Nearly convinced to go with Blue Iris... But...

[remsta]

Hi All,

I have nearly been convinced to go with Blue Iris for our Hikvision cameras in our new home, vs. Synology Surveillance station or a Hikvision NVR.. except then I saw the iPad app... it looks terrible.

I was wondering if its possible to use a 3rd party app such as this one ‎IPCams - IP Camera Viewer when running Blue Iris?

Note: this is at my parents new house, there are two iPads controlling Sonos and the cameras so it needs to be simple to use for them.

Thanks!

 

[sebastiantombs]

Don't forget the built-in interface for BI, called UI3. Very good and pretty simple to use.

 

[Holbs]

I use UI3 over VPN when out in about. I do have Blue Iris send me text messages with .jpg images of triggered alerts. Upon review of those alerts, I fire up my VPN and check things out.

 

[remsta]

Don't forget the built-in interface for BI, called UI3. Very good and pretty simple to use.

Can that be used on an iPad? or how does that work? Does it run through Safari? What I like about the app viewer app above is that you can run it with home kit in split screen with Sonos on the screen too.
Like in this image:

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

Yeah, I feel you. The app isn't great at all, has all sorts of issues. But the positives of the system overall make it worthwhile for me. For the most part is does what I want and I can view clips, even if it sometimes has issues

The overall flexibility of Blue Iris means its the only option for me, personally. But I've steered a few friends into Synology Surveillance Station and they are all happy

 

[TonyR]

Can that be used on an iPad?

yes

or how does that work?

Open Safari, type in your server's IP with port and UI3.htm enter, like you were going to a web site.
Such as: "http://BI-server-hostname.com:BI-server-port/ui3.htm"

Does it run through Safari?

Yes

What I like about the app viewer app above is that you can run it with home kit in split screen with Sonos on the screen too.

It can be made to look pretty much how you like it.
Create a group, assign the cams to it, assign a user to that group, log in with that user/password.

 

[remsta]

Yeah, I feel you. The app isn't great at all, has all sorts of issues. But the positives of the system overall make it worthwhile for me. For the most part is does what I want and I can view clips, even if it sometimes has issues

The overall flexibility of Blue Iris means its the only option for me, personally. But I've steered a few friends into Synology Surveillance Station and they are all happy

Yeah I have Synology Surveillance station at home for my 2 cameras - but I get a lot of false alerts (sunshine, leaves from plants etc). I saw a youtube video showing that with the AI you can avoid all that - hence I am steering towards Blue Iris because I don't want endless calls from my parents saying they constantly get push notifications with false alerts haha

is it possible to stream to Blue Iris but also use the App viewer iOS app I mentioned above or can the camera only stream to one location?

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

Can you just turn off the notifications? You will almost certainly get almost the same amount of false alarms in Blue Iris

 

[remsta]

Can you just turn off the notifications? You will almost certainly get almost the same amount of false alarms in Blue Iris

Oh really? I thought based on this video Blue Iris is much better...

 

[wittaj]

^That is using a third party application that is not part of Blue Iris. But it isn't a plug and play application either and you can find many threads on this site of all the steps to go through to make it work but you will see there is quite a bit of hand-holding with the third party apps as you will see reading through that thread. So instead of phone calls about shadows you get the endless calls from your parents that the AI is down again lol.

The Hook Up guy is referencing and using this:

[tool] [tutorial] Free AI Person Detection for Blue Iris

This program analyzes motion in Blue Iris cameras in real-time using Artificial Intelligence. It notifies you if a human or an object of your choice is detected and can send alert images to Telegram. It is based on DeepQuestAI, a free multipurpose AI that you can install on your own server...

ipcamtalk.com

Get cameras with AI and then you don't need the third party apps.

Who uses Dahua AI capable cameras? Reliable AI for triggering events? Pro's/con's?

It has come to my attention that certain Dahua cameras come with built in AI that distinguishes between human & cars. I was unaware of this. Well, always saw the AI word used in the reviews but never really thought about it because I thought it was a Dahua NVR integration only. I am currently...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[remsta]

So hopefully someone can just clarify for me:

If I install 7 Hikvision Cameras, run them primarily over BlueIris for recording etc... but want to have the previews running in IP Cam Viewer (iOS) app on the iPad, that is possible? Having both Blue Iris monitor the stream and a separate app, IP Cam Viewer, makes no difference right?

I am currently trying this at home, I have Blue Iris running off my Synology 918+ NAS in a virtual machine, but at the same time added the same camera to the IP Cam viewer app and it seems to work - unless I am missing something?

 

[wittaj]

Yes, many of us use an NVR feeding some cameras into Blue Iris. But if you want to use the NVR app viewer for playback, then you would need to record on the NVR...but for live viewing as you are showing, that will work.