Hi All, the question may look dummy but I am trying to setup a home surveillance system. The options are either I buy a whole integrated system from Amazon, Or I go towards the direction of Tinycam pro with any cameras’ brand.
The second option looks more flexible but so far I am unable to get a decent quality on recordings (local and FTP on NAS), frames are dropping and sounds like ghosts. For testing purpose I installed it on fire tablet 10’ (2021 version).
I need an advice on the best option for recoding and also viewing live in sharptools.
Thanks In advance
You can also look into something like BlueIris.
I use this to record all of my cameras 24/7 but also have “clones” of the cameras setup just for notifications. My 4tb drive gives me about 3 weeks of recordings with 10 cameras.
I do run it on my home server in a VM and use deepstack for AI stuff with the GPU.
It offers a bunch of url’s for live feeds/images. You can utilize these with sharptools. You are however limited to what the browser supports for live streams. I basically have refreshing images instead as its just to get a view of whats going on. I use the app if I need anything more in depth.
Of course there are other self hosted options but blue iris is the tool I went with and been using for years.
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Thanks for the info, so in a nutshell I need to have
1-Cameras
2-Application to host the cameras (Tinycam or blueiris)
3-Hardware to run the application and provide Webserver (don’t know what is the best)
4-Storage which can be NAS for example using FTP
Is my understanding is correct ?
1-Cameras
Yes. Go for IP cameras with native stream support. I have all foscam. Also look for cameras with dual stream support. This comes in helpful with keeping cpu low on blue iris. Then you can start looking at quality etc to determine what you want.
2-Application to Host the Cameras
Basically the application will give you extra power with the cameras. It gets a little more complicated conntecting to sharptools as you will have to deal with exposing the server to the internet and security. I won’t get into that.
3-Hadware
Tinycam I think is android only. I ran my BlueIris on an old Windows computer. It was an i7 4470 and cost me very little. You will need an ssd for the OS and a drive for recordings (WD Purple drive). If you want to get into AI then having a GPU is also good but not required. You can add it later if you want to.
4-Storage
All comes down to how much you want to store. I have a 4tb drive and it gives me around 3 weeks with 10 cameras. I don’t have it on raid or anything as its not critical information. If it dies I can replace it and keep going.
Thanks for the info, do you think an out of the box solution from Amazon would have the same result ?
I can’t say for sure if they would. Integration with Sharptools has certain requirements such as an available stream or image url so it can get the video/pictures. I’m not sure if a OOTB system would have such a thing.
Your suggestion is to install blue iris on an old computer and stay away from Tinycam ?
I’m a fan of Blue Iris. But its not the easiest application to get to know. Others find it frustrating.
You should try them both and see what works for you. My requirements aren’t necesarily the same as yours and I may do a lot more with BI than you would ever need.
But if you really want to spend the time and learn it… BI is a very powerful NVR software.
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I don’t mind complexity, currently I am running timycam on a fire tablet 10 (2021). Everything works fine other than the dropping frames and ghost audio. Cameras are Wyze cam V3 and Wyze cam pan v2. Both have the same problem. I assume it is a processing problem due to the fire tablet.
If I want to try the BI direction what is the best setup for a pc to have a fair comparison ?
So a bit of a plot twist. If you are using hte wyze cam’s this may not be a good solution for you.
Blue Iris works with the rtsp streams that cameras provide. I know wyze has a firmware that officers this but I’ve never been a fan of it. There is also a wyze proxy that translates the wyze camera stream into something blue iris could use but this could add more complexity and cpu usage based on the number of cameras etc.
I use to have wyze cameras and after a lot of frustration trying to get them working I ended up ditching them. They are cheap and work with their ecosystem but just frustrating if you need them to work with other things. This is the case with most of those popular camera setups (wyze, ring etc).
Tinycam in this case may be your only option if you want to keep the Wyze cams.
If you really want to try out blue iris then just install it on any pc to give it a shot and use the trial. Then you may either have to install the wyze rtsp firmware or install an app called wyze-bridge to translate the camera feed for you.
As another option…
I have used Fosi cams before as well as others…
Many cameras have a “snapshot” function.
So you can simply create a media tile with a URL of - something like:L
http://192.168.0.50/snapshot.cgi - or whatever.
Depends on your camera model and the command you can send.