Home Camera System - Which system to get

[KillSwitch10]

I have a homelab and was trying to run BlueIris in the past and had a few issues with it. Now I am looking for something a bit more plug and play with better wife approval factor. I was hoping to get some advice from the lovely group here.

 

**Useful Information**
- PfSense
- UniFi networking with POE switch.
- Proxmox cluster 3x nodes.
    - Docker host with authentic, traefik, CloudFlare tunnel.
- TrueNas Scale server - with room to add video drives.

 

**Requirements**
- Work with current cameras Alhua, Annke, Hickvision.
- High WAF (wife approval factor) - easy to configure remote connection, easy to use app for Android.
- All self hosted.
- 4+ cameras minimum.

 

**Bonus**
- Easy integration to pull up all cameras with Samsung TV and / or Nivida shield.
- Integration into homeassistant
- License plate recognition

 

**Current Thoughts**
Currently I am leaning towards purchasing a Synology RS system but am not sure what version to get? I like the idea of Unifi but enjoy PfSense not to mention I already have 7 cameras.

Thank you everyone for your assistance with my search!

[aggie113]

I have both a Ubiquiti 3 camera setup (if you count the doorbell) as well as a 4 camera setup on my Synology using a mix of Reolink PTZ and other POE cameras.  With my current setup nothing has the zoom or clarity to pull a license plate from 50 yards away, so not sure if the Synology software is good enough for that function.  I will say the Ubiquiti setup is much better at detecting "people" (or cats) and cars than Synology.  The Ubiquity cameras can be viewed directly through a device they sell that has an HDMI output, Synology would require either an app or internal website for viewing.  Synology will let you host two cameras and then require a license add-on for others.  The fee isn't excessive, but it does exist.  With the Synology setup the cameras can be more problematic.  Not saying the Ubiquiti ones are perfect, but they are more tightly controlled by the "server".  So for ease of use, Ubiquiti gets more points, which doesn't seem to really matter if you want to use non-Ubiquiit cameras as that isn't officially supported.

[voyager_]

I've been running Blue Iris for around 8 years now without issues. If your willing I would give it another look. My wife has no issues using the app but will typically access it though the browser. She frequently leaves it up on her tablet when home alone and we use it to check on our pets when we are away. They have made some significant improvements including support for AI functions for object detection. From what i've looked at and tried they also have some of the best support for just about any camera. Everything is run local and stored to your system.

 

My current setup has 12 cameras about half have been upgraded to 4k and are all poe cameras. For my more recent cameras I have switched to armcrest, they have abunch of options including color at night, 4k, audio, etc... The computer running it is an unraid server with a windows vm, I didn't want windows running bare metal because of some of those annoying windows updates and I use it as a backup of my main server. It has a ryzen 5800x, 32gb ram, gt710 for booting and diag. Passed into the windows vm is a 2060super and the onboard sata controller so I can hotswap drives. Blue Iris can write to network storage but I use the passed through sata controller to store to a wd purple 4tb drive. I've found network drives don't always play nice with windows and some applications, having the controller passed though for the drive windows sees it as a system drive and blue iris manages the space on it's own to only delete when needed. Currently when the 4tb gets full it moves it to a separate drive for until the video is 2 months old or space is full.

 

I don't know of a way to add it to a samsung tv or nvidia shield, we just pull it up on our phones or tablets and have a tablet by the door that keeps it up all day along with home assistant. They used to have support for home assistant integration but I haven't messed with it for awhile. There is a plugin for license plate recognition, but on the Blue Iris facebook group there have been many that have. I do know that specific cameras are needed to get it working reliably for it to capture the plates and you will need to adjust the camera settings for day and night. 

 

Long story short, I would try to give blue iris another shot with a trial and if you run into issues the facebook group is great. 

[ToboRobot]

Unifi Protect can be run behind the pfSense device.

What cameras do you have already?

Synology requires a license for cameras beyond the initial (2?) devices included with the NAS I believe.

 

[KillSwitch10]

On 2/4/2024 at 9:31 PM, aggie113 said:

I have both a Ubiquiti 3 camera setup (if you count the doorbell) as well as a 4 camera setup on my Synology using a mix of Reolink PTZ and other POE cameras.  With my current setup nothing has the zoom or clarity to pull a license plate from 50 yards away, so not sure if the Synology software is good enough for that function.  I will say the Ubiquiti setup is much better at detecting "people" (or cats) and cars than Synology.  The Ubiquity cameras can be viewed directly through a device they sell that has an HDMI output, Synology would require either an app or internal website for viewing.  Synology will let you host two cameras and then require a license add-on for others.  The fee isn't excessive, but it does exist.  With the Synology setup the cameras can be more problematic.  Not saying the Ubiquiti ones are perfect, but they are more tightly controlled by the "server".  So for ease of use, Ubiquiti gets more points, which doesn't seem to really matter if you want to use non-Ubiquiit cameras as that isn't officially supported.

Thanks for your response!

[KillSwitch10]

11 hours ago, voyager_ said:

I've been running Blue Iris for around 8 years now without issues. If your willing I would give it another look. My wife has no issues using the app but will typically access it though the browser. She frequently leaves it up on her tablet when home alone and we use it to check on our pets when we are away. They have made some significant improvements including support for AI functions for object detection. From what i've looked at and tried they also have some of the best support for just about any camera. Everything is run local and stored to your system.

 

My current setup has 12 cameras about half have been upgraded to 4k and are all poe cameras. For my more recent cameras I have switched to armcrest, they have abunch of options including color at night, 4k, audio, etc... The computer running it is an unraid server with a windows vm, I didn't want windows running bare metal because of some of those annoying windows updates and I use it as a backup of my main server. It has a ryzen 5800x, 32gb ram, gt710 for booting and diag. Passed into the windows vm is a 2060super and the onboard sata controller so I can hotswap drives. Blue Iris can write to network storage but I use the passed through sata controller to store to a wd purple 4tb drive. I've found network drives don't always play nice with windows and some applications, having the controller passed though for the drive windows sees it as a system drive and blue iris manages the space on it's own to only delete when needed. Currently when the 4tb gets full it moves it to a separate drive for until the video is 2 months old or space is full.

 

I don't know of a way to add it to a samsung tv or nvidia shield, we just pull it up on our phones or tablets and have a tablet by the door that keeps it up all day along with home assistant. They used to have support for home assistant integration but I haven't messed with it for awhile. There is a plugin for license plate recognition, but on the Blue Iris facebook group there have been many that have. I do know that specific cameras are needed to get it working reliably for it to capture the plates and you will need to adjust the camera settings for day and night. 

 

Long story short, I would try to give blue iris another shot with a trial and if you run into issues the facebook group is great. 

Thanks. I had issues with my video feeds looking like a slide show. This was on an UnRaid VM with 12 cores and 18GB of ram passed to it. This was on an 2697v4. I was writing to an SMB share hosted on TrueNas with a 10G connection. I did not have a WD Purple drives so not sure if that was the issue. Any thoughts on how to fix this?

[voyager_]

10 hours ago, KillSwitch10 said:

Thanks. I had issues with my video feeds looking like a slide show. This was on an UnRaid VM with 12 cores and 18GB of ram passed to it. This was on an 2697v4. I was writing to an SMB share hosted on TrueNas with a 10G connection. I did not have a WD Purple drives so not sure if that was the issue. Any thoughts on how to fix this?

Did you have a gpu also passed into the vm? There are settings in blue iris for decoding the video, I have all mine set to use the gpu and make sure to use direct to disk recording. It will drastically cut down on the resources needed but it does use more space. was the slide show issue seen on every device that you viewed it from and did it also occur on the vm itself when viewing the cameras. It could be an issue with what the frame rate the cameras where set to. Do you also happen to remember what the resource usage looked like when the issue was occurring. If it didn't have a gpu passed through I would lean towards that being the issue. In general i've found vms that don't have a gpu passed through that are handling video or graphics tend to suffer and Blue Iris will use it for decoding the streams from the cameras.

[Bdavis]

You won't be able to use your old cameras, but my ubiquiti setup just works. I have the dream machine SE, and setup was as simple as plugging in the cameras and clicking adopt on the app.