Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

HS-CAM-O Questions

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    HS-CAM-O Questions

    I'm running the latest copy of HS4 and have been using HS for 4 years now. I'm pretty experienced with things (have written plug-ins, scripts, etc.) but I have never used a camera on HomeSeer or any other system. My wife wants me to add some cameras to monitor outdoors and not knowing anything about them, I figure the HS-CAM-O is probably a safe bet to jump into video camera usage.

    I plan to run CAT5 cable to each camera location and I will add a POE switch so that I can power the cameras via POE.

    My main question is this: It is my impression that the main benefit of adding outdoor security cameras is that they can be setup to record video when any motion is detected. Does this HS-CAM-O camera provide that motion detection capability so that I can setup events to capture video, or will I need to also use something like the HS-FLS100 motion sensor or some other motion sensor device?

    Any other suggestions or advice would be most welcome!

    #2
    Originally posted by bradleyward View Post
    Any other suggestions or advice would be most welcome!
    Except in very controlled situations, it's common to have excessive, useless motion events from blowing leaves, moving shadows from sun/clouds, animals, etc, on outdoor cameras. These are frustrating to deal with when trying to use motion in home automation and for recording "important" events. Thankfully recent advances in consumer-accessible AI have improved the situation dramatically.

    I have an Amcrest AD410 doorbell camera with built-in human detection. It does a good job of limiting motion events to humans. Well, it thinks cats are humans, but mostly... But the real game changer for me and many others has been Blue Iris software's integration of Deepstack AI. Blue Iris is subscription based, and a bargain given it's capabilities IMHO, and Deepstack is free of charge. Deepstack recognizes many different objects--e.g., person, car, bike, truck, etc.--and can be trained to recognize others and even specific faces although I've not tried it. Blue Iris can be integrated with HS via HTTP calls or built-in MQTT support for motion triggers, notifications, camera control, etc. (There's a HS3 Blue Iris plugin but it's no longer supported. I purchased it a few years ago and don't recommend it.) I have 12 cameras on BI at one location and 7 cameras at another location. It's a powerful platform and I highly recommend it if you intend to add more cameras in the future.
    -Wade

    Comment


      #3
      Yes, you will need to use an external motion sensor to trigger the cameras captures. A HS4 event can be created to record up to 30 seconds of video per motion event.
      💁‍♂️ Support & Customer Service 🙋‍♂️ Sales Questions 🛒 Shop HomeSeer Products

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by Wade View Post

        Except in very controlled situations, it's common to have excessive, useless motion events from blowing leaves, moving shadows from sun/clouds, animals, etc, on outdoor cameras. These are frustrating to deal with when trying to use motion in home automation and for recording "important" events. Thankfully recent advances in consumer-accessible AI have improved the situation dramatically.

        I have an Amcrest AD410 doorbell camera with built-in human detection. It does a good job of limiting motion events to humans. Well, it thinks cats are humans, but mostly... But the real game changer for me and many others has been Blue Iris software's integration of Deepstack AI. Blue Iris is subscription based, and a bargain given it's capabilities IMHO, and Deepstack is free of charge. Deepstack recognizes many different objects--e.g., person, car, bike, truck, etc.--and can be trained to recognize others and even specific faces although I've not tried it. Blue Iris can be integrated with HS via HTTP calls or built-in MQTT support for motion triggers, notifications, camera control, etc. (There's a HS3 Blue Iris plugin but it's no longer supported. I purchased it a few years ago and don't recommend it.) I have 12 cameras on BI at one location and 7 cameras at another location. It's a powerful platform and I highly recommend it if you intend to add more cameras in the future.
        Hi Wade,

        Thank you very much for such a detailed reply! Very helpful.

        I've been doing some searching online after reading your reply. I see that Blue Iris software can be purchased for a list price of $69.95, but I see no mention of a subscription service on the Blue Iris site. I then went to Amazon and see that Amcrest sells the Blue Iris software on Amazon for $59.95. Researching Amcrest, I see that they have a cloud service. Is this the subscription service that you are talking about? I've yet to find any pricing information for that on the Amcrest website.

        And wow, Amcrest has a LOT of different products. I researched the AD410 doorbell that you have and that looks very nice, I may just start there. I'm guessing that a good way for me to get started is to buy the AM410 doorbell. Get it up and running first and that should give me a much better idea of what is going on. Then after doing that, I would hopefully be in a better position to install CAT5 cable to my camera positions, install a POE switch, and purchase my first actual video camera (probably from Amcrest, I suppose). As part of that step I suppose I would be purchasing the Blue Iris software too...

        Brad


        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by bradleyward View Post

          Hi Wade,

          Thank you very much for such a detailed reply! Very helpful.

          I've been doing some searching online after reading your reply. I see that Blue Iris software can be purchased for a list price of $69.95, but I see no mention of a subscription service on the Blue Iris site. I then went to Amazon and see that Amcrest sells the Blue Iris software on Amazon for $59.95. Researching Amcrest, I see that they have a cloud service. Is this the subscription service that you are talking about? I've yet to find any pricing information for that on the Amcrest website.

          And wow, Amcrest has a LOT of different products. I researched the AD410 doorbell that you have and that looks very nice, I may just start there. I'm guessing that a good way for me to get started is to buy the AM410 doorbell. Get it up and running first and that should give me a much better idea of what is going on. Then after doing that, I would hopefully be in a better position to install CAT5 cable to my camera positions, install a POE switch, and purchase my first actual video camera (probably from Amcrest, I suppose). As part of that step I suppose I would be purchasing the Blue Iris software too...

          Brad

          If you are going the Blue Iris route you'd better have a semi beefy PC to run it on as it's a CPU hog.
          💁‍♂️ Support & Customer Service 🙋‍♂️ Sales Questions 🛒 Shop HomeSeer Products

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by Rupp View Post

            If you are going the Blue Iris route you'd better have a semi beefy PC to run it on as it's a CPU hog.
            This is no longer true with BI v.5. Using substreams cut CPU usage to a fraction of previous. Your cameras must support substreams, of course.
            -Wade

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by bradleyward View Post

              Hi Wade,

              Thank you very much for such a detailed reply! Very helpful.

              I've been doing some searching online after reading your reply. I see that Blue Iris software can be purchased for a list price of $69.95, but I see no mention of a subscription service on the Blue Iris site. I then went to Amazon and see that Amcrest sells the Blue Iris software on Amazon for $59.95. Researching Amcrest, I see that they have a cloud service. Is this the subscription service that you are talking about? I've yet to find any pricing information for that on the Amcrest website.

              And wow, Amcrest has a LOT of different products. I researched the AD410 doorbell that you have and that looks very nice, I may just start there. I'm guessing that a good way for me to get started is to buy the AM410 doorbell. Get it up and running first and that should give me a much better idea of what is going on. Then after doing that, I would hopefully be in a better position to install CAT5 cable to my camera positions, install a POE switch, and purchase my first actual video camera (probably from Amcrest, I suppose). As part of that step I suppose I would be purchasing the Blue Iris software too...

              Brad

              I believe the way it works with BI is it's $69 to purchase and you get a year of updates and support. (They enhance and update frequently.) If you want to continue to receive updates and support, it's $29.95/yr. You have the option to pass on the subscription part and continue using whatever version you had when the first year is up.
              -Wade

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by Wade View Post

                I believe the way it works with BI is it's $69 to purchase and you get a year of updates and support. (They enhance and update frequently.) If you want to continue to receive updates and support, it's $29.95/yr. You have the option to pass on the subscription part and continue using whatever version you had when the first year is up.
                Oh, OK. I can live with that. So is Blue Iris all that you are using, or are you also paying the $6 per month per camera to Amcrest? Or another way to ask the same question, do I need to subscribe to both, or is Blue Iris (which looks very powerful) all that I need?

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by bradleyward View Post

                  Oh, OK. I can live with that. So is Blue Iris all that you are using, or are you also paying the $6 per month per camera to Amcrest? Or another way to ask the same question, do I need to subscribe to both, or is Blue Iris (which looks very powerful) all that I need?
                  No, you don't need both. I may be oversimplifying, but as far as I know the cloud services like Amcrest Cloud only provide for recording, notifications and playback accessible from anywhere. Perhaps remote camera control, too, not sure. Blue Iris does those things in a more robust and configurable way, along with a lot of other things. Starting with just a couple cameras it will run on just about any PC, although you'll want to do some research and planning as you build a larger camera system. A big factor is storage depending on how much you're recording, how long you want to keep clips, etc. I have BI with 6 cameras and HS4 running together on an 11 year old Dell laptop (i7-2720QM, 8GB) at a weekend home. It records all 6 camera substreams 24/7 and main stream (higher res) when triggered and confirmed by Deepstack. CPU sits around 9-12% most of the time and bounces higher for brief periods when cameras are triggered. As a data point for storage capacity, I have a 2TB external SSD for storage and allocate 1.5TB for BI clip storage. It typically holds a bit over 2 months of archive--including the 24/7 substream recordings and periodic high-res triggered recordings--before the oldest files are automatically deleted.

                  You'll likely want remote access to your recordings, and there are a few ways to do it. Blue Iris can be exposed to the internet via port forwarding, but personally wouldn't do it that way because I'm not network-security-savvy enough to do it safely. Some would say it can't be done safely at all, but that's a separate discussion. I have remote access VPN configured on my Unifi router that lets me access my home network when I'm away. I get email notifications with embedded snapshots for certain events, but push notifications via the BI phone app are also available. Once you have remote access to BI, the phone app gives fairly extensive monitoring and control capability. There's also an good web interface that exposes a lot of the main application's features. I use it in conjunction with HS Touch for camera stream access.

                  Obviously I'm a big fan of Blue Iris. To be fair, I've not tried camera integration with HS4. The HS3 integration was too limited and quirky to be useful to me which is why I looked elsewhere a few years ago. My understanding is it's much improved in HS4.
                  -Wade

                  Comment


                    #10
                    I have my hs-0 cameras setup in homeseer for viewing and snapshot pictures but no recording. I didn't see anyone else mention these cameras do not support POE. However you can use a poe power plug converter to run the camera over poe. I am using one for one of my cameras and it has worked well. I use blue iris for the recordings. There is a blue iris plugin for homeseer however it is not actively being supported. I personally would not spend money for a plugin that has 0 dev support. Depending on your use case there are some "workarounds" for Integrating the two systems documented in that plugin forum area that would allow you to bypass some of the features of the plugin. Blue iris also supports mqtt, which you could also use for an Integration point with an mqtt plugin like mcsmqtt.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Is the HS-CAM-O Outdoor IP Camera obsolete? When I search Outdoor Security Cameras on Homeseer only the FOSCAM FI8905W comes up as an Open box item..... What other outdoor security cameras work with Homeseer and record to the MyHS Plus camera recordings Cloud?

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Yes the HS-CAM-O is no longer being manufactured. You can use any camera that offers the ability to use a snapshot URL which is most brands. I'd recommend searching the camera manufactures website just to ensure this ability.
                        💁‍♂️ Support & Customer Service 🙋‍♂️ Sales Questions 🛒 Shop HomeSeer Products

                        Comment

                        Working...
                        X