Looking for CCTV/NVR recommendation (Frigate, Shinobi, iSpy, BlueIris, Zoneminder, etc) reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- largenostril · 2023-12-15 21:43 Howdy, I am looking to update our CCTV setup and hoping all you lovely folks can help point me in the right direction without spending days evaluating options :) I run an escape room business and we use CCTV to monitor guest progress as they "escape" the rooms. Our current setup: * we have 16 cameras (Amcrest IP2M-841EB) * we use **Amcrest Surveillance Pro** installed on each workstation (4 Windows PCs) * the cameras are grouped per room (e.g. "Detective Room", "Space Room", etc) * employees use the workstation PCs to monitor guests on up to 4 cameras (3-4 cameras per escape room) * employees use PTZ to view different angles from the cameras I'm looking to get everything onto a self-hosted server rather than installed directly on the workstations. I have a Dell PoweEdge R230 with Proxmox and a few docker instances running. NVR would be nice, but is a secondary priority. I also DO NOT need AI, motion / object detection, zones, triggers, "tours", auto-tracking, or anything fancy like that. I want to get all the cameras centrally hosted and then use a web UI (or desktop client) to view a given room's cameras. Being able to save a camera layout / view / group is a requirement (e.g. all cameras in a room). Also being able to use PTZ easily is a requirement (ideally, can control PTZ for any given camera without having to leave the 4 camera view). Blue Iris probably seems like the most obvious answer (especially since our whole setup is Amcrest at this point), but I'm not huge on spinning up a Windows VM just for BI, and I've never loved Amcrest Surveillance Pro, so part of me wants to try another vendor, but I'm not terribly biased. Normally I would just spin up each of them and evaluate all the options, but life has other plans, so I'm looking for some outside ("expert") advice. Thanks a bunch for any suggestions / insight! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- violet-crayola · 2023-12-15 23:17 I use xeoma - works great on Linux server and light weight ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Do_TheEvolution · 2023-12-16 00:35 I am playing with [Frigate](https://github.com/DoTheEvo/selfhosted- apps-docker/tree/master/frigate) right now and love it, but afraid no PTZ control yet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vivekkhera · 2023-12-16 04:50 You’re moving your four independent systems into a single point of failure. What benefit will this bring you? Right now if one PC goes down your other three rooms keep running. With a centralized system all four rooms go down at once. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- largenostril · 2023-12-16 06:23 Thanks for confirming the lack of PTZ controls. I was hoping Frigate would make the short list, but this was my biggest concern after reading some docs and giving it a cursory look. When I have some downtime I want to set up Frigate at home on my Unraid box for my Wyze cams. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- largenostril · 2023-12-16 06:24 Thanks for the suggestion, do you know if it supports PTZ and camera layouts / groups? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ParticularCod6 · 2023-12-16 08:31 https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate/releases/tag/v0.13.0-beta2 The beta back in September introduced ptz controls ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PovilasID · 2023-12-16 10:31 Frigate can have the detection muted but it is very cool to have a list of events that happened neatly cut out and have an automated stream that prioritizes objects (Birdseye), however... their UI is immature and wasteful. You can setup a nice UI in Home assistant with their custom card that can integrate PTZ but it is a lot of tinkering but I have different Amcrest camera working with frigate rock solid for a year though switch from color to IR sometimes triggers AI... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- largenostril · 2023-12-16 17:27 I haven't used Home Assistant yet. (I don't know why, laziness? Haha) If I'm understanding it correctly, I can just create dashboards for each camera layout (e.g. one dashboard per room) and then add the rtsp streams and use the Amcrest integration (https://www.home- assistant.io/integrations/amcrest/) to add PTZ controls. Assuming this is correct, do you just use Frigate for NVR and/or AI/detection? Do you need to integrate Frigate into HA or does it just do its own thing in the background? Thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tenekev · 2023-12-16 18:01 I'm assuming that what you need is an NVR with an emphasis on live viewing and interactions. My guess is BlueIris/Shinobi. Shinobi can be a bit finicky but I liked it for live viewing. Forget about Frigate, it would be a waste of time for your needs. I use it and LOVE it but it's the exact opposite of what you want. What you are seeing here is the hype talking. The best I can do is narrow your scope - try out BI and Shinobi. Spin them up side by side and test them out. That's what I did and no amount of asking other people could have given me the insights I needed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PovilasID · 2023-12-16 18:20 Home assistant has a lot of ways configure your dashboards and you can set up one dash per room. Considering your minimal requirements you can probably make it work with home assistant alone... Frigate can be installed as addon if you are using home assistant OS or via plugin if using docker. Either way if you chose to use look into hardware acceleration but if you have a newer CPU you will be fine. Because if you do chose to use frigate and leave it doing the AI thing in the background... it will eat your CPU cycles like chrome eats ram especially on 16 cams. For frigate this this addon allows for most in-depth integration customization (even has PTZ and 2way audio controls) https://github.com/dermotduffy/frigate-hass-card ---------------------------------------------------------------------- violet-crayola · 2023-12-16 19:19 Definitely supports ptz, picked up my no name amazon cameras no problems. Just checked its got groups and layouts