Greetings! This place seems to be a wealth of specialized knowledge so I am looking forward to building a really cool new how security camera system for my next house. I will be moving in about a month so I have time to prepare and research what I should be getting.
My older (current) home has security cameras, and I have been through quite a journey on this already... I added my first cameras about 10 years ago after some really annoying sales people pissed me off. Built that setup on an old Vista machine with a 4 port CCTV coaxial card and software it came with. It was a rather primitive setup, but it worked well enough for my to record 2 cameras at my front door. I later expanded to more cameras but the system couldn't keep up, so I bought a linux based generic chinese dedicated DVR off ebay and added a HDD to it, this used a lot less power, was smaller and better performance and it did support 4 cameras, but the menu and interface was rather clunky.
Running the cables through my attic, walls, and mounting the cameras was hard work, so by the time PoE cameras became affordable, I was already kind of invested in my currently run lines, so I got an Amcrest DVR which supported higher resolution cameras on my existing coaxial lines, and I am running that now with 6 cameras. The app for my phone works fairly well.
My new house will be larger and I want to "do it right" this time, so I am looking to build a Blue Iris dedicated computer, or rather likely buy a refurbished one and customize it as needed. I'm used to building computers, but given the cost of a Windows license alone, I can see how it is significantly cheaper to just buy a refurbished computer and work with that than build something from new components.
I like the community you all have built here and I look forward to learning a lot!
My older (current) home has security cameras, and I have been through quite a journey on this already... I added my first cameras about 10 years ago after some really annoying sales people pissed me off. Built that setup on an old Vista machine with a 4 port CCTV coaxial card and software it came with. It was a rather primitive setup, but it worked well enough for my to record 2 cameras at my front door. I later expanded to more cameras but the system couldn't keep up, so I bought a linux based generic chinese dedicated DVR off ebay and added a HDD to it, this used a lot less power, was smaller and better performance and it did support 4 cameras, but the menu and interface was rather clunky.
Running the cables through my attic, walls, and mounting the cameras was hard work, so by the time PoE cameras became affordable, I was already kind of invested in my currently run lines, so I got an Amcrest DVR which supported higher resolution cameras on my existing coaxial lines, and I am running that now with 6 cameras. The app for my phone works fairly well.
My new house will be larger and I want to "do it right" this time, so I am looking to build a Blue Iris dedicated computer, or rather likely buy a refurbished one and customize it as needed. I'm used to building computers, but given the cost of a Windows license alone, I can see how it is significantly cheaper to just buy a refurbished computer and work with that than build something from new components.
I like the community you all have built here and I look forward to learning a lot!