kerberos.io

Another Linux option is kerberos.io Do not know anyone that has actually tried it though. If you look at the docs, to do multicams on a server (not a RPI) you need to setup a docker image for each cam. I'm still looking if you need multiple web interfaces as well. The demo appears to show a camera only. I like some of the data displays like the heat maps I have not seen elsewhere but wonder about the horsepower required for all that. Especially since I'm phasing out all my 720p cams. Blue Iris is often accused of being a CPU hog. With motion highlighting turned on (similar to but less data intense than heat amps ought to be) 13 (720p to 2K mixed) cams can max a 4th gen i7 (4 cores / 8 threads) during a storm.

Another issue for me is I want a console. If the dogs start barking or a sensor is triggered I want to be able to look at the monitors and see what is going on.One of the reasons I have 3 Blue Iris servers, other than load, is that 13 cameras fit perfectly in a 1:3, 4 up layout full screen display on a 32 inch monitor so that I can see at a glance what is going on.

I should note too load. Those servers are each looking at around 40 mb/s coming in from cameras so sending to the cloud in never going to happen without a fiber uplink.

I am thinking about setting it up just to fine tune motion detection setting for Blue Iris if nothing else.

Zoneminder eval as Blue Iris replacement

Intro

After getting feed up with Windows 10 issues I'm checking out Zoneminder. First things first start with a clean CentOS 7 install since I ran into all kinds of conflicts trying to install on boxes with other things already running. xrdp for instance will keep you from installing vlc which Zoneminder needs.

Update: if you just want to see a quick demo video of Zoneminder, iSpy and Blue Iris here a great one another guy did. And if you are thinking Synology Surveillance Station as an alternative you might want to watch the video Is the Synology Surveillance Station better than Blue Iris?

Installing base CentOS 7

Installing CentOS 7 with Gnome desktop

These instructions are great other than instead of minimal configuration, select Gnome desktop and select all sub packages, otherwise follow the instructions in the link

After it reboots accept the EULA and take defaults for basic config. Check for and install any outstanding updates.

The rest of the set up can be done remotely as root logged in via ssh

Create user with sudo access

adduser username

passwd username

If system uses the simple wheel group membership you can use

usermod -aG wheel username

Otherwise edit /etc/sudoers to get granular.

To avoid conflicts DO NOT install anything else before Zoneminder!

Install Zoneminder

Follow the instructions from here.

wget http://zmrepo.zoneminder.com/el/7/x86_64/zmrepo-7-9.el7.centos.noarch.rpm
sudo yum install --nogpgcheck zmrepo-7-9.el7.centos.noarch.rpm
sudo yum install zoneminder
less /usr/share/doc/zoneminder-*/README.Redhat7

The last line above is more instructions. Follow them with these caveats:
sudo dnf install mariadb-server should be
sudo yum install mariadb-server
Note it is important to install mariadb-server and NOT mysqld or try and use a remote db since this seems to currently keep Zomeminder from starting.
Note when you see something like
mysql -uroot -p -e "grant all on zm.* to \
                        'zmuser'@localhost identified by 'zmpass';"
It is better to enter as
mysql -uroot -p -e "grant all on zm.* to 'zmuser'@localhost identified by 'zmpass';"
since \ seems to get lost sometimes when copy pasting into ssh sessions.

At sudo systemctl start zoneminder is where you know if things worked.

Note if you want to be able to access Zoneminder other than from a browser on the box itself also run the commands
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=80/tcp
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=443/tcp
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

You can now go to the console via your browser. If you are on the box you can use the IP address of 127.0.0.1 otherwise substitute your server's IP address for 10.10.2.191 in this URL
https://10.10.2.191/zm/

Setting up cameras

For details check out the Getting Started section of the user guide. Note the set up section appears to be out of date as some of the tabs had different or more options when I setup a camera for this test.
Setup is not nearly as simple as Blue Iris which generally just figures it out from an IP address and a login. Since you will probably end up Googling what to use to make it work with your camera I won't go into steps here.

First impressions

I got Zoneminder to work by spinning up a new copy of CentOS 7 on one of my test PCs.

The broke bit I saw on my first try seems to be with it not seeing the DB because it is looking for an instance of Maria DB local (remote is also supposed to work) and does not see MySQL local either as equivalent.  Note they are functionally equiv and the OS saw the MySQL DB I had installed as newer version of Maria. There were also other software conflicts on other servers I tried that had other things installed like remote desktop for example which needed to be remove just to get it to install.

The interface is no where near as finished or as easy to use as Blue Iris. Plan on looking up what to put into config boxes and playing with options to get them to work. For example to configure the video stream on ZomeMinder per their Wiki looks like this

Note the Probe and ONVIF links are supposed to yield a list of config suggestions similar to what Blue Iris' inspect does but it returned nothing detected for the Amcrest. The presets option lists about 40 low resolution cameras. Amcrest was not even listed in the presets despite being on their Wiki. By comparison Blue Iris has more than 40 brands of cameras listed, many with many models.

The equivalent window on Blue Iris looks like this

Generic above was setup automatically by inspect though you could also select Amcrest. The configuration by selecting the brand and model looks quite different but seems to work equally well.

Load wise a single Amcrest 2K cam on Zoneminder appears to max out a Core 2.

Note that is streaming the one cam back to a browser but it was still nailed after stopping that stream.

You can see the spike where I logged back in via remote desktop to see the load and how it changed the load on the box very little.

For comparison that same camera plus 12 others are recording 24/7 with motion detection on the i7 server now with an average core load of 46%.

Granted the i7 is faster but not that much faster. About 3 times faster according to this.

Finally for me I'm looking for something that lets me have a monitor (3 actually) showing the cams so I can just glance up when I get an alert or hear the dogs barking that something is happening.

The Zoneminder interface seems to be oriented to record now and watch later. That is fine if that is all you need but if you want to be able actively monitor multiple cams it won't cut it.

Update

After trying:

• moving the swap file to another hard drive
• running hardware diagnostics 
• Windows troubleshooters
• trying fixes I found on line
• reinstalling Blur Iris
• and even swapping out the graphics card, since the symptoms were the Blue Iris console locking up and Windows programs not updating bits of the screen  

I ended up restoring from the restore disks which put the system back to Windows 7. After installing upgrades and all the software (Blue Iris, apcupsd, cygwin and ODrive) it is working great again. Kind of confirms it was a Windows 10 issue.

Some things to keep in mind if you are thinking of cloud recording your cams

I hear a lot of people and services talking about recording to the cloud but some basic issues really put a damper on things quick.

Bandwidth needed

Depending on who you ask 720p will eat up 600 Kbps to  44.6 Mbps. 1080p 1.2 Mbps to 73.5 Mbps!

NetFlix says 5.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for HD quality It does not say if that is 720p or 1080p but I'm guessing it is 1080p.

For a more real world example Let's look at my Blue Iris severs with a mix of camera resolutions and brands.
First server is recording 13 cameras. 2 2Ks, 1 960P, 2 1080p and 8 720p. Its network usage averages around 40 Mbps with peeks near 50 Mbps.
Second server is recording 12 cameras. 1 2Ks, 1 960P, 2 1080p, 1 SD and 7 720p. Again about 40 Mbps average with 50 peeks.
Third is lighter 12 cams; 1 2K, 2 1080ps, 6 720p, 2 SD and 1 USB.  Its network usage averages around 25 Mbps with peeks near 32 Mbps.

Not a problem if you have fiber / gigabit level bandwidth but the current top of the line Spectrum (formerly Time Warner) internet connection (300 Mbps service) averages around 20 Mbps upload. The 300 is download speed only.  AT&T only claims 12 to 20 Mbps upload speeds on their top end tier that I cannot even get here. Note AT&T's web store shows a 1 TB cap in fine print for unbundled internet service. (1 TB is less than 14 hours at 20 Mbps or about 33 GB per day) Worse yet it seems TWC is one of the few left NOT capping data. So even if you dedicate a top end TWC internet connection just to your security cams, do not expect to get more than about 6 720p or 3 1080p cams to record to the cloud over it.

Security

Another issue is you REALLY do not want these cams open to the internet. The security on them tends toward cosmetic. Google "webcam security issues" for tons of examples. You want cams on their own, local only, network if possible. At very least blocked at you modem's firewall from talking to the outside except through a local firewalled  server. Otherwise it is like locking your doors while leaving some windows open.

Saving space by not recording continuously

Of course you can save bandwidth by trying to just recorded motion. This is about as useful as saving bandwidth by lowering resolution. Either way you will probably end up cussing when you actually need footage of an event. You can waste quite a bit of time trying to find the sweet spot of balance between catching the stuff you want and eliminating false alarms for each camera. Unless you are monitoring a controlled indoor setting I'd suggest you just forget it. Either you error on the side of false alerts to not miss anything (and probably still miss some stuff) or you might as well not be recording at all. Your best bet is to record continuously and set you motion triggers to the light side, uploading pic and or snippets to cloud storage. That way you get alerts for anything serious and can check the video for what lead up to it. As well as other views of the area from other cameras if available. Assuming the server is not taken of course.

Always test your setup with a person in the most extreme distance to confirm the video will not be useless when you need it by trying to get a recognizable picture from it. Odds are you will find you need better resolution and or zoom than you think to get video useful for more than just seeing someone is there. For a starting point check out the CCTV Design Lens Calculator for ideas of what you will probably need.

My original Facebook overview.

I get asked about this a fair bit so here is my HD security cam 101. 

First things first 

Do not bother with analog cams or anything less than 720p. The video is almost useless and they will cost as much or more than HD cams.

The 2 trickiest bits are getting power to it and getting it connected to your network.

You can find these 720p Escam QD300s for as little as $27 on Amazon if you wait long enough. Generally they are $35-$40. I prefer these Escam QD900s today. Above pic is from one. They are 1080p which really makes a difference. I’ve seen them as low as $43 used. Been trending around $55. If mounting on or near the house, run an Ethernet cable to them and you can power them off the Ethernet cable by using some cheap POE adapters. Note this will not work with 5 volt cameras but fine for these 12 volt models. Away from the house just use WiFi. Do NOT run unshielded Ethernet outside for more than a few feet or a storm may fry your network! You can pick up cables for analog video cameras pretty cheap. For some reason they are cheaper and longer than the power only cables. My creek cam is on about 200 feet cable run, which is about the limit and probably is hurting the image quality a bit at night. Unless you have enterprise class WiFi or a repeater, you are not going to go much farther anyway through trees anyway. Waterproof any connections / unused connectors with duct tape or sticking in a waterproof outlet box. Be sure and change ALL the default passwords, user and P2P! I generally like to set up cams so each cam is visible to another so if someone, or more often something, messes with it I know what happened to avoid it happening again. Note the affordable 2k cameras are just starting to come out so you might want to keep that in mind when planning purchases. Check out Amcrest IP3M-941W and Amcrest IP3M-943W (Note I have not tried one of these yet but have eval coming.) Also if you feel comfortable taking electronics a part you can swap the lenses out on those QD cameras to get up to a 4x zoom from a 16 mm lens. That will help keep you camera closer to the house and less noticed.

There are all kinds of recording options.

The cameras above come with info on their cloud based service and there are lots of others but I generally find them pricey and you can easily swap your internet connection. There are also some nice looking DVR boxes now but I prefer a PC running Blue Iris. If you are just doing a cam or two, about any old (unfortunately has to be Windows) PC will run it just fine. For instance a used PC if you do not have an old one laying around. A single i7 class PC (as low as $600 new) can handle about 18 720p cameras recording continuously. (You can have them only record when they see motion but I would not suggest it.) After running a few days see how much space your recordings take with your settings and get a second hard drive for it. Given you might not notice or hear about something you want to review the video for right away I general suggest keeping at least a week’s worth. 8 TB drives are available now at a decent price per gigabyte. Just saying. I generally go with Western Digital Red or Purple. Blue is a bit cheaper but had some of those fail on me in less than a year. Your mileage may vary. For more on WD colors click here.

From there it depends on how wild you want to get.

Blue Iris is pretty easy to get running and has a ton of stuff you can get fancy with if you want to take the time. Definitely start by setting it up so you can view on your phone. Then setting motion alerts based on something above at least certain size moving between (up to 8 odd shaped) areas of the picture. Motion detection is something you will just have to play with till you get the sensitivity and screen zones right. Once you do, you can have it alert you to odd behavior in a bunch of ways. For instance one of mine says "driveway" over speakers and uploads a pic to my cloud if it sees something moving on the driveway, with a rectangle drawn around the thing it saw. I have that camera aimed at the gate at the street and I've told it to ignore anything beyond the gate and be extra sensitive to any motion near the UPS box out there. (UPS seems scared to drive in my driveway and used to just leave stuff sitting by the gate or random spots in the yard so now there is a box for them near the gate.) It is SO nice while I'm working to only have to glance at a monitor to see what is in the driveway or what the dogs are barking at. Especially lately if I had to go outside to check on them every time they get stirred up I'd never get anything done. Add to that seeing the wildlife you might not even know had in your yard and you will probably be adding more cams than you ever thought you would want for security. FYI for those that do not know, check out 3 camels price watch You can set it to email you when an item on Amazon falls below a price you are willing to pay! Also shows you historical prices for an item so you know what is a good price and right time to buy. Can save you BIG money!