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Synology 4 bay NAS DiskStation DS918+ (Diskless)
Amcrest UltraHD 2K (3MP/2304TVL)
Reolink 5MP IP PoE Camera 4X Optical Zoom Vandal-Proof IK10 Home Security Outdoor with IR Night Vision RLC-422
#Synology #NAS
momendo
If Unifi cams support RTSP, then maybe it’s supported.
Corgitronics
Very good review! I’ve been looking for something to replace the crappy Arlo system I currently have.
I had a Ubiquity at my last home, but I haven’t wired up the new house. This is just the thing to motivate me to get the cables run.
belrpr
Would love some more about this and using triggers to start recording. Triggers by hardware. Door opens or motion detectors.
Mike .L
Same!
kc0eks
Unifi cams have rtsp (not enabled by default) and I pull them into blue iris with no issues. Imagine this can do it also.
slipknottin
The real advantage of synology over BI is the power usage. BI is very power hungry. Though BI also has more capable motion detection and other options, while the synology relies more on the cams to do the motion detection work.
smileymattj
I like setting up All time record + Event record. Synology’s Timeline seems to work the best to accomplish this. You get a full timeline of 24/7 recordings and still have the highlights of motion events on the timeline. And it’s done efficiently with a single video file. Most other camera software writes two files, and uses twice the resources.
You can jump to the time something happened, and if in-doubt you can prove the software didn’t fail. A lot of clients don’t trust the system and think something happened when it didn’t and you can show them, no in-fact absolutely nothing happened here, see for yourself. Instead of saying just trust the software, it’s blank because nothing happened. Should I only capture events and have no answer for customers that need proof? Or should I sit here all day reviewing 24/7 footage because the customer doesn’t know when the thing happened, and doesn’t trust the system? The way Synology captures both at the same time, gives you the best of both worlds with no drawbacks; 0 compromise. This also helps you tweak your motion trigger settings to ensure you have the proper values to capture things.
Synology Surveillance Station has great export function, great live view, great timeline, great app. Can’t ask for nothing more, really like it.
My guess (not proven) is that Synology focuses on putting the footage on the disk first as #1 priority. Then manipulates the footage afterwards. It’s actually really simple just take the stream direct from the camera and dump it to the disk as any video format you want. As a secondary function, monitor events, alarms, alerts, etc… Anything special gets logged in a journal and/or database, and perform those tasks after you ensure you’ve captured the footage. That’s how I would approach designing a camera system software. Don’t waste time or CPU deciding what to do with the footage, you only have 1 chance to capture it. Capture it and decide what to do with it later. Especially with multi-core machines of today, it’s nothing to perform tasks after the fact, while still capturing new footage.
The way Synology puts the footage on the disk, it’s logically organized and in a viewable format. That way if an extreme failure happens and all you got is the files, that’s all you need. You can easily view the footage. An extreme case example: Say someone burned your building down by arson. And you were barely able to get the files off the drive because it was partially readable. You have an idea general time frame of when the fire got started. You can look at the files without any special computer/software, and you can review it to submit to the police. Without wasting time rebuilding a server to convert, import data/footage, etc… that might not even work. If the footage is still intact on the disk, it’s usable. Very disappointing on other systems to look at a file, knowing what you need is inside it, but you can’t do anything with that file because it’s reliant on the entire system to be intact.
I used to run Milestone many years ago, and it would constantly lock up the machine, miss event recordings, and have all kinds of problems. Took forever to export footage, because it was stored in proprietary format which had to be converted. If the Milestone install/database was lost/damaged, and footage files were intact, you couldn’t view it. Not even import it to a new install. It clearly maxed out the machine’s resources, but throw more performance at it and it didn’t make a difference. Now Synology on less than half the machine can do the job way better than Milestone ever did.
Colby Taylor
Thank you for the info
forid200
I’ve never used Synology for CCTV before but damn, it looks bare basic compared to the software I use now (Blue iris). And also the licensing costs seem to be a lot higher.
accesser
How smart are the alerts on BI ?
I run the same setup as this for me the missing feature is any kinds of AI, birds or wind can cause lots of alerts
forid200
@accesser You’re right, that’s one issue I had. But you have to tweak the settings to get as least false positives as possible. In terms of AI all that should be changing as V5 of Blue iris will be integrating a lot of AI services and features. So hold tight, things are looking better.
forid200
@accesser Sentry Alerts already exist if you want to get rid of false positives completely. But I couldn’t find the time yet to get it working perfectly. I’ve honestly found it not to be as turn key as the Sentry AI company advertises it to be.
accesser
@forid200 Thanks for the info, I really hope we see some stiff competition with AI NVR’s soon its needed 😛
noblackthunder
when i worked in the security sector we used Avigilon that we really liked … especially for the user this system was really good .. i mean scrubbing trough footage was just instant on normal hard drives that where quite cheap … it also had good features and intigrations … It also supported normal coax cameras ( with an adapter via Ethernet ) or ethernet cameras … all on good and normal computers that where quite cheap .. the only negative thing was that you had to pay for license for 3rd party cameras or you could buy there own cameras where the license was included.
Now i suspect price might be allot more expensive .. but i have to say … there are good solutions in general out there
misterpc23
noblackthunder I work with avigilon every day and I find blue iris to be a much better solution in most cases unless the enterprise licenses are purchased which are big bucks. I ran into an issue where the cameras weren’t sending motion detection alerts to the avigilon CC software due buggy firmware. Our only solution was to go to the camera vender for an unreleased firmware to patch the problem. If it was a blue iris installation we could have used the built in motion detection system to hold over until the new firmware was released. We got lucky…
noblackthunder
@misterpc23 i can only speak from my experiance i had 😛 and avigilon was the best software we had … I mean we also had mirasys ? or what it was called … horrible software … then we had also a really old version og geovision we phased out many years ago ( that software was really bad ) and a few ohter softwares we used ….
I liked Avigilon because it was really snappy , fast and reliable also on the motion detection side .. though we mostly used avigilons own cameras that made licensing really easy and they where really good quality … And thinking tabout quality .. old analog cameras are so bad compared to good IP cameras … man … the extra detailed helped allot out. We also intigrated it into our alarm center so they could see when an alarm whent of and help customers remotely =) … So we never had issues like you describe but i am sure depending on 3rd party cameras that there are allot of issues in some way or another .. we where just lucky and never had them ^^
misterpc23
noblackthunder Like you said, Avigilon does an excellent job running on lower power hardware, because it only grabs the HD stream when motion is detected. That’s how its able to efficiently display all of those cameras on screen in realtime, theyre all coming in natively at 640×480 until an alert/motion or if you full screen the camera. And speaking of, I get to finish working on a geovision system later this week. The client wants remote access and it’s posing to be an issue. Their software is total garbage and the support matches in quality
noblackthunder
@misterpc23 yea geovision is garbage at this stage .. it was good back in the days when PC video survialance did come and the all in 1 recorders where a bad choice .. because then it was at least pc based and servicable and had early IP camera support … lol reminds me of when a HD failed on a geovision machine….. the machine would lag for so long .. it would take me like 2 hours to get into the device manager to check what drive actually failed … LOL
QuickQuips
The nvr1218 having four licenses makes it worth it over a normal synology unless you want the plus bitrot protection. Iirc they’re going to change the name to dva or something similar next year.
Amcrest is on my short list. Combining it with a ring doorbell pro to monitor my house/pet.
Carlos Tavares Jr
Using the same concept with Zoneminder, I can build a zoneminder box with unlimited camera support with ZMninga on either the nas desktop or dedicated linux desktop. This is how I have it at my work. The difference is my zoneminder nvr is virtualized and I run the zmninja desktop app on my machine and on my phone. Zoneminder also has a web interface if you wish to use it. Runs any rtsp camera and more recently the support for video improved a lot!
Janis Vaskevics
Synology has proven to be rather unreliable in the fact that they strive to support all cameras and fail at all of them. I would choose branded nvr and use it together with same brand cameras, be it Hikvision, Uniview ProvisionISR or Ubiquiti. The latter has its own software that works in linux. Price for synology nas + camera licences makes up a hefty sum that is waaaay too much for nvr.
solomon w
Just curious if you have tried or could do a review on QNAP for an NVR?
SpringBok401
QNAP is crap in comparison, I was really surprised it was so poor. Synology seems much better.
Colby Taylor
Is this station good for 16 cams? I will partition the storage for cameras and server backup. I seen a video where you said not to use the synology in the background for 10 or more cans. (Yesterday vlog). Thw background synology was ds918+ I believe. The site lists it is perfect for 16 cams
Paul
Can you have multiple sources connecting to a IP camera with full control? eg like a synology nas and a blue iris setup and a standalone nvr all at the same time?
007Systems
WOW those are high license fees! Dedicated SVR’s are almost cheaper. I was looking forward to doing this but I think I will stick with dedicated video recorders.
John Becich
Buy a bonifide NVR. This software add-on to an NVR comes up short. All the designers had to do was listen to a surveillance expert, for guidance. Obviously, they didn’t. But they want high license fees, from fools with no discretion.
Thomas Coastline
Can you please help me – which synology to buy to run this? I want something for home purposes, so the cheapest option. Thanks for advice!
Sam 2000
I have a relatively powerful computer which I can leave on all the time (core i7, 64 GB RAM, 1GB GPU). I wish to have 8 security cameras. Can I just install Blue iris on my computer and use it as a server as well? Or I need to buy a dedicated server for the cameras? Thanks for great content
Cosmin Rotaru
For the 8 cameras license (even the 4 cameras license) you get a really good dedicated NVR. I find these licenses unreasonable priced.
Jimmy Chen
The licensing model is terrible. The software seems to be well written, but you need to pay high premium to get an underpowered NAS and on top of that you need to pay crazy prices for license pack when you go over the default 2 limit.
Cosmin Rotaru
@Jimmy Chen I do use the 2 free licenses and I quite like the Surveillance Station. One of the connected cameras is a cheap one and Surveillance Station does the motion detection for the feed. The other camera is on the supported list (quite a long list, I must say) and Surveillance Station can receive the motion detected trigger from the camera, which is also nice. What I also noticed is that this 2nd camera can be set to record the video on an external HDD/NAS. I did not tried that yet but it might be a solution to avoid using Surveillance Station altogether (although the application is quite well made otherwise).
Bevan Moore
Fantastic and informative video. Appreciate your knowledge.
Brendan White
How do you find the Reolink night vision? I find, most likely due to them having a really low iFrame rate that is not adjustable, that night vision is virtually useless due to a lot of ghosting making it virtually impossible to ID a person.
Have you ever worked out if Surveillance Station can be linked to an AI detection system?