NVR display for offsite location

[Nolesfan]

Question for you guys, I have a customer that is looking for a solution to display an offsite location on a TV display, and I am looking for suggestions.

For the main location that his office is at, we have an NVR with 16 cameras. I took the HDMI signal out of the NVR to send the signal to his office to display on a 32" tv. He has now acquired a second business that is off site, but wants to add a second 32" tv to display the NVR system for the second location, but he would prefer not to have a dedicated computer to run the display for the second location. Is there any way to log into the remote NVR to display the live feed, without utilizing a computer to control the display? Thoughts?


Thanks!

-Tim

 

[nayr]

do you even have the bandwidth between sites to consider such a thing? streaming 16 video feeds is going to chew through data like crazy; if your subject to bandwidth caps I'd expect you to exceed them in a few days tops.

Your going to need a computer of some sort; no TV is going to take the feeds directly.

 

[Nolesfan]

Not looking for a full resolution feed, just a viewable picture of the NVR console when they are in the office. Both sides have a 50mb/30mb cable connection. Sorry, that wasn't more clear in my initial post. I know the TV will not take the signal directly, but I wasn't sure if there was an app out there for Roku or something small instead of dedicating a computer to this task.

Thanks Nayr.

 

[nayr]

you can do it with a raspberry Pi; Ive got a display next to my front door running off one..

SmartTV apps generally suck ass; cant decode that much h264 video and everything goes to a crawl if you try to view more than 1 stream at a time.. If I try to open 8 feeds on my AndriodTV i'll be lucky to get 2FPS.

 

[Jack B Nimble]

you can do it with a raspberry Pi; Ive got a display next to my front door running off one..

Is there any software you used in that raspberry PI or did you code your own ?

 

[rgarjr]

As nayr mentioned, you will need some type of computer device to connect through the Internet and stream. Many NVRs have a web server interface that you can log in with a web browser and show the camera feeds.

Is there any way to log into the remote NVR to display the live feed, without utilizing a computer to control the display? Thoughts?


Thanks!

-Tim

 

[nayr]

Is there any software you used in that raspberry PI or did you code your own ?

lil bit of both

 

[hiky]

I know this sounds a bit low tech but what about running an NVR hooked up to a 42Inch TV at the second location showing the camera feeds and setting up a single cam hooked into the NVR looking at the Tv screen, then just access the single cam on its own via a web browser

Bandwidth would be acceptable but i have no idea if flicker would be an issue or quality but its a thought

 

[gmaster1]

As someone who loves Raspberry Pi and other low tech devices, I'd say skip it for your sanity. If you are putting this in a client's network, the last thing you want to deal with is tinkering and wasting time on debugging etc. Don't get me wrong, you can program them to be pretty rock solid, but if you don't already know how to or haven't tinkered with one yet, skip it.

That said, those Windows HDMI compute stick things are dropping in price by a landslide. The last batch I bought cost $45/each and came with 2GB RAM / 32GB disk space and Windows 10. Those power on when usb power is applied (IDEAL for what you want) and barely skip a beat. Because it's Windows, this also means you can install any ActiveX junk the NVR needs to play smoothly and effectively.

Just thought I'd throw that out there. Wayyyyyyy toooo much RPi suggestion on this site without realizing that 90% of people don't want to mess with that. Easier to get a super duper cheap Windows based product nowadays.

 

[jasauders]

How do those Windows sticks fare after updates are applied? 32 GB seems wildly slim. We put a few 8.1 boxes on 64 GB SSDs to do single purpose tasks, and after a few months of updates, they're maxed (and 64 GB still provides more breathing room than 32 GB does, so... makes me wonder). 120 GB SSDs are the new minimum requirement in our environment for Windows boxes, regardless of how simple their task may be.

I have a tablet on my nightstand with Tiny Cam Pro, which pulls in my live feeds. Just personal preference speaking, but I like the UI a lot. It makes me wonder if some sort of Android stick might be a contender, as that app can interface with lots of NVRs without too much fuss. Just a thought.

 

[Jack B Nimble]

My Tinycam monitor Pro running through my Firestick works flawlessly at home on two TV's. I do find if I bring one on a business trip that outside of LAN like required in this instance is pretty laggy but, better than nothing to check on the family.

 

[gmaster1]

How do those Windows sticks fare after updates are applied? 32 GB seems wildly slim. We put a few 8.1 boxes on 64 GB SSDs to do single purpose tasks, and after a few months of updates, they're maxed (and 64 GB still provides more breathing room than 32 GB does, so... makes me wonder). 120 GB SSDs are the new minimum requirement in our environment for Windows boxes, regardless of how simple their task may be.

I deployed about a hundred Win8.1 term PCs with 16GB SSD -- after all updates applied, still had 5GB usable even after several GB used for recovery/factory image.

My Win10 experience with these things is exactly similar. I've never come across an issue where 32GB is an issue after or before updates. I've deployed everything from 8.1 Bing, to Win 10 Pro using ultra micro small form factor yada yada like this. It sounds like there's something extra funky happening with your installations and/or the winsxs folder, cache/temp, etc.

 

[jasauders]

I deployed about a hundred Win8.1 term PCs with 16GB SSD -- after all updates applied, still had 5GB usable even after several GB used for recovery/factory image.

My Win10 experience with these things is exactly similar. I've never come across an issue where 32GB is an issue after or before updates. I've deployed everything from 8.1 Bing, to Win 10 Pro using ultra micro small form factor yada yada like this. It sounds like there's something extra funky happening with your installations and/or the winsxs folder, cache/temp, etc.

Guess we just have different experiences. Once upon a time when we were more Windows-focused it was the same way. From what I've seen, everything Vista onwards seems to be quite larger, image+updates wise, whereas ye olde XP days we could cram the images down substantially in size. The few 8.1 machines we have left kind of mirrored the same thing we had going on with Win 7. It's nothing special... The actual Windows ISO, updates, and some assortment of software, all crammed together with WDS -- the software is typically on the slimmer side of things for your more "appliance-like" setups, meanwhile compare to our actual workstations that get deployed with 250 GB SSD/500 GB HDD or higher at this point. I can't comment on Windows 10 in particular as I haven't used it much in enterprise (we've been migrating most of our installs -- about 80% of our fleet of ~5,000 systems are Ubuntu at this point).

Just before hitting submit, I used my Google Fu quick and it seems there's no shortage of discussion regarding this.

"and 32 is Barely going to fit your OS, and I do mean barely"
"32GB here is good enough for browsing and maybe 2 apps, everything else I had to offload to my 500GB HDD"
"The Windows directory on my (Win7) machine is 26GB, and I'm certain I don't have any "manufacturer bloatware". I assume the extra is from updates."

That said, there's some discussion regarding some specific devices (perhaps these Intel sticks are included) that are designed to work in a more compressed environment, which may give leverage to Windows operating on a smaller footprint with these gizmos.

With that last point in mind, it may negate my concerns for these specific devices, so perhaps it would work well. Still, I wouldn't consider it, but that's just my take.

 

[gmaster1]

Yeah sorry those users on Google have either some odd behavior occurring, or aren't calculating properly.

If any w7 install of mine went past 10GB I would freak out. Honestly, I've rarely ever seen it climb to 10 after updates and before I start to add custom applications to it. I can spin up a few VMs now to confirm this. My base w7 install, for example, only has a 20GB HDD thrown at it (I use it for sandboxing things and then delete it each time.)

Not saying 32GB is all you need, of course, just that some of these numbers thrown out are a little scary knowing what I know.

**There was an update about a year or so ago that MSFT published that addressed a growing folder (I believe it was WinSXS). Users who installed that update (almost all of us have by this point) noticed about 4-5GB cleaned up instantly.

Keep in mind, there are a plethora of tablets and sub $180 laptops on the market right now running Windows with either 16 or 32GB for storage and OS. You can easily upgrade these machines to the pro versions of 8 or 10 without issue.

 

[jasauders]

Some interesting counter-experiences here... you're going to entice me to spin up a new Windows box just to see for myself -- aren't you?

 

[gmaster1]

No need

This was taken a few minutes ago on one of the 16GB hard drives. You can see the recovery partition steals like half of it. Doesn't matter. I outfitted these with W8.1 Pro. I still have Office 2010 (Word, Excel, Outlook), Chrome, etc but its primary role is a thin client. Works well. All of the most recent updates are applied to this machine.

 

[jasauders]

I'd like to know what steps you take to get to that point. I almost forgot, I have an old Toshiba laptop that I put Windows 8.1 on straight from an 8.1 ISO. I specifically use this for the ActiveX nonsense that comes with configuring certain cameras, as no other systems in my house are Windows based to do that. First thing I did post-install was disable all updates, as I didn't want to be hit with a Win 10 auto upgrade given how infrequently I use this system (it has, in total, probably 2 hours of total uptime/use since the birth of this install).

-8.1 install straight from ISO, not a manufacturer's image.
-Firefox, Chrome, VLC, AngryIP Scanner, Hikvision + EyeSurv IE plugin installed. No other software installed.
-All 3 browsers were cleared of their entire history of cache, browser history, downloads, etc.
-Zero updates whatsoever applied at any point in time.
-No data whatsoever stored on the drive.
-22.1 GB in use.

/shrug

 

[gmaster1]

PM me for any specific questions, but if it's a stock install the first thing you'd want to do is disable hibernation, sys restore, file sync, pagefile, run that update I was referring to, etc -- There's like 10GB easily.

I do share that suspicion that Windows compresses things based on how much space it sees, but I've never had to go in and remove features to free up any extra space on anything W7-10. The Bing version of 8.1 has some super compression to it if I remember correctly, but I don't deal with that one much.