quote:

The coachlights on either side of the garage have 1200watt LED bulbs. Whether white light or infrared, image quality is all about light.

I am presuming you are talking a 1200 watt equivalent LED?
My buddy has a basketball court lit by an actual 550 watt LED and that thing is like a freaking night sun mounted to a helicopter.

My driveway cameras will be 8 foot high and it is 16 feet to the passenger door (I back my vehicle in) and 45 to the end of the drive.
I have a coach light on each side of the garage currently with a 100 watt equivalent LED but of course that amount of light can easily be bumped up.

Our distances are about equal so figuring that camera will do well for me on the front.

Duh..brainfart sorry

1200 LUMENS - 100Watt equivalent

Yes sounds pretty close to same. I keep one in forced color mode, the other in auto so that it goes to B&W using built in IR. That way if I dont get home in time to turn on the carriage/coach lights I still have one good camera working. I like the ability to get good color image at night but it takes a lot of light and some tweaking to the settings.

I suppose if I were smart I'd get the coach lights on a day/night sensor to turn on automagically.

A security light could work also. They switch from B&W to color mode pretty quickly with enough light. See samples below at Mom's house:





More examples of my other cams on youtube page
https://www.youtube.com/user/bigredfish59

quote:

Is this camera varafocal, or fixed at what focal length?

That particular cam is a 2.8-12mm varifocal.

Its only zoomed there to about 4mm

I am playing around with the 15 day trial of BlueIris.
I have my lone camera up and running at the moment. The picture is extremely pixilated and blocky.
Is this because I am in demo mode that I don't have a quality feed?
It has the watermark Blue Iris Evaluation Version which makes sense. Just not sure if it should be so terribly pixilated.

No issues with the camera as if I open the camera up in it's proprietary player video feed looks good.

I can't be certain Black as I'm not a BI expert. Sounds like you're viewing the sub-stream (likely CIF low res) on BI instead of the main stream (1080p assuming that is what your camera is streaming). Do you see where to choose the stream coming from the camera?

I do know there is a set of choices as to which settings you make on the camera vs which you make in BI.

Best to go here and ask the BI gurus
https://ipcamtalk.com/forums/blue-iris.30/

I have been using Blue Iris for three years. The learning curve is a bit steep but once figured out it is almost set and forget. I really like it.

I use it to control Seven (7) 4 MP cameras and two (2) 3 MP Cameras

My main observation about Blue Iris is that you must have enough computer especially if you want it to run in the background while using the computer for other tasks.

You can't scrimp on processor(s), RAM or hard disc memory. Cooling has not been a problem with a Corsair H100i Cooler

quote:

Do you see where to choose the stream coming from the camera?

Nope

quote:

My main observation about Blue Iris is that you must have enough computer especially if you want it to run in the background while using the computer for other tasks. You can't scrimp on processor(s), RAM or hard disc memory. Cooling has not been a problem with a Corsair H100i Cooler

While not a super machine it exceeds the requirements that Blue Iris suggests for HD viewing and gets used for nothing but some web browsing from time to time.
At the moment I only have one cam hooked up

I wish there was a simple way to do this. I just want to hook up a few cameras and have it record when it is triggered, send me an alert, and pull up a live feed wherever I am.

Looks like the other issue I have and don't know enough about is I guess I have a dynamic IP address so it is constantly changing the ip of the camera. Not sure how I adjust for that with BlueIris.

The Amcrest proprietary mobile app I use does not loose connection when the ip changes.
But for that app I am stuck with Amcrest only cams. Which is fine for just testing and the location of the camera it actually does very well but I will need to get some better cameras for the rest of the positions I am planning on using so trying to find a decent program.

I was messing with iSpy which is an open source program and it was alright but to get any mobile alerts one has to pat $5 a month which is no big deal really unless I can do BlueIris for a one time $55 purchase.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
I am playing around with the 15 day trial of BlueIris.
I have my lone camera up and running at the moment. The picture is extremely pixilated and blocky.
Is this because I am in demo mode that I don't have a quality feed?
It has the watermark Blue Iris Evaluation Version which makes sense. Just not sure if it should be so terribly pixilated.

No issues with the camera as if I open the camera up in it's proprietary player video feed looks good.

can you post some screenshots?

I should have clarified; it is the number and MP rating of the cameras that effect the processor. Lower MP Cameras and fewer cameras require less processing power.

One last suggestion; Hard-wire the cameras if possible, so much easier in the long run.

quote:

Originally posted by 0658:
I should have clarified; it is the number and MP rating of the cameras that effect the processor. Lower MP Cameras and fewer cameras require less processing power.

One last suggestion; Hard-wire the cameras if possible, so much easier in the long run.

Actually, Pixel Count and Number of cams don't affect processing power as the processing is in each IP camera.
Bandwidth and storage are affect mostly with those with compression being the equalizer.
I have found processing power to be an issue with management software aka VMS with some aspects such as motion detection.

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
I am playing around with the 15 day trial of BlueIris.
I have my lone camera up and running at the moment. The picture is extremely pixilated and blocky.
Is this because I am in demo mode that I don't have a quality feed?
It has the watermark Blue Iris Evaluation Version which makes sense. Just not sure if it should be so terribly pixilated.

No issues with the camera as if I open the camera up in it's proprietary player video feed looks good.

can you post some screenshots?

I'll try in a day or so. I need to figure out how to setup a static IP as I keep loosing my camera feed.

Currently only have one 1.5mp 1080p camera that is hardwired.

Not sure but just checking, is the camera IP on your internal network, like 192.168.1.X ?

No it is a 10.0.X.XX

ok cool, same thing, sorry just had to ask because of your changing IP post, was slightly worried it was using an external IP.

Doesn't the camera have a setting for DHCP or Static IP?

quote:

Originally posted by bigredfish:
ok cool, same thing, sorry just had to ask because of your changing IP post, was slightly worried it was using an external IP.

Doesn't the camera have a setting for DHCP or Static IP?

It is very possible. I am new to this stuff so it can take me a bit to figure it out and with the 3 kiddos running around like wild animals I am lucky if I get more than 10 minutes at a time to fool with something. So it gets done very slowly in stages.

Roger that.

Yeah look for a setting in a 'network" tab and you should be able to set it to a static IP, it's likely set to DHCP now

Alright I was able to get the camera switched to a static IP in it's setting lets hope it stays for me.

Here are a couple pics of what I am talking about.
BlueIris Screen Shot


Amcrest App


As you can see the BlueIris is all pixilated, looks like that silly MineCraft game.
The Amcrest feed looks just fine.

I am guessing this is something they do with the evaluation version.

I exported clips to mp4 files and play them in VLC and the clip is the same. Looks like I am in the MineCraft game.

Well, I do know my B.I. does not do that. Paid version. Either a setting or eval copy is limited.