Always Record and Record on Trigger

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MethodAgent
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2021 6:09 pm

Always Record and Record on Trigger

Post by MethodAgent »

Hi everyone, I am new to Blue Iris and came from Surveillance Station. I love it so far and the performance is great. I have read some posts about best practice being to always record and then use the triggers to generate alert clips as needed. I would like to set this up as currently, I am only recording on triggers. It is working well and I don't fell I am missing anything but you never know. I am currently only using Profile 1 (Active) and I am not using any schedules. What is the best way to go about setting up always recording and then still use the triggers on motion? Thanks in advance!!
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terk
Posts: 175
Joined: Tue Jun 18, 2019 2:36 pm

Re: Always Record and Record on Trigger

Post by terk »

It all depends on your use case, if you have a home automation system like Hubitat, Home Assistant, or SmartThings you can have them change your profile base on something like the home automations modes. I use Hubitat to set the profiles based on the Hubitat's current mode that way my internal cameras only record and alert when we're sleeping and home or when we're away and the rest of the cameras record 24/7 but only alert after sunset when we're home or anytime when we're away. I have all of our cameras running through DeepStack and AITools to prevent false alarms when motion occurs so we only get alerts when people are in the cameras view when motion occurs. There are a lot of options and ways to set things up with BI.
atreyu
Posts: 56
Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2020 7:22 pm

Re: Always Record and Record on Trigger

Post by atreyu »

The typical reason to set up your cameras like this is to always record low resolution and trigger record on HD. You end up configuring two “cameras” in BI for one physical camera.
MethodAgent
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2021 6:09 pm

Re: Always Record and Record on Trigger

Post by MethodAgent »

atreyu wrote: Wed Mar 31, 2021 11:46 pm The typical reason to set up your cameras like this is to always record low resolution and trigger record on HD. You end up configuring two “cameras” in BI for one physical camera.
Thank you. So this is not something done in Blue Iris with schedules and profiles on one camera, it is done by creating two cameras in BI to the same IP camera and setting each to a different profile. Is that correct?
MethodAgent
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2021 6:09 pm

Re: Always Record and Record on Trigger

Post by MethodAgent »

atreyu wrote: Wed Mar 31, 2021 11:46 pm The typical reason to set up your cameras like this is to always record low resolution and trigger record on HD. You end up configuring two “cameras” in BI for one physical camera.
I use Hubitat extensively. I didn't even thin to integrate Blue Iris with it. I will look into it, thanks!
atreyu
Posts: 56
Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2020 7:22 pm

Re: Always Record and Record on Trigger

Post by atreyu »

MethodAgent wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 3:40 am Thank you. So this is not something done in Blue Iris with schedules and profiles on one camera, it is done by creating two cameras in BI to the same IP camera and setting each to a different profile. Is that correct?
BI is so tweakable I wouldn’t rule out your original thought. I also haven’t played with profiles or schedules so I don’t know much about them. But yes, I setup two BI cameras pointing at one physical camera/IP. One configured to the SD stream and set to continuous record. Its motion detection collects stills for the DeepStack AI and sends a motion detect MQTT message to Home Assistant for things like turning on lights. The AI will send an MQTT message to Home Assistant if it saw anything interesting. The HD camera is configured to only trigger record. It’s only trigger comes from Home Assistant through MQTT based on the AI and some other things.

That is largely based on Rob from The Smart Home Hookup’s description. Check YouTube.

BI is dual stream camera aware, but as I understand it, it uses the SD for grid camera view and motion detection. The HD is used for recording and single camera view. I think they are working towards an “always record SD, trigger record HD” option for a single dual stream configured camera. That would be nice. Clean up the “all cameras” view.
MethodAgent
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2021 6:09 pm

Re: Always Record and Record on Trigger

Post by MethodAgent »

Thanks for the great explanation! How do you find this affects the performance? This would take me from 9 cameras to 18 😁
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