Blue Iris on Intel 4th gen laptop.

tt7878

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Hello
I want to install a blue iris system at my house.
I have an old laptop lying around but I don't now if it is fast enough.
Now i already have a 5mp reolink camera and also a 1080p foscam camera.
To my new system I would like to add 4 new 8mp cameras.
I'm not sure yet if I would go with 4 reolink rlc 820a or with 4 annke C800.
The laptop i have lying around is an HP probook 470 g1.
In the laptop is an: Intel 4200m, 4gb ram, and an old hdd that I want to replace with a cheap ssd.
But I don't now if it is able to handle 6 cameras of which 4 8mp cameras and maybe also deepstack for motion alerts.

Thanks in advance.
 

wittaj

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4th gen is fine if you have it laying around. But you would want 8GB of RAM minimal, preferably 16. But that is cheap.

Folks here run 50 cameras on a 4th generation CPU at 30ish% and another member just reported 18 cams on a 3rd generation at 12% CPU.

I think 6 cameras will be fine LOL. You just need to follow every optimization in the wiki - substreams are a must!

However, stay away from the Reolinks. They do not work well at all or with Blue Iris...

Reolinks do not work well with Blue Iris and is even worse with DeepStack if you ever decide to go that route. There are some goofy work-arounds to kinda get them to work in BI, but it doesn't fix the inherent flaws in the camera during nighttime motion.

Blue Iris is great and works with probably more camera brands than most VMS programs, but there are brands that don't work well or not at all - Rings, Arlos, Nest, Some Zmodo cams use proprietary systems and cannot be used with Blue Iris, and for a lot of people Reolink doesn't work well either. Some people have got some of the models to work with BI kinda, but it still doesn't overcome the poor night performance.

Blue Iris and Reolinks do not work well together, but the same principles applies for almost any low end consumer grade camera. It is just Reolinks is one of the more consumer end cameras people buy and come to this site as to why it is pointed out often about. I have a cheapo camera for overview purposes so it doesn't matter, but it exhibits this same behavior even though in the settings I can set an iframe...

This was a screenshot of a member here where they had set these cameras to 15FPS within the cameras (and look some of the sub FPS were dropped to 5 and KEY of 0.25 which is a recipe for missed motion):

1638963936767.png



Now look at the key - that is the iframes ratio. Blue Iris works best when the FPS and the iframes match. Now this is a ratio, so it should be a 1.00 if it matches the FPS. The iframes not matching (that you cannot fix or change with a reolink) is why they miss motion in Blue Iris and why people have problems. This is mainly why people are having issues with these cameras and there are many threads showing the issues people have with this manufacturer and Blue Iris. It is these same games that make the camera look great as a still image or video but turn to crap once motion is introduced.

The Blue Iris developer has indicated that for best reliability, sub stream frame rate should be equal to the main stream frame rate and these cameras cannot do that and there is nothing you can do about that with these cameras... The iframe rates (something these cameras do not allow you to set) should equal the FPS, but at worse case be no more than double. This example shows the cameras going down to a keyrate of 0.25 means that the iframe rates are over 4 times the FPS and that is why motion detection is a disaster with these cameras and Blue Iris...A value of 0.5 or less is considered insufficient to trust for motion triggers reliably...we have seen people come here where the reo/BI combo missed them pulling their car into their garage, so it would probably miss your little thief LOL.

A key of 0.25 means that if the object can be in and off of your camera view in under 4 seconds, it will miss the motion. Folks have seen the key drop to 0.10 with these cams, which means if an object is not on your screen for longer than 10 seconds, it will miss the motion.

Compounding the matter even worse...motion detection is based on the substream and look at the substream FPS - they dropped down to below 6 FPS with an iframe/key rate of 0.25 - you will miss motion most of the time with that issue...DeepStack probably won't work at all...

Now compare above to mine and cameras that follow industry standards that allow you to actually set parameters and they don't manipulate them. You will see that my FPS match what I set in the camera, and the 1.00 key means the iframe matches:

1638964131845.png



Here is the unofficial thread showing all the issues folks have with Reolinks. Despite our repeated attempts to ask people to share a good quality night time motion video, as you will see, it doesn't exist. If all you care about knowing is what time something happened, then maybe these are the right cameras if the person is in the field of view long enough, but you will never be able to IDENTIFY them at night unless they stop for 5 seconds (does no thief ever)...

 

tt7878

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I'm glad it will work on my old laptop. so I can still give him a second use.
After all I hear about reolink, I have also decided to go with the annke cameras.
thanks for the impressive, very helpful answer.
 

Griswalduk

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I don't use blue iris myself but what I've read its generally advised to put blue iris on the SSD boot drive and use another HDD for video storage. Usually a western digital purple.

Can you facilitate this with the laptop. Maybe using esata or whatever it's called.

I'll hand you back to expert @wittaj for further advice. He's forgot more than I'll ever know :)
 

wittaj

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^+1

For best performance, the computer shouldn't be a laptop as they are typically designed for lower power and temps over performance. But since you have it sitting around collecting dust, doesn't hurt to try.

Best idea is to put Windows and BI on an SSD and the video on HDD. With a laptop that probably isn't possible and the SSD probably isn't sized large enough for a lot of video, but you have to work with what you have sometimes!
 

Griswalduk

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Speedy response lol. I edited the above post to mention esata which i think stands for external sata. Could this be an option.

Also i believe there's a free trail version of blue iris that could be used to test.
 

wittaj

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Yeah, do not want to use USB for HDD.

Yes, download BI and it is good for 14 days as a trial.
 

bp2008

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The i5-4200M CPU is very weak, and it will probably run really hot especially if the laptop has dust buildup inside it, which can make it run at a lower clockspeed, which makes the CPU even weaker.

But it should still be capable of 6 cameras if you use sub streams with all the cameras, and limit the frame rate of your 4K cams to 10 FPS or so. Maybe 15 FPS if 10 is just too stuttery for your tastes.
 

bp2008

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I don't know if sub streams work in trial mode, since traditionally the Blue Iris trial mode doesn't let you use direct to disc, and direct to disc is a prerequisite of sub streams.
 

tt7878

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I installed Blue iris on my old computer and added my 2 cameras that I already had. Currently, the laptop uses 12% of the CPU. The laptop still has a hdd as a boot drive and makes the startup quite slow and currently it still has windows 7 on it. I plan to put an ssd in it and install windows 10 on it at the same time. At the moment I record the images on a usb hdd from western digital and for older images I have added my synology nas. I also thought to use synology surveillance station but I find that the licenses are quite expensive and that it has less functionality like no AI. At the moment everything works quite stable and I am also very happy with the web interface of Blue Iris.
 

tt7878

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The substreams and also direct to disk recording works fine on the computer and I use the free trail.
 
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