new home new setup

[Portermonkey]

Hi,
I sold my home and my camera setup up that i ran on my 24/7 always on pc with BLU Iris. I loved it. I love the Blu Iris app. I loved how i could use all kinds of cameras; wired, wireless, poe, etc.

Now i am in a new house and do not want to leave my primary pc on full time.

what are my options ? Do i need to make a dedicated pc server just to run blu iris ? are there boxes i can by that can be connected to my network and accessed by my pc ?

any suggestions pointing me in any direction is appreciated.

thanks

[Matts1984]

So Blue Iris does need to be running 24x7 if you want the cameras to record 24x7 and/or get alerts. It doesn't necessarily have to be your "primary PC" but it should be a system with a pretty powerful CPU and a fair amount of disk space. If we're talking about getting something totally new from the start (wow! we normally aren't asked like that vs trying to use something ancient).

Ideally you'd want a system with a newer Intel CPU, 12 or so GB of RAM, and as much disk space as you can afford - that part is completely up to you and how much time you want. In a perfect world, you would want to use a PoE switch and all wired cameras getting power from it. Your Blue Iris system can be a headless "pc/server" type system that has no monitor and just sits in the corner somewhere and you use Remote Desktop to manage the system. Getting super specific on specs boils down to what type of cameras and how many you want.

[Portermonkey]

So Blue Iris does need to be running 24x7 if you want the cameras to record 24x7 and/or get alerts. It doesn't necessarily have to be your "primary PC" but it should be a system with a pretty powerful CPU and a fair amount of disk space. If we're talking about getting something totally new from the start (wow! we normally aren't asked like that vs trying to use something ancient).

Ideally you'd want a system with a newer Intel CPU, 12 or so GB of RAM, and as much disk space as you can afford - that part is completely up to you and how much time you want. In a perfect world, you would want to use a PoE switch and all wired cameras getting power from it. Your Blue Iris system can be a headless "pc/server" type system that has no monitor and just sits in the corner somewhere and you use Remote Desktop to manage the system. Getting super specific on specs boils down to what type of cameras and how many you want.

Thanks !

I did not know that Blu Iris does not have to be open to record ???? how does this work ? It is the when the program is open that it is using pc resources and throttling my cpu and thus more power usage. Aand if the program is not open the server it is installed on has to be on of course right ?

Yeah that sounds like what i want as far as a box with no monitor that i would access from my desktop and phone through my lan.

Yeah poe kills 2 birds with one stone, more reliable than wifi and no need for 110v outlets.

thanks again,

[Matts1984]

I did not know that Blu Iris does not have to be open to record ???? how does this work ? It is the when the program is open that it is using pc resources and throttling my cpu and thus more power usage. Aand if the program is not open the server it is installed on has to be on of course right ?

Yeah that sounds like what i want as far as a box with no monitor that i would access from my desktop and phone through my lan.

Yeah poe kills 2 birds with one stone, more reliable than wifi and no need for 110v outlets.

thanks again,

So, it does have to be running on the server, which it can do now as a service and auto-start with Windows.... but it doesn't have to be open, maximized, stream being viewed, etc. All in all this really helps with CPU utilization but yes the server has to be on and running. My setup is in my signature but, when not viewing a stream it pretty much runs around 5% CPU. Having the UI3 browser session open, assuming you're not zoomed in on a stream, actually still does not impact CPU in any noticeable way.

Basically what I'm saying, if you get the right hardware, BI can actually run pretty lean and smoothly (definitely use substreams!). You need the right hardware for when it is doing heavy decoding/encoding though so don't assume you can get by with a first-gen i3 processor and run 10 cameras. The pc/server DOES need to always be running as this is not intended to be a cloud based setup. The thing that makes BI attractive to me is that I can run it all local, the files are mine, and no one else has them. After the initial setup and yearly subscription (honestly it's not that much money) I have no recurring exorbitant fees.