What is Reddit's opinion of Blue Iris?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

A security camera is great to have, I really think every house should have a camera recording who's coming and going. I did a ton of research on security camera systems a while back. I can tell you a bunch of details, but here's the bottom line as far as what I ended up going with...

• Best software - Blue Iris - Unquestionably the best security camera software currently made. Great apps to see the cameras on your phone where ever you are. Note that to use security cam software you do need a computer that you can leave on all the time.

• Best general purpose outdoor security camera - Hikvision DS-2CD2032. Full HD1080p. There are always new cameras coming out, but as of January of this year when I did the research, this is the one that was generally considered to be the best (or one of several other Hikvision cameras if you want a different style camera).

I don't recommend those all-in-one camera systems that come with several cameras and a DVR. The quality is just awful, to the point where the image is often not good enough to see who the person is.

I did a ton of research on security systems a while back. I can tell you a bunch of details, but here's the bottom line...

• Best software - Blue Iris - Unquestionably the best security camera software currently made. Great apps to see the cameras on your phone where ever you are. Note that to use security cam software you do need a computer that you can leave on all the time.

• Best general purpose outdoor security camera - Hikvision DS-2CD2032. Full HD1080p. There are always new cameras coming out, but as of January of this year when I did the research, this is the one that was generally considered to be the best (or one of several other Hikvision cameras if you want a different style camera).

I don't recommend those all-in-one camera systems that come with several cameras and a DVR. The quality is just awful, to the point where the image is often not good enough to see who the person is.

The picture is decent. This guy does a review of it. I wouldn't say it's equal to 700 lines, but they're better than my Swann cameras. If you want to record with these, then I recommend Blue Iris Software which installs on a PC.

There is a thread on the BI forums requesting this feature. Maybe if it gets enough attention we’ll see something come of it?

http://www.blueirissoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2399&p=6134#p6134

> I'm not currently running (or fluent in) Linux. Does this take ZoneMinder out of the equation as a software option?

Only if you're unwilling to spend time learning how to set it up.

It looks as though Blue Iris supports Foscam cameras. They have two licenses: $30 for single camera, $50 for unlimited cameras. $50 is pretty inexpensive, and you can try it before buying it.

Disclaimer: I do not work for Blue Iris, I have no stakes in their company, and I've never used it. I've read a lot of great reviews about it, however. I personally use UBNT airCams and airVision. I have also used ZoneMinder in the past.

I was just looking into doing the same and found this: http://www.blueirissoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2639

Hope it helps. I have some time before I move so I'm planning on grabbing 2 of the cameras I've been looking at and give BI a trial run on a VM.

>(though "being offline" is a hard state to send alerts from).

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I do expect the camera feed to remote location/cloud to be disrupted. Therefore an alert will need to be sent to 2 or 3 peoples phones. It seems the screenshot you posted shows that Blue Iris can do that. Can it ring the phone or phones that receive the alert?

Can the feed be recorded to a spare computer or device off site?

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He is a complete piece of shit and the main reason people do not go there. So what if someone buys a cheap Chinese camera and wants help making it work? They are there to get help with what they have and not have some piece of shit tell them that their camera is shit and to go and buy something different. Blue Iris opened up their own tech support message board just because of that guy. http://www.blueirissoftware.com/forum/

I would use Blue Iris for this. If you get the Dahua IPC-HDW5231R-ZE it has a memory card inside and will record events or send alerts itself when weirdness happens.

Blue Iris can also do all of that (here and here are images with high level details). It can detect a missing camera, or a lack of motion on the camera.

Most of these battery- or solar-powered cameras only send a video clip when motion is detected. It's not meant to record 24/7. Doesn't look like you can use it with a 3rd party NVR.

http://www.blueirissoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1127

If you don't mind having a PC somewhere in your house running 24/7 (which most people probably do anyway), I would highly recommend using the Blue Iris software.

I have the exact same camera you do and I'm running it with Blue Iris and using it to record motion, view the camera from an app on my phone, alert me if there are certain conditions, etc. Blue Iris is pretty much universally regarded as the best security cam software currently, and there is so much more you can do using software on a PC than you can with a DVR (which usually cost more, have few features, and the picture quality is generally not good).

> I don't know how to set it up to actually record and store info though.

Check out Blue Iris and ZoneMinder.

One of those should work for you. If you have Linux experience and don't mind the learning curve ZoneMinder is great since it's free. If you only have a Windows computer Blue Iris would probably be the best way to go, but there may be other NVR software out there.

I use the embedded software for motion detection and sending clips/stills to an email address and archiving on a fileshare for physical access logging - we go through some nasty audits every year. I tend to log directly into the cameras to view streams but I do have them loaded into this product called BlueIris which I've been happy with. Very customizable.