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> > A DVR and a set of "old school" network cameras in an internal network have none of those problems > Ring is a $300 purchase and takes an hour to install.
by Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
> > A DVR and a set of "old school" network cameras in an internal network have none of those problems
> Ring is a $300 purchase and takes an hour to install. This would take me a few weekends and would cost thousands of dollars. Cloud centralization makes things easier and cheaper, by orders of magnitude.
I have a number of "old school" network cameras and an on-site DVR, it doesn't take "a few weekends" to set everything up.
Adding a camera is simply a matter of following the instructions to connect it to the network. This would be the same process for a Ring or an "old school" camera. Adding a camera to Blue Iris is a 5-15 minute job, depending on how much tweaking you want to do to the motion detection settings.
In terms of implementing from scratch, I picked up a refurbished Windows 10 Pro machine, set up and updated Windows, installed Blue Iris, and added my cameras, in an evening.
Cost-wise, my setup is more expensive than a single Ring camera. However, my incremental costs are a lot cheaper since I can buy sub-$100 cameras instead of $300 ones. There's also no monthly fee, which is nice.
- syphilis2 8y agoThere's no monthly fee, but you do have the cost of running that Windows 10 machine. What does that amount to? At 100W and $0.14/kWh I calculate about $10, which is competitive with something like Nest Aware.
- Mister_Snuggles 8y agoThis really depends on the machine and how you deploy it. I picked up a refurbished SFF business desktop type of machine and the power draw is only 40-60W (with Blue Iris running and recording from all of my cameras). This is definitely a consideration though. More cameras and/or higher resolution cameras will result in more power consumption or require a beefier machine.
- illumin8 8y agoNot to mention if you get robbed they're going to take the PC that has your recordings on it, so good luck giving the police footage of your robbers...
- bradknowles 8y agoProperly installing and maintaining Windows is a full-time job in and of itself, forget everything else. Not something I want to waste my time on.
- Mister_Snuggles 8y agoI thought this too, but Windows 10 has needed surprisingly little babysitting in my experience.
- Rebelgecko 8y agoDo you have any sort of off-site backup? I think one of the big advantage of the "cloud" cameras vs a home setup is that it's easy to view footage anywhere (I haven't used Blue Iris so maybe they make that easy), and if someone breaks in and steals your computer you'll still have the video somewhere else.
- Mister_Snuggles 8y agoI don't. I've thought of building such a thing, but it's not something that I really have a need for. It's a good consideration though and a definite advantage for the cloud services.