A camera that works with Vera & Homewave & store the footage somewhere

Other Devices & Integrations Door Locks & Sensors
#1

Hi there,

What’s the best choice for a reasonable quality outdoor camera that works with Vera and can be viewed via the HomeWave app?

I’m also interested in keeping say a weeks worth of footage saved somewhere in case I need to look back over it - is it possible to do this in the cloud or do I need to have some sort of local storage for it on my network?

Many thanks

#2

Local storage best quality and easiest to do.

Cameras there is a ton of IP cameras and alot if not all can be made to work with Vera.

I have Foscam and Blueiris software. I do have cameras connected to vera but I’m not sure why yet. The Blueiris App on my andriod of IOS is much faster and has better quality to view live video and vera doesn’t show recorded video. When On wifi in my house I have around 30sec or more of delay when viewing video threw vera vs. just using Blueiris app that fast.

For me a novelty to have the cameras on Vera but when I need to see whats really going on… I open the Blueiris app. I don’t think Vera was made to stream 6 HD cameras.

#3

Hi - great info and advice. Thanks very much

Sounds like the way forward

So for Blue Iris - I’ll need a PC running the software full time. Think I’ll look for a small & cheap PC to dedicate to it as I don’t have any computers on all the time in the house.

There’s no mac equivalent of Blue Iris is there?

Any suggestions on mini PCs that that draw the least power?

Cheers again

#4

Can’t comment on Mac equivalent. But I can say a cheap computer with my 6 HD (1080p) cameras, doesn’t work very good. Blue Iris draws alot of CPU power and at work they tried 3 HD cameras and some voice recorder (phone line recording) on a new 350.00 computer from office depot (PC, HP brand I think). It’ didn’t work worth a damn. Freezes up and was registering 90 plus % of CPU usage during running. Computer just couldn’t power it.
This was without degrading the video quality. In blue Iris you can cut down the feed quality and same on the camera side to help, but we were trying not to on our application. My suggestion is to start with the camera or cameras then install a trial on any computer you have now and give it a test for a week or so and then you can make your decision which way you want to go. You can at this time also test the cameras in Vera with or without BlueIris too to see what you think.

Don’t forget to pay attention to the computer requirements page on Blueiris and make sure you meet or exceed that or you’ll be disappointed in the quality, lag, fluid motion and such of it.

[quote=“mrsdoubtfire, post:3, topic:180476”]Hi - great info and advice. Thanks very much

Sounds like the way forward

So for Blue Iris - I’ll need a PC running the software full time. Think I’ll look for a small & cheap PC to dedicate to it as I don’t have any computers on all the time in the house.

There’s no mac equivalent of Blue Iris is there?

Any suggestions on mini PCs that that draw the least power?

Cheers again[/quote]

#5

@Integlikwhoa,

does blue iris support html calls on events like motion?

I agree with you. I have a few cameras on my vera and I don’t know why. A lot of folks are using Vera Alerts to send photos, I do like that capability, but don’t use it myself. My DVR has that ability, but can’t do the html calls.

#6

Yes it does, search on these forums for Blueiris and you’ll find it. There is several but i don’t use it for that. I do have blue iris app alert me if any motion on my front door camera tho. Then I can play back threw their app. But yea you can turn on lights or what ever when motion is detected. Have it trigger a scene.

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=10390.0

#7

I am having good results using ACTI cameras with the free ACTI NVR software. A great advantage I find is that the processing load (for motion detection) happens in the cameras. The PC simply stores the footage (24-7 or whatever you set it as). My PC runs many other duties (Windows Home Server, home theater,… etc.) and only sports an i3 low voltage processor. It’s handling the load easily (less than 5% processor load while recording and serving files) I have not had success connecting my cameras to my VeraLite (UI6),… but don’t see a real need either.

Good luck in your research

#8

For a low cost, low wattage PC in a very small form factor consider the Intel NUC

I like the ACTi camera’s also, they can do some HTTP calls also and be configured with an HTTP call to adjust some settings.

I have a NUUO DVR in our office with 5 IP cam’s Vivoteck, and Hikvision… but still have a Foscam coming today to add to vera for the ease of
integration. Just want to be emailed a snap when someone opens the locked front door, based on that I can then decide to bring up the NVr mobile app and see whats up.

#9

Thanks for this info, Looks like I might pick one of these up to play around with.

#10

The only reason I have some of my cameras added to my Vera is so that I can have snapshots emailed to to me from VeraAlerts when someone rings the doorbell, unlocks one of the locks, etc.

Now, if I can configure Blue Iris so that an HTTP call from Vera would do the same thing. I’d definitely remove the cameras from Vera. I’m looking into this at the moment.

#11

I use zoneminder, an open source dvr software for linux with motion detection, recording and other featuers. I managed to add cameras from zoneminder to vera.
Take a look at http://www.zoneminder.com/ but better yet, search for it on youtube to see a demo. I’m storing last month of video, spawning a few TB of data.

#12

I have a camera on the front porch only facing the front the door, bell and walkway. Blue iris sends an alert which when clicked shows a clip (better then snapshot) of who’s there. I have had mail stolen off my porch (packages to big to fit threw the door slot). If it only sent me a snapshot when door bell pushed or door unlocked I wouldn’t know about this until I realized I was suppose to get a package and look threw the footage. Alerting of movement much better running off door bell or door lock. You should see the stupid things the mailman does. [quote=“PJJP, post:10, topic:180476”]The only reason I have some of my cameras added to my Vera is so that I can have snapshots emailed to to me from VeraAlerts when someone rings the doorbell, unlocks one of the locks, etc.

Now, if I can configure Blue Iris so that an HTTP call from Vera would do the same thing. I’d definitely remove the cameras from Vera. I’m looking into this at the moment.[/quote]

#13

Yes this can be done.