Hi from Bristol UK.

[PKBristol]

Hi, i'm new to this forum but quite active on another forum.
Not a newbie as far as wireless ip cameras are concerned.
Various Foscam mjpeg cameras and various android based cameras, androids being a lot easier to set up, more stable, perform better and are lots cheaper.
I use iSPY connect on my pc to monitor my local and remote cameras. Tinycam monitor on my android phone and tablet to view cameras.
Asus RT-N66U router.

Paul.

 

[Henry SNV-7080R user]

Hello Paul,
Always eager to learn from experienced forum threads... On which other forum are you also active ?

Henry

 

[PKBristol]

Hi Henry.
On the Foscam forum, my original ip cameras are Foscam so that's where i started.
http://foscam.us/forum/

 

[Henry SNV-7080R user]

Paul,

In view of the valuable capabilities of iSpy in terms of "intelligent alarm/motion detection" you highlighted in a previous reply, I am tempted to try it ...

My setup would be :

- 5 HD IP cameras (3megapixel) constantly feeding iSpy,

- real-time analysis of live flows by iSpy,

- detection of alarm/motion sequences,

- recording to HDD of these sequences when detected,

- internet playback on demand (up to 3 simultaneous different users),

- each camera connects on its own internet cable to a common switch. The 5 flows mix on the switch to 1 cable going to the router,

- the iSpy server would connect to this switch (to avoid having the camera flows "polluting" the rest of the network)

Questions:

a) Do you have a dedicated PC to run iSpyConnect ?

b) What core system chip would you recommend to run iSpy with intelligent alarm/motion detection on 5 video flows ? Too much power is useless: it heats up and is costly...
c) any other recommendations ?

thanks,
Henry

 

[PKBristol]

a).Not a dedicated pc, just my usual pc which is running all the time, it's used for general web browsing, work stuff, downloading and streaming films etc as well as running iSPY, it's just my general pc.

b). My pc is about 6 years old, nothing fancy, q6600 processor, quad core, 2.4ghz, 4gb ram, 32 bit.
Each camera i have monitored puts about 7% load on the CPU, it shows the CPU usage of iSPY in iSPY at the bottom of the screen.
That's with 4 seconds of cache record on all cameras, motion detection on alert, areas masked etc.
Try iSPY, it's free, nothing to loose.

c). Other recommendations, i've installed Gdrive on my pc (it's googles version of dropbox) and on my android phone, when setting up iSPY you can decide where the recorded videos go, mine go into the Gdrive folder, within a few seconds they're sync'd to the cloud, i can then view the videos on my phone when i'm away from my network. Of course i can also view the cameras live using the tinycam monitor app on my android phone.

All my cameras are wireless, consisting of Foscam cameras and android cameras.

I also monitor cameras which are at another location.

Paul.

 

[Henry SNV-7080R user]

Hello Paul,

Thanks for explaining your installed system.

I know G-Drive, and I already use it: it stores the Gmail account and a number of files and some photos. Google gives you 15 GB for free, and I already have used 5 GB.
You can upgrade to 100GB storage for 1.99$/month, and even to 1To for 9.99$/month...

How much storage do you allow for iSpy videos on-line ?
Even with powerful filters, you cannot avoid being filmed when passing in the recording zones, so inevitably you get some videos on-line every day...!

Regards,
Henry

 

[PKBristol]

I delete most of my unwanted videos mostly of myself most days, anything i want to keep goes into a seperate "CCTV keeps" folder so i haven't got anywhere near the 15gb limit. I also find that Gdrive encodes the videos quicker than dropbox, so they're ready for viewing quicker.

Paul.

 

[Henry SNV-7080R user]

Last question: my cameras generate the video flows in either H264 or MPEG.
It is recommended to capture the flows as they come, and not ask the recording software to re-encode in another format, an operation which inevitably will degrade the quality of the images and also require additional unnecessary CPU power from the computer.
Do you set the cameras on H264 or MPEG ?
My setting is H264, without knowing if it is better or not !
When iSpy analyzes the frames for alert/motion, does CBR/VBR, compression level, GOV, entropy coding (I don't know what that is !!...), have an effect on the quality of the analysis ?

Thanks
Henry

 

[PKBristol]

I don't have H264 cameras so i can't answer that question. In iSPY there's an "Add IP camera" wizard which takes you through the steps, the last step is to check all valid video streams, you can select one from that.
My cameras are all MJPEG, i select the relevant stream.
As far as i know iSPY does not re-encode for live viewing, there are different options for the recording format though. There's lots of advice on the iSPY website.
For a free program it's excellent, i haven't found myself wanting anything more from it yet, everything i've asked from it it can do.

Paul.

 

[Henry SNV-7080R user]

Hello Paul,
Talking about iSpyConnect, I was asked if the software analyzes the incoming streams in real time, or if it first stores the flows and then performs its motion detection tasks in the background.

As I have five 3megapixel cameras, I would believe that the main PC processor required to analyze these streams in real-time would require a 7core processor and 8Go ram ?
I have no idea how much CPU power is needed for this... maybe a 5core processor can do the job also...

Or does iSpy rely on the computer's graphical card to perform its motion detection tasks ? It seems important to know if it operates this way... then the main processor does not need to be as powerful... and then I need to concentrate on a powerful graphical card...

The expected quality is to have a smooth view of the saved (motion-detected) flows.
If a lot of intermediate images are dropped or lost, the result is degraded: moving objects appear blurred or do not even appear at all.

Henry

 

[PKBristol]

Hi Henry.
The video is real time, ie i can hear a car going past my house and see it out of my window and that car shows on iSPY with maybe quarter a second lag at most, that's using my android cameras, for me that's realtime enough.
The android cameras are set to stream at 14 fps and the bitrate is set to 50% which is about 400 kbps.

I think a lag issue may sometimes be caused by how well peoples cameras stream and also the router, i've got a good router, Asus RT-N66. I can also stream HD movies wirelessly to multiple devices at the same time, no buffering and it doesn't effect my cameras.

My pc is about 7 years old, the processor is a Q6600 quad core, a bit of a dinosaur really, graphics card is nothing special, 2gb of it's own ram, it's about 5 years old, the pc has 4gb ram.
When i spy is running it shows how much processing power it is using, on my pc it's about 10% per camera, less when watching remote cameras, ie cameras not at my location.
12 cameras in total uses about 70% of my old processor.
I recently installed iSPY on a laptop for someone else, that laptop had an i3 processor, on that iSPY was using less than 10% per camera. So, unless you're monitoring a lot of cameras there's no need for a modern/powerful pc.

I would advise that you try iSPY, it's free so you've got nothing to loose.

Paul.

 

[Henry SNV-7080R user]

Paul,

I've had so many downturns that your story seems too good to be true !! I trust what you write, and I thank you very much for passing on your experience.

I will first try iSpy with an old running XP PC which may do the job:
- Pentium D 3Mhz with 3.25Go RAM
- Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition graphical card
- 2 Raid HDDs

I will publish results when I have iSpy up and running on the location (this should be around August).

Have a nice day,
Henry