Personal Residence IP Camera Setup options?

[bmather9]

So I'm planning to setup about 6 wired IP cameras at my residence and I wanted to get some opinions on my options. I'm looking for all the standard surveillance camera stuff, motion detection etc... I really want solid, user friendly, remote viewing of both live and recorded video from PC, android and apple devices. A few of the cameras will be indoors and I'd really like audio to be included on those. The only 'special' function that I'm looking for, would be that whenever I'm home, the indoor cameras would stop recording. I plan to script this to turn off recoring when my cell phone connects to the wifi network at my house. I have an Ubuntu file server with plenty of disk space to do what I want, and tried running zoneminder but with 4 cameras the CPU was choking, even at lower framerates. I've experimented with xeeoma and it seems to require much lower CPU load and can probably do everything I want.

I'm not opposed to spending some money to end up with a solid solution that does what I want, but here's a few options I've been brainstorming about:

1. Use my Ubuntu Server (intel pentium G620) with Xeeoma, which seems to work, but is a bit difficult to setup and seems abnormal coming from Russia I believe? The interface seems confusing to me so I'm not sure it meets my 'user friendly' viewing criteria?

2. Use UniFi video cameras with Unifi software on my Ubuntu Server. This seems like it would be a polished experience, but lacks the functionality to turn off recording when I come home. I could probably hack my way to building some type of macro to use the web interface to automatically disable recording? This also has the option of me purchasing a UniFi NVR if my server can't handle the load.

3. Blue Iris, which would require me to buy a new server PC to run windows and the Blue Iris software. I've heard it's great, but would it be able to turn off recording when I arrive home?

4. Use Hikvision software, since I already have some of their cameras I could use, I could try to setup Hikvision software on my Ubuntu Server, or buy a Hikvision NVR to do the job. Not sure if the capability to turn off recording could be implemented?

Any advice or help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[pcmcg]

Have you looked at Milestone system. You can get it for about $50 per camera. I think it has a much better remote viewing client compared to Hikvision.

 

[fenderman]

3. Blue Iris, which would require me to buy a new server PC to run windows and the Blue Iris software. I've heard it's great, but would it be able to turn off recording when I arrive home?

Any advice or help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Yes, either manually or by using the geofencing built into blue iris.

 

[bp2008]

I just want to chime in and say Blue Iris is a great choice and you can get a great deal on a refurbished PC from ebay.

I have some experience with UniFi video. They are doing good things with the software, for sure. I'm sure it would run fine on your file server without even knowing its specs. But the cameras are only 1 megapixel despite costing as much or more than 4MP cameras from Dahua or Hikvision. To top it off, the UniFi cameras have no support for 3rd party applications. They are compatible with UniFi video software only.

 

[bmather9]

So if I go with Blue Iris, would it be able to record to my current NAS server rather than a local disk on the machine running Blue Iris? Would my gigabit network handle this?

UniFi interests me because their software seems pretty slick; I currently use their WiFi access points and an edge router lite which has been very stable and quite easy to use for me. It would hurt to pay so much for underwhelming hardware. It seems they also handle audio and even have 2 way audio with one of their cameras. Does Blue Iris support audio recording? 2-way audio?

I've played with Hikvision iVMS-4200 client software and it seems like it has potential to do what I want, but I doubt it's a good as Blue Iris. It seems they also have a version of it that will run on Linux, so I need to give that a try before I decide. Their mobile app worked quite well for me so far, but I haven't tested all the functions I'm interested in.

I guess that's the biggest downside to Blue Iris; if I'm going to run it, then I have to get a new machine and set it up in my server closet, when iVMS-4200 and Unifi both can make use of my current Ubuntu Server. On the other hand my current server, while it has plenty of disk space, is a bit under-powered for running multiple high-res cameras, so I'm sure I'll need to turn the frame-rates down.

I appreciate any further advice; Thanks!

 

[Q™]

...I have some experience with UniFi video. They are doing good things with the software, for sure. I'm sure it would run fine on your file server without even knowing its specs. But the cameras are only 1 megapixel despite costing as much or more than 4MP cameras from Dahua or Hikvision...

1MP...ouch. IMO that would make UniFi cameras a non-starter for me, unless I'm missing something.

 

[fenderman]

Yes, blue iris can record to nas..you can even have it record to both, local and nas...gigabit network is more than sufficient.