DAMN. Was about to purchase some new hardware to handle my 10 cameras (with 10 copies) as my CPU was running at 90+%. I just read that thread and did all the tweaks (especially the sub stream) and my CPU is now hovering around 20%. Big difference. Just saved me a lot of money.
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Just for clarity - I expect the 'Thread' that was read was a tuning thread about BI? There is a whole board section at IPCAMTALK that covers a ton of the tuning and will assuredly bring CPU down while improving various other factors.
I know this is a reply to an old post - but as I re-read I feel something got missed. The point about needing a Windows machine isn't completely accurate - It's been years now since I needed to do it but there used to be a Windows VM you could fire up on a Mac. A quick google search describes Parallels, Crossover, or Bootcamp as methods available. It might not be pretty but ...
I think the point is that you need a windows environment. A VM that is running windows on a linux OS, or thin hypervisor is still a windows virtual computer.
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There Virtual environments can still have some serious limitations when it comes to video processing resources that lean on special hardware or graphics card for secondary processing. This just means it is possible cpu impacts could be much greater then expected if you can't leverage hardware that would be avaliable without the virtual environment
Also, most people - even many HA and HE enthusiasts - aren't IT gurus. I have an older but still perfectly functioning Mac Mini that I would like to turn into a hub/recording device for IP cameras. But do I want to learn about VMs on top of that? Nah. Too much else to do.
It's a shame there's not a true "Blue Iris for Mac" out there, or at least something very similar. But if there is, I haven't found it yet.
There are a few out there. I can't remember them all as it was a number of months ago when I was doing research but I know sighthound is pretty popular.
Where you may get into issues is when you start to add more cameras you need more power. So not sure how many you are planning to ad or even if the mac mini will handle them all. But its a fun project anyways.
Totally understand. I just feel like these days anything HA related you have to become a guru so when things break you can figure out why. It becomes a full time job.
If you want to avoid all that then probably buying a self contained NVR (hardware/software package) might be your best bet. You may be able to just set it and forget it.
I'm always tweaking my BlueIris setup. But I like that. Same way I'm always messing with my Unifi wifi and my HE. I just get an idea and try to do more.
No kidding. I upgraded 8 cameras to 4k and it was killing my I7-8700 until I did the tweaks. Now I am running with all kind of extras at a cool 40%.
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Proxmox has worked well for me, pretty easy to set up. There are some good guides on doing gpu passthrough to the VM to cut down on CPU use dramatically.
I use SecuritySpy from bensoftware.com on a mac mini server. It is awesome and supports nearly any camera. I also use it with virtual sensors on HE to turn on lights on my porch/patio/carport. Although it does have a trigger mechanism for homekit I haven't tried it since my mini is too old to support that feature. I think it is a good alternative to Blue Iris.
I moved from SightHound 6 Pro to BlueIris 5 with DeepStack several months ago and there's simply no comparison.
SH Pro is a resource pig--with four 4MP cameras I was seeing typical CPU loads of 50-60% on a 3rd gen i7 with 8GB of RAM. SH object detection at night is terrible useless. Headlights are constantly detected as people and a spider web in front of a dome camera resulted in over 200 "people" detections over the course of a single evening. By comparison BI and DeepStack running on the same i7 with five 4MP cameras results in a CPU load that's typically under 20% and false people detections are nearly nonexistent--I'd estimate I get less than one per month.
Then there's the issue of price; an SH Pro (unlimited cameras ) costs $250. BI 5 (up to 64 cameras) can commonly be found for approx $50 with discount codes. I realize that BI only runs on Windows but I think buying a used i7 on ebay + BI would only be slightly more expensive than a SH Pro license and the overall experience is likely to be significantly better.
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Many thanks, all. Personally, I try to avoid Windows simply because I must manage it. The older I get, the less interest I have in that (a big change from my old Homeseer days 15 or more years ago). I'll check out the recommended Mac solutions. And if they don't work out, sigh... I may fire up a Windows machine. I have an old one somewhere here, but I doubt it's up to the task.
I gave up on BI after a few years. I just got a 1U NVR and its been "set and forget" and it has a remote viewing app
keeping up with a server just for BI was getting expensive on its own, and then i added 3-4 cameras and needed and CPU upgrade..............
one 16 channle 4k NVR for $400 work perfectly fine. granted it's hikvisoion, but to be honest it works great and they have nice features too
What are the advanced features you are referring to? BI seems over complicated (I already bought it) I have simple requirements. Recognize motion. Filter out things like my flag waving. Ideally recognize only people. In a perfect world, show only people I have not previously verified as family or friends. I really don’t care about primary streams, sub streams, just record from my cameras 100% of the time and call out meaningful events. Does it really take multiple on-line courses and ultra granular settings to figure it out?
It all comes down to your needs. What you listed seems pretty simple that anything can do it. Yes, BI seems a little over complicated but I also think its a product of feature creap. Trying to do everything for everybody.
In my case, I have BI integrated with my Hubitat. Some of the things I do that are a bit more andvanced (not saying no system can do some of these).
- pop up a feed on my desktop when I'm working when motion starts at the bottom of my drive way and moves to the top of my drive way (zone crossing)
- AI detection for cars/animals/people
- Change the active profile based on my presence so things like indoor cameras will turn on/off and the same with notifications
- all cameras show up as devices in Hubitat with motion/sound detection triggers that I can then integrate into various routines
- I can integrate the cameras into my dashboards. Looking at putting a small tablet by the back door that shows the feeds so when we let the dog out we can see where he is or if there are other random animals out there.
- very power management of motion detection. You can even view a clip of a triggered event that you don't want to get triggered for and modify the settings live on the clip to filter out what you don't want. For example I tweaked a camera that was getting notified by leaves blowing.
- all my cameras record 24/7 and then I have a copy of them that handle the alerts only. The 24/7 are hidden from the interface so those recordings don't clutter up the alerts.
- ability to control other things from the interface such as the lights on the floodlight cameras.
- 2-way audio via the apps
On top of that it has power management of recordings. You can manage disk space usage and even have it move recordings to other computers for archiving on a schedule. I guess this is more of a commercial thing than it is a home user setting.
I've looked at other solutions and while each of them may have a few of the features they were all missing something that I wanted or it was not fully baked (ex motion trigger for on but not for off) or didn't even have an iphone app which allows this to be a full replacement.
So, yes it is a complicated product but I consider it a power user product. Take some time to figure it out and its pretty cool what it can do. Don't have the time/need, then yes there are a lot of other more simpler products that exist.
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It's important to quantify "recognize motion". Most (all?) NVRs are capable of pixel based motion detection. This type of detection is based on the number of changed pixels. And while it's configurable, things like waving flags, shadows, moving branches, etc., make it very unreliable and useless quite frankly.
BI5 includes support for DeepStack AI Server; an Open Source AI Engine. BI essentially uses pixel based motion detection to set a trigger that captures a JPEG image that is then analyzed by DeepStack. DeepStack examines the image and uses object recognition to determine if the image contains a person (or car, or truck, dog, squirrel, etc.). This results in very accurate object detection. Your waving flag will never result in a false person detection 
You forgot - provide free support, and do it all for less than 10 dollars. Seriously, I think it's unfair to put down a great product while in a DIY community group that is discussing 4 programming languages, 1400+ devices and 430 custom apps.
However, in the spirit of things, check out IPCamtalk and read threads about other products and tools that may fit your needs better. You may also consider Exacq or Milestone products to fit your wants and desires best.
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I consider advanced feature anything more then basic view, recording, and notification.
Motioneye works fine for me when all i need is to do recording from a camera. Bit i am literally just recording the stream 24/7 and using it for local viewing.
You mentioned face/object detection. I consider that a smart function and advanced. To ke that puts you square into the BI area. It can also use hardware for accelerated analysis of the video and augment recording with hardware accelerated encoding as i understand it. I also suspect BI can integrate with audio better then a more basic solution.
The key here is as a earlier person posted it is about feature creep. BI has years of growth and layers upon layers of added features. If i had a different need i wouldn't hesitate to use it. I don't doubt it is a great product and if you already payed for it use it.
That sounds awesome. I guess the learning curve is worth it!
Thanks for sharing all of that.
Any views if this little computer could run a handful of 4k cameras on Blue Iris ok, along with a few low power apps like Node Red and Apache as a web server? How about with the Deepstack AI object detection? Is it a major overhead?
Or this one (lower power and not as fast according to the benchmarks)
Any better recommendations bang/buck?
I'm running 8 cameras that range from 1080p to 4K on an old i5-6500 with 16GB. It also runs a Plex server.
As long as the cameras use Direct-to-disk and substreams, I don't think you'll have CPU issues.
I also use Deepstack in all the cameras. Using the integrated graphics in the I5 was giving slow response (200-1200ms) so I bought a cheap Nvidia P400 (~$110) card that has brought those times down to 100-200ms.
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