I’m planning to set up a CCTV system to watch around a building. Anybody running Shinobi or something? And if so, what hardware are you using? I bought some cheapo v380s but the ones I got are honestly hot garbage.
Blink works well without the subscription if you buy the parts.
It’s not the cheapest, but I have had very good luck with Synology. Works with almost every camera on the market, including everything that supports ONVIF or RTSP. Good client software for web, desktop, and mobile. Has tons of tweaks and features.
I second this. Good things to know include:
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Each Synology NAS comes with Surveillance Station licenses for 2 cameras. You can use any 2 compatible cameras. You can switch out cameras for new ones, as long as it’s just 2.
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If you need more than 2 cameras you can buy additional license pack bundles to add different numbers of cameras. These additional licenses are tied to that Synology NAS box. My understanding is that you can’t take them with you to a new NAS. This isn’t a problem for most people (who are gonna use that NAS for 6-10 years), but it is good to be informed when you’re making platform choices.
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I started with zoneminder. When it worked, it worked “OK”.
Getting AI-based object detection working in it, felt pretty hackish.
After it stopped working a few times, without notifications, I ended up picking up a blue iris license.
Blue Iris, itself, has been 100% rock solid. Its only disadvantage, it requires a windows device to run it on. (Although- there IS a docker container which emulates it using WINE). But- overall, it has every feature you could ever want in an NVR, and its reliability is hard to beat.
I run it on a 100$ optiplex with an i5-6500 and 8G of ram. There is a dedicated 8T HDD for long-term storage, and a cheap 500G “burner” NVMe for caching content, and batching to HDD.
I also, run Frigate. Its object detection is quite well, and REALLY FAST. (I want alerts BEFORE somebody is already knocking on my door). It does have a lot of NVR functionality, however, its not on the same level as blue iris. But- it does work extremely well for object detection.
I’m using raspberry pi zeros with motioneyeOS 😜 not the best hardware, but gets the job done on a budget
