Kind of gross but also makes the point of 24/7 recording, coverage and adequate resolution.

This AM I found someone had gotten sick in the hallway. (Thankfully I have vinyl flooring or tile everywhere but the bedrooms.) From the sheer volume and some of the bits that looked like dog food I assumed it was one of the dogs. I went to the video to see which but of course the only camera  pointed that way (an Amcrest IP3M-956W in the kennel) was too far away to make out the mess on the floor. So I scanned back to my last trip down the hall but still could not see anyone going through during that time. There was a small spot visible on another cam (an Amcrest IP3M-941W in dining room) but scanning that video showed it was made by one of the cats. Back tracking the cat I saw he came from the hallway even though I had not seen him on the kennel cam. Armed with an exact time I went back and ran the hallway video slowly and could see a shadow from the small blind spot between cams that had to be the cat getting sick into the hallway. So it appears the cat ate some of the dry dog food and it made him sick. At least that is my assumption right now as he seems fine but I know to keep an eye on him for a while.

Which leads me back to the points I keep trying to make to people.

• A lot of what of what you want to see after the fact would be missed if all you have is triggered recordings. The only bit above that triggered a motion event was the cat getting in the dining room which was small and short.
• You need enough coverage to be able to track a subject. It is amazing how often seems to happen in blind spots. This is why I have 38 cams and want more.
• And you need to be able to make out detail in the video. Sometimes only being able to see a body is there is good enough if you are just back tracking but if you need to see a face or when something was disturbed / left you need detail. 

Granted you never will have all the coverage you wish you had after an event but often a few extra dollars and a bit of extra planning will yield a much better end result so you do not end up feeling like you wasted your time and money.

Bluecherry NVR vs others

BlueCherry is another multi-camera Linux NVR. 

Here is a great 45 minute overview and demonstration. Below is mainly just the stuff not really covered in it.

You can download their client and connect to their demo server to try it for yourself. Note only 4 of the demo cameras would connect for me and one is playing a animated video.

Interface beats Zoneminder by a mile.

Their feature compare with Zoneminder is here. kerberos.io does beat them on some features like heat maps but over all I'd say the Bluecherry interface is better than kerberos.io too.

Does most of what Blue Iris does. Main diffs with Blue Iris

It costs a lot more.

To dup my current 38 cam set up would be $650 to 675 vs $135 for Blue Iris. There is a 30 day free trail though.

Generally the interface is not as polished as Blue Iris though way ahead of Zoneminder

Plays back at up to 128x where Blue Iris does up to 256X

Probably not that big of a deal unless you are having to find when thing X happened in several hours of video.

Also not seeing many automation options. 

For example with Blue Iris I can trigger virtual devices in my home automation system based on motion and loss of signal. Here the only option appears to be email. This is what the options are with Blue Iris for motion or loss of signal triggering.

Motion detection seems thin

Compare this Bluecherry screen

to Blue Iris' these screens

Zoom seems to stay centered on image instead of cursor location like in Blue Iris

This means if the thing you want to zoom in on is off center, zoom is basically useless. Also it is a simple +- button system of step instead of the much smoother Blue Iris method of put your cursor over the subject and use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

Loads

Not sure about loads since I have not set up a sever to test on matching hardware. The client did not seem to load my PC much at all though all I could pull from their server appeared to be 4 streams around 720p.