Haw many cams can BI handle? (with the right hardware of course)

R

RifRaff13

Young grasshopper
Jul 16, 2021
51
20
Clayton NC
Hey Peeps!

Is there a limit to the max number of cams BI can support, or does it only come down to your hardware build?

How many cams are you guys running and with what hardware?

Just curious!

Thanks
Rif
 
Ah well said. I guess I'm looking to see if running 30 cams is pushing it really. I guess it truly is all about the hardware build right. :)

My wife thinks i am a little over the top at 28... but i can comfortably say i have about a 95% external coverage working at this point. Am i really out there all alone?
 
  • Love
  • Wow
  • Like
Reactions: mat200, Sybertiger, sebastiantombs and 2 others
That makes me feel better! :) A couple years ago I had 12, and now I'm at 28.

Gratz JNDATHP! We moved from Colorado (or eastern California) last year to NC, and with the new house came the major expansion. We have a serious HOA, but since i have them all tucked up under the eve's, i haven't heard a peep (knocking on wood). Unless you are right up under them, they look like accent lights. A lot of my neighbors out here have cams, but i think i am leading the local pack. The HOA has added a bunch as well and upgraded what they had to newer 4K's in the last year, with all the influx etc.
 
  • Like
  • Wow
Reactions: Sybertiger and JNDATHP
People in the family think I have a lot of cameras with 9. But none of them are really what I want. Luckily this corner we live on, there hasn't been any trouble in the last 3 years here.
But Holy Cannoli, the Condo is located nearby to what is now a somewhat sketchy area.
Cam 19 went in last week. 26 if if you stream the cameras hooked to the Old Nightowl DVR. I bring it in on the Windows App of Nightowl CMS HD and view in a seperate window.
CPU definitely jumps up when I get the DVR streems flowing. like 23% to 35%.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: sebastiantombs and JNDATHP
RifRaff13 said:
Ah well said. I guess I'm looking to see if running 30 cams is pushing it really. I guess it truly is all about the hardware build right. :)

My wife thinks i am a little over the top at 28... but i can comfortably say i have about a 95% external coverage working at this point. Am i really out there all alone?
Click to expand...
See usage levels here: Blue Iris Update Helper
 
  • Like
Reactions: sebastiantombs
looney2ns said:
See usage levels here: Blue Iris Update Helper
Click to expand...
Thanks for that info. I am guessing that's pulled from the servers as collected data. I guess the intent of this thread was to see if there is a practical limit to BI. I know the licensing goes to 64 but in my experience, vendors will always overstate capabilities. It does appear that 30 is not a high number, so that made me feel better (not my wife though).

I wonder if these are idle CPU readings vs action or alerted readings?

I run a Ryzen 9 5950x, and see general idle CPU stats at about 10-13%. When someone drives by, tripping my 4 front cams in succession i can see a spike of 60% or more. I am running off an m.2 1T SSD so i don't think i am getting write lag. (benchmarks below)
1661944186834.png
(no I'm not German but I'm running from the zip file so i guess it defaults to German)

I have had times when it spikes to 100% for a maybe 10 sec. I updated a couple weeks a go and that's when it got worse. I tried the old uninstall reinstall (left the dir there and thus kept the configs), but didn't help. I am up to date on code (including the one this morning) but this oddity continues (well did yesterday). I guess my next thought is a clean install with everything removed.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Running almost all Amrest 4K's with about 6 2k versions tossed in, set to 15fps, increased buffers to 10Mb. I have spent weeks turning most knobs i can find, can't figure out the spikes. Was thinking it was volume of cams type thing but i guess that's not the issue since i am not pushing any limits. Oh well, the quest continues!

Thanks
Rif
 
If you're not using sub streams, use them. It should cut CPU utilization down significantly.
 
look at your Intel Quick sync settings. Ryzen Doh! Or if your running a GPU like Nvidia, the Nvidia NVEC can be toggled off. if the camera's are set in BI to run Hardware accelerated decode that might cause 100% spikes when you get a bunch of motion.
Try turning some of them off and see if the CPU %age changes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: looney2ns and Old Timer
Thanks peeps,

Yes i use all sub streams. I started the other thread pointing out that all playbacks in the UI only use the sub streams, which has never been addressed accept to acknowledge its an issue.

I have no real video card in that machine, so Hardware Acceleration is set to no.

This is where i kick myself for not paying a bit more and using the Intel with QSV (Quick Sync Video). I wonder a lot about that being a source as well.

On a side note, i have noticed after today's patch, my CPU has been up around 50%, no idea why unless they are doing some new indexing or something.
 
As an eBay Associate IPCamTalk earns from qualifying purchases.
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: RifRaff13 and looney2ns
RifRaff13 said:
Ah well said. I guess I'm looking to see if running 30 cams is pushing it really. I guess it truly is all about the hardware build right. :)

My wife thinks i am a little over the top at 28... but i can comfortably say i have about a 95% external coverage working at this point. Am i really out there all alone?
Click to expand...

I run over 33 cameras (lost count but under 40 cams) with an i5-4590 and 16GB RAM. CPU utilization is around 50-60% usually.

This is just at home, because I can LOL.
 
  • Haha
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: RifRaff13, Flintstone61 and looney2ns
Thanks for the input and the link Flintstone61. Bradner, do you have any lag when using the UI from another machine or do you monitor from that system?
 
RifRaff13 said:
Thanks for the input and the link Flintstone61. Bradner, do you have any lag when using the UI from another machine or do you monitor from that system?
Click to expand...

I have 4 or 5 Fire TV's I run UI3 on with zero issues. It's the UI3 that made everyone else be supportive of installing more, and more cameras :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Looking Out and sebastiantombs
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom