Blue Iris vs Protect vs Camect

C

Chapin

Getting comfortable
Oct 5, 2017
148
28
I've been a happy BI user for just over a year, big thanks due to this community for helping me get off the ground.

For the past 2 - 3 weeks I've been testing the Unifi Protect system and also the crowd funded Camect NVR. All three of these are good systems and each has strengths and weaknesses that the other don't. I thought I'd share some observations here of these three systems. I'll try to add to these lists as I think of more.

My cameras are Dahua, Unifi, and a Nest Doorbell

Blu Iris Pros:
Most powerful and configurable of the three
Good AI (Sentry); only one with boxes around movement which is really nice

Blu Iris Cons:
No integration of IOT (Nest etc) cams
Most AI false positives
Need to open port or set up VPN for remote access

Camect Pros:
Best camera choices, ONVIF, RTSP, IOT (it's really nice having the Nest appear with the other cams)
Best AI, able to differentiate between a squirrel, cat, and dog; Also apparently can differentiate between many other categories and alert/not alert based on object type.
Best AI notifications
Set up was pretty straight forward. Found all of the cameras, except the Ubiquity which streams on a non-standard port. It found all of the Dahuas which were are on a sequestered vlan, different than the Camect vlan.
Camect support is really responsive to solving issues
Most trainable AI

Camect Cons:
This is an early product, a lot of things could work better or be more intuitive. I think that this will improve over time.
No mobile apps, uses a mobile browser window. I would guess that apps will come along.

Protect Pros:
Simplest Set up
Most intuitive interface (web and IOS)
Best remote viewing experience (iOS), including playing back motion events and scrubbing playback video
Fewest AI false positives

Protect Cons:
Only Unifi Cams
Unifi Cam (UVC G3 Pro) picture quality not on par with Dahua (IPC-HDW5231R-ZE)
 
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Would be nice to have the ability to install the Camect software on your own hardware. For me that's the major Con of Camect at the moment, bound to the limited capacity of the provided hardware only being capable of handling about 24Mp total resolution.
 
Camect looks really interesting. But I always thought smart motion detection methods (from tripwire to people recognition etc.) took a lot of CPU/RAM power for a 3rd-party NVR.
The benefit of using a same brand NVR (for example Dahua camera's with Dahua NVR) was that the camera's could do the smarter ways of motion detection (IVS) themselves and they could "talk" to the NVR thus reducing the needed (powerfull) hardware in the NVR.

That's why you see the quite powerfull (needed) systems needed for (example) Blue Iris.
Than I'm wondering how this little box with just a Intel Celeron J3455 CPU and 4GB RAM is capable of doing all that.
 
M-Cube said:
Would be nice to have the ability to install the Camect software on your own hardware. For me that's the major Con of Camect at the moment, bound to the limited capacity of the provided hardware only being capable of handling about 24Mp total resolution.
Click to expand...

I would guess that future versions of Camect will have more capacity.

I'm pleasantly surprised at how well it works. They have a ways to come, but compared to other tech crowdfunded projects I've supported, this one is pretty good. they do have the best motion detect AI I've used. It differentiates between a cat, squirrel, raccoon, and dog, as well as correctly identifying a USPS truck. It's not 100% yet, there is a cat that has been a dog and a squirrel. but, pretty impressive overall.
 
Iemand91 said:
Camect looks really interesting. But I always thought smart motion detection methods (from tripwire to people recognition etc.) took a lot of CPU/RAM power for a 3rd-party NVR.
The benefit of using a same brand NVR (for example Dahua camera's with Dahua NVR) was that the camera's could do the smarter ways of motion detection (IVS) themselves and they could "talk" to the NVR thus reducing the needed (powerfull) hardware in the NVR.

That's why you see the quite powerfull (needed) systems needed for (example) Blue Iris.
Than I'm wondering how this little box with just a Intel Celeron J3455 CPU and 4GB RAM is capable of doing all that.
Click to expand...

I used a Dahua NVR before BI. It did not work well for me. sluggish and counter intuitive. BI works much better for me.

I think that all three of these, BI Sentry, Protect, and Camect use the cloud for the AI motion alert processing and not the local NVR.
 
Chapin said:
I used a Dahua NVR before BI. It did not work well for me. sluggish and counter intuitive. BI works much better for me.
Click to expand...
I have a Dahua NVR for a while now, but I don't have much experience using it (or maybe experiencing sluggish behaviour), since I usually just use the IVS recordings on the camera's SD-card for watching footage back and that works fine.
I think that all three of these, BI Sentry, Protect, and Camect use the cloud for the AI motion alert processing and not the local NVR.
Click to expand...
Not according to them:
spectator said:
The AI analytics are mostly on on the CPU at the moment. We do use the integrated intel GPU extensively for encoding and decoding though. No support for an external GPU yet.
Click to expand...
Even more:
spectator said:
Re: "And the camect connects to the internet no matter what?" ....

I might not understand your question, but Camect does require internet connectivity when you first activate it. After activation, it will run fine without connectivity (and will record when your internet is down if you're using it with regular IP cameras) but it does require occasional connectivity in order to download software updates and to do some maintenance things like make sure the time is correct. We're not recommending that people run it in the complete absence of connectivity because we don't test that use case.
Click to expand...

I'm not all into the alternative CCTV recording software, but I'm pleasantly surprised that there's software that can handle like 12 2MP camera's on a system with just a Intel Celeron J3455 CPU while doing all that cool smart alerts and even see the difference between animals and stuff.
Usually it takes quite a bit of CPU power to do that, so that is a nice surprise.

It's not for me (yet) since I don't have a big install, but it's definitely a nice development.
 
I’ve got a 12-camera system. One 8MP, three 4MP, one 3MP and the rest 2MP. BI shows they generate ~550 MP/s.

My BI PC is an i7 from 2012 (not what I’d consider powerful vs today’s systems) and the processor runs at about 25%, so hearing that a NUC running a current generation Celeron can keep up doesn’t sound all that crazy.

There’s a project someone is hosting on here that uses an open-source AI package you can install on your BI machine that will scan BI alert snapshots. It’s not directly integrated with BI so there’s a fair amount of manual setup required initially... IMO that’s where off-the-shelf solutions like Camect are going to be nice for the masses that aren’t interested in tinkering with stuff like that.
 
Chapin said:
I think that all three of these, BI Sentry, Protect, and Camect use the cloud for the AI motion alert processing and not the local NVR.
Click to expand...

Not Camect. Your video is never sent to the cloud. Camect AI is 100% local to that little box with a Celeron J3455 and 4GB of RAM :-). It will work even if your internet connection is down. Without internet, you won't be able to get notifications or email alerts, but you can review the alerts in the UI.

This is why, unlike other NVRs, CPU is the limiting factor for Camect ... The Indiegogo unit has a recommended usage limit of 24MP of total camera resolution, assuming "normal home security" usage (i.e. it could be lower if you have cameras looking out on scenes that are constantly busy and require constant processing by the AI).
 
Hi Chapin,

I am waiting for my Camect to be delivered, where you able to connect any Ubiquity camaras to Camect?

Thanks for posting your experience on the three systems, very useful
 
Now that BI has Deepstack AI integration, the Con about it having the most AI false triggers can now be scratched from the list as most will say it is better than Sentry...
 
I've had camect for about 6 months I really liked it great ai, but its starting to go the way if sentry ai, and sighthound ,customers are starting to sell their boxes. They don't prioritize their their updates, I and many people complain to them about their app notifications when motion was detected, when you clicked in the notification it opened the app and played nit the current but what ever was the previous alert.i brought this up to camect months ago like others was told just hit the live button and they might address it in future updates. Only a month ago I left a long forum message to all customers saying camect was putting its customers safety at risk by not making it a top priority a few days later fixed.
But their app is horrible its sluggish alot, notifications come in sometimes very late.if I'm keeping an eye on my 5 year old in yard to run to bathroom watching through their app it will show him somewhere he was a few minutes ago not where he could be. Like climbing over the fence. I only have 4 cameras connected with a coral USB accelerator and still have frequent issues. I have excellent internet connection.
There's reason at all they dont have android or ios app months ago. Their starting to try an attract company businesses instead of getting every thing to run smoothly. Just like sentry and sighthound look what happened to them customers left they weren't concerned with their regular customers. Now sentry and sighthound are back in forums everywhere Trying to get back the little guy.
 
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Does anyone know if using camect, once you have all your cameras on camect. Can you have something like tiny cam pro app point to camect so I can view all my cameras on my TV thru something like Nvidia Shield.
 
No, but I just point TinyCam Pro at my cameras directly on my Chromecast for Google TV device hooked up to my Kitchen monitor.
 
DMF said:
No, but I just point TinyCam Pro at my cameras directly on my Chromecast for Google TV device hooked up to my Kitchen monitor.
Click to expand...

Thanks for reply ! Good to know.

Supported emailed me and saying pointing the cameras to two sources works fine. All cameras to camect, and you can live stream them from TinyCam pro.

Which is what I wanted to do.
 
Flavacali said:
I've had camect for about 6 months I really liked it great ai, but its starting to go the way if sentry ai, and sighthound ,customers are starting to sell their boxes. They don't prioritize their their updates, I and many people complain to them about their app notifications when motion was detected, when you clicked in the notification it opened the app and played nit the current but what ever was the previous alert.i brought this up to camect months ago like others was told just hit the live button and they might address it in future updates. Only a month ago I left a long forum message to all customers saying camect was putting its customers safety at risk by not making it a top priority a few days later fixed.
But their app is horrible its sluggish alot, notifications come in sometimes very late.if I'm keeping an eye on my 5 year old in yard to run to bathroom watching through their app it will show him somewhere he was a few minutes ago not where he could be. Like climbing over the fence. I only have 4 cameras connected with a coral USB accelerator and still have frequent issues. I have excellent internet connection.
There's reason at all they dont have android or ios app months ago. Their starting to try an attract company businesses instead of getting every thing to run smoothly. Just like sentry and sighthound look what happened to them customers left they weren't concerned with their regular customers. Now sentry and sighthound are back in forums everywhere Trying to get back the little guy.
Click to expand...

Any update on this? Did Camect fix the issues you were describing a while back?
 
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