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    Blue Iris and camera questions

    Let me start with a statement. I personally do not find the camera feature of HS4 useful at all. It can't do most of the things that I need hence I'm looking at Blue Iris.
    Questions about Blue Iris

    1. Can I run it on a dedicated RPi-4 ?
    2. If yes on RPi than how many cameras can I monitor without recording all the time just when motion is detected.
    3. Can I show live video feed on web pages (i.e. does BI have web server).
    4. Can BI recognize car license plates?
    5. Can BI recognize people's faces?
    6. Can BI recognize humans from other objects?
    7. Can BI filter false motion triggers such as grass, leaves, branches, birds, small wild animals etc.
    8. Can I make voice announcements to the camera from HS4 "speak something" function through BI assuming that the camera supports two way audio.
    9. I understand BI reports over MQTT motion detection. Does it take MQTT commands as well? For example "start recording cam #2".
    10. Is BI plug-in for HS4 good and reliable?

    Thanks in advance to those who are willing to share their BI experience.

    #2
    Originally posted by puma View Post
    Let me start with a statement. I personally do not find the camera feature of HS4 useful at all. It can't do most of the things that I need hence I'm looking at Blue Iris.
    Questions about Blue Iris

    1. Can I run it on a dedicated RPi-4 ?
    2. If yes on RPi than how many cameras can I monitor without recording all the time just when motion is detected.
    3. Can I show live video feed on web pages (i.e. does BI have web server).
    4. Can BI recognize car license plates?
    5. Can BI recognize people's faces?
    6. Can BI recognize humans from other objects?
    7. Can BI filter false motion triggers such as grass, leaves, branches, birds, small wild animals etc.
    8. Can I make voice announcements to the camera from HS4 "speak something" function through BI assuming that the camera supports two way audio.
    9. I understand BI reports over MQTT motion detection. Does it take MQTT commands as well? For example "start recording cam #2".
    10. Is BI plug-in for HS4 good and reliable?

    Thanks in advance to those who are willing to share their experience with BI.
    1. No. It requires Windows. You may be able to figure out some sort of was to run it Virtually on a Rpi, but the answer is pretty much no.
    2.
    3. Yes. It has a live feed and the web UI is great
    4. It has a license plate reader interface-- I think you need a subscription.
    5. maybe
    6. maybe
    7. It has many options for motion sensing.

    See the ipcamtalk website

    8. Not that I have seen
    9. I don't use MQTT, I use the Blue Iris plugin which is for HS3 but it works great for me on HS4. I can trigger a HS event based off camera motion and I can trigger camera motion based off a HS event. For example, when my shed door opens or closes, HS has BI focus the camera on my shed and record for a few minutes.
    HS3 Pro Edition 3.0.0.435 (Windows Server 8.1 on ESXi box)

    Plug-Ins Enabled:
    Z-Wave:,RaspberryIO:,AirplaySpeak:,Ecobee:,
    weatherXML:,JowiHue:,APCUPSD:,PHLocation:,Chromecast:,EasyTr igger:

    Comment


      #3
      9. Yes it can. I am using this for motion detection to trigger HS events through thr mcmsmqtt plugin. I was using http json before to do the same thing but mqtt is a hair faster. And yes you can also send commands to it through mqtt. The mqtt side of BI is not documented clearly, much of the commands however and options are the same for the documented http/json. There is also supposedly a way to pass a snapshot image through mqtt to hs but I have yet to figure that one out.
      10. The hs bi plugin is free however if you are running bi 5 or newer the plugin never actually worked that well anyways past v4 of BI. I also saw a post somewhere from an hs rep that said it only is free if you purchased it previously.

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by puma View Post
        Let me start with a statement. I personally do not find the camera feature of HS4 useful at all. It can't do most of the things that I need hence I'm looking at Blue Iris.
        Questions about Blue Iris

        1. Can I run it on a dedicated RPi-4 ?
        2. If yes on RPi than how many cameras can I monitor without recording all the time just when motion is detected.
        3. Can I show live video feed on web pages (i.e. does BI have web server).
        4. Can BI recognize car license plates?
        5. Can BI recognize people's faces?
        6. Can BI recognize humans from other objects?
        7. Can BI filter false motion triggers such as grass, leaves, branches, birds, small wild animals etc.
        8. Can I make voice announcements to the camera from HS4 "speak something" function through BI assuming that the camera supports two way audio.
        9. I understand BI reports over MQTT motion detection. Does it take MQTT commands as well? For example "start recording cam #2".
        10. Is BI plug-in for HS4 good and reliable?

        Thanks in advance to those who are willing to share their experience with BI.
        4. Lots of discussion on ipcamtalk.com on the art and science of license plate recognition.
        5&6. It does both these things very well with the integration of 3rd party DeepStack AI which is a free application that runs locally. I found alerts to go from useless (clouds, shadows, leaves, animals) to excellent with DeepStack as you can configure alerts for a large array of different objects such as person, car, truck, bicycle, etc.
        10. As mentioned above, it was said somewhere on the forum that the plugin is still available for download for free by previous purchasers, but apparently not available to new users. This is due to it being abandoned by the plugin developer. Odd situation and you might want to contact HS sales directly to enquire.
        -Wade

        Comment


          #5
          I don't have an much to add to what people already said but
          1. No. It is Windows
          2. N/A
          3. Yes. I use their ui3.html with HSTouch. I which it would be possible to zoom into a particular video stream but unfortunately that is not possible. There is also an error message each time you start it on a mobile device but you can edit the ui3.html file to avoid that error message (something about storage not being available).
          4. I purchased a cam specifically to read license plates but haven't installed it yet. From all I read it should work well, though.
          5. Don't know
          6. Don't know
          7. It has some settings to ignore branches and leaves moving, clouds, etc but it didn't work well for me. Even besides that, I came to the conclusion it is best to record 24/7 and not based on motion. Motion is cool if you have someone sitting at the monitor 24/7 and do live surveillance.
          8. Don't know
          9. Don't know about taking MQTT commands but you can trigger recording from HS4 through http commands.
          10. It's a pretty nice plugin but not supported anymore because BI now has an interface that makes the plugin kind of obsolete.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by mulu View Post
            7. It has some settings to ignore branches and leaves moving, clouds, etc but it didn't work well for me. Even besides that, I came to the conclusion it is best to record 24/7 and not based on motion. Motion is cool if you have someone sitting at the monitor 24/7 and do live surveillance.
            Look into DeepStack and substreams. Lots of info on ipcamtalk and directly from BI. I record 11 cameras continuously on substream (lower res) and trigger on person detection (and in some instances, car and truck) to record high-res for limited periods. Best of both worlds, and the substream recording uses amazingly modest server resources considering the number of cameras.
            -Wade

            Comment


              #7
              I am currently running Blue Iris and it works great. I have the BI plugin for HS3, which I understand will work with HS4, but I need to configure it in order to trigger events, etc. What functionality is obtained by adding cameras to HS4 directly? Is there anything new available that I would be missing by using BI and the associated plugin? I assume that I would be able to view the camera feeds in HS4 directly. Can I feed the cameras to BI and HS4 at the same time?

              Comment


                #8
                I haven't used cameras in HS4 directly so I am not sure if there are any advantages. However, as you have probably seen on this forum, the number of cameras supported by HS4 is very limited. Also, you don't get any of the advanced features that BI offers.

                Comment


                  #9
                  wpiman "For example, when my shed door opens or closes, HS has BI focus the camera on my shed and record for a few minutes." VERY Cool.

                  Wade "It does both these things very well with the integration of 3rd party DeepStack AI which is a free application that runs locally." I can wait to set mine up

                  @dwebwer85rc " The hs bi plugin is free however if you are running bi 5 or newer the plugin never actually worked that well anyways past v4 of BI. I also saw a post somewhere from an hs rep that said it only is free if you purchased it previously."
                  The plugin seems to be of the .NET Framework flavor. With a migration to Core, this can run under Windows(WSL) or Linux. hmmm?

                  I am new to home surveillance (BlueIris) and automation (Homeseer) but my plan initially, was to run both separately. I do see where BI offers some benefit or HS with supported number of cameras and now DeepStack AI. wpiman's setup of a trigger to BI that a door (or some event) just opened ... go look and possibly notify me with a snapshot. VERY COOL!!!

                  Thanks folks.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Any good BI alternative that runs on Linux ? I did online search and found few but wondering if anyone here has first hand experience. Thanks.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by HaYen808 View Post
                      wpiman "For example, when my shed door opens or closes, HS has BI focus the camera on my shed and record for a few minutes." VERY Cool.

                      Wade "It does both these things very well with the integration of 3rd party DeepStack AI which is a free application that runs locally." I can wait to set mine up

                      @dwebwer85rc " The hs bi plugin is free however if you are running bi 5 or newer the plugin never actually worked that well anyways past v4 of BI. I also saw a post somewhere from an hs rep that said it only is free if you purchased it previously."
                      The plugin seems to be of the .NET Framework flavor. With a migration to Core, this can run under Windows(WSL) or Linux. hmmm?

                      I am new to home surveillance (BlueIris) and automation (Homeseer) but my plan initially, was to run both separately. I do see where BI offers some benefit or HS with supported number of cameras and now DeepStack AI. wpiman's setup of a trigger to BI that a door (or some event) just opened ... go look and possibly notify me with a snapshot. VERY COOL!!!

                      Thanks folks.
                      I agree with you, the only thing that is missing and is my dream to have is face recognition, they have it integrated into it but does not do a good job. I would like to recognize when I come home or my family. It is surprising since the technology is there. Maybe next release.

                      Sent from my SM-G973U1 using Tapatalk

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Supposedly deepstack is supposed to be able tobdo facial recognition. I installed it and started looking at it to integrate into bi, but I was underwhelmed with what it does when I started looking at the documentation. I really don't care if it tags a snapshot of my cat as "cat"

                        Comment


                          #13
                          I use Blue Iris with DeepStack, 21 cameras, mix of 2MP and 4MP, on an i7-6700K and the CPU utilization is under 30% on a bright, sunny, windy day. At night it drops to around 10%. DeepStack is running using a GTX970 NVidia card. I really don't care about cats, dogs, horses, zebras, giraffes and so on, but it's easy to just recognize what you really want to be aware of. There are custom models available over on IPCT that eliminate all the fluff of the "built-in" model which also improves detection speed. The big advantage that DeepStack brings to Blue Iris is that it almost totally eliminates false triggers from lights and shadows, a very big advantage.

                          In terms of facial recognition, I did fool with it and found it to be hit an miss. While the technology is there I think it comes down to processing power and a big enough model. Developing a model is a lengthy task and I don't find it all that important.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Good feedback. Thanks' for posting, however it's all Windows based as BI is Windows only.
                            Anyone using BI equivalents in Linux/Ubuntu environment ? I did some research and there are dozen of BI equivalents in Linux. Not sure where to start though. Practical advise by current users would be highly appreciated.

                            Thanks,

                            Comment

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