What's the best C4 Camera Setup?

[zaphod]

One other thing that BI has is that you can use motion sensing to trigger events.  For example, upon motion you could cause BI to hit a URL on your C4 box that causes action in C4, assuming that you are using the Chowmain Generic IP driver to receive the events in C4. 

[THawes]

I have never really bothered trying to integrate cameras into Control4 (outside of DS2's at customers, and the Chime I am using myself now) because the interface, video quality, etc is lacking as has already been mentioned here.

I've used a Hik NVR, Milestone XProtect (great, free up to 8 cameras), and am currently using the Surveillance Station on a Synology NAS for my cameras, which I've been happy with. There is a web interface, a desktop app for Windows, and reliable iOS and Android apps that allow you to view live streams, see motions events/receive notifications, and watch recorded footage.

[ILoveC4]

Blue Iris allows for tons of very cool Control4 integration. It was already mentioned, having motion detection (or a variety of other alerts you can configure, like recognizing and object or a person) can fire off MQTT alerts with C4 can receive and execute programming off of. I use my garage camera as the motion sensor to control the lights in there and it works flawlessly. 
 

You can also create programming off you touching different parts of the cameras image while displaying it in the C4 app. On many of my cameras if I touch the top right corner of the image it turns the lights on in the areas that camera is pointed at. Touching the top left corner plays an announcement. 
 

I have V5 and I don’t pay any annual fees - it was just a one time fee that seems like it was about $60. I think the mobile app was $20. I don’t do port forwarding but rather just view them through the C4 app when I’m out, or connect to my VPN. Setup with BlueIris is super easy. 
 

I’d highly recommend both BlueIris and the Domaudeo Advanced BlueIris driver from BlackWire. 

[KWD]

I'm running BI in a Unraid Windows VM, zero issues. I never use it with C4, just to many clicks to to get to them, a lot quicker opening the BI app. The big advantage I see with BI is you can use it with any camera. 

V5 does now require paid support if you want updates after the first year. Pretty lame, I'm guessing most people will wait until a major update that has a feature they want, purchase a month of support, then wait again. 

[TundraSonic]

We have 27 cameras on a Security Spy NVR. Cameras are nearly all Dahua. Currently runs on an Intel Mac Mini but will likely upgrade to an M1 Mac Mini next year. Cameras and NVR are on their own dedicated Unifi switch. NVR has a second ethernet connection to an internet connected switch for remote access. Storage is a Synology RS3618xs. Mac Mini & NAS are connected to the switch w/ 10gbe so quite good performance.

Overall more stable than BI (mostly I think because of Unix vs Windows based OS), more features & flexibility than Unifi, Synology, Luma or others.  Quite good IOS & ATV apps. We've not yet done much w/ C4 integration as there's no need for cameras on C4 and I've only done a few triggers. Hopefully the next release of SS will officially support ATV PIP which will allow me to set up some triggers to have a camera pop up in a PIP window on TV's based on a doorbell ring, security system trigger or whatever. 

[ecschnei]

On 12/27/2020 at 7:47 AM, ILoveC4 said:

Blue Iris allows for tons of very cool Control4 integration. It was already mentioned, having motion detection (or a variety of other alerts you can configure, like recognizing and object or a person) can fire off MQTT alerts with C4 can receive and execute programming off of. I use my garage camera as the motion sensor to control the lights in there and it works flawlessly. 
 

You can also create programming off you touching different parts of the cameras image while displaying it in the C4 app. On many of my cameras if I touch the top right corner of the image it turns the lights on in the areas that camera is pointed at. Touching the top left corner plays an announcement. 
 

I have V5 and I don’t pay any annual fees - it was just a one time fee that seems like it was about $60. I think the mobile app was $20. I don’t do port forwarding but rather just view them through the C4 app when I’m out, or connect to my VPN. Setup with BlueIris is super easy. 
 

I’d highly recommend both BlueIris and the Domaudeo Advanced BlueIris driver from BlackWire. 

Does this driver come with a keypad overlay?  I didn't buy mine from Blackwire, it was audio obsessions that I purchased it from many years ago.

[ILoveC4]

13 hours ago, ecschnei said:

Does this driver come with a keypad overlay?  I didn't buy mine from Blackwire, it was audio obsessions that I purchased it from many years ago.

A keypad overlay? I’ve not seen that, but maybe? It just records at what point on the X and Y axis the screen was touched while looking at the camera and allows you to execute programming based off of that. 

[ecschnei]

On 12/29/2020 at 8:10 AM, ILoveC4 said:

A keypad overlay? I’ve not seen that, but maybe? It just records at what point on the X and Y axis the screen was touched while looking at the camera and allows you to execute programming based off of that. 

The audio obsessions driver gives a transparent keypad overlay so you can put in a gate/door pin number and program off of hot spots.  Like I have one camera that has an outdoor light in the 6 position so I tap it and the programming allows me to turn it on/off, similar to the x/y axis you are talking about.

http://www.audioobsessions.com/blue-iris-nvr.html