality.

Here was someone that got it in BI but the PTZ functions didn't work:

 

anijet

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If I start a camera add and try Q5 here is what it looks like.


1625969814552.png
 

rfj

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@anijet I tried those settings (adjusting the IP address, username and password) but it still doesn't work. I understand my BI 5.x version might not support PTZ and audio with the Q5 but I would think(!) that I would at least get the video stream. Actually, I downloaded a trial version of the latest BI, which supposedly supports the Q5, on a different computer and I still can't get it to work. So some setting seems to be wrong.
 
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