Luma... Garbage?? SnapAV doesn't care?

[lippavisual]

13 hours ago, DLite said:

Good to know. We have a bunch of Synology NAS gear. Is it agnostic about the camera brand, or does it only work with specific brands?

Completely agnostic to camera brands.  When setting a camera up, you can search through brands for quick setup or just type in the url for the cameras stream.  Can also use it to share lower res video feeds for cameras that don't support multi-streams.

Built-in cloud connection using QuickConnect.  I usually setup a local and remote access for each job.

I have several commercial systems with over 40+ cameras that I upgraded from traditional NVR's and the customers are absolutely thrilled. 

 

Since you already have a NAS, it should have come with at least 2 free camera licenses.  Setup Surveillance Station and try it out.

[lippavisual]

3 hours ago, DanITman said:

Unifi protect is where it’s at. It requires you use Ubiquiti cameras but they have a ton of options. 

Cameras aren't the greatest, let alone stock availability.  Good luck with any warranty support either.  They're not weather-rated at all in my eyes.

[Cinegration]

Unifi protect is just awesome.  

We’ve installed and deployed well over 300 systems.  Never looked back.  The app is amazing, the cameras have local communications, no yearly fee for recording, local recording, etc…

it may not have the ‘support’ and we counter that by training our techs and staff.  there might be better unique or industrial requiments unifi doesn’t support and we’d use another brand. But…  in 4 years not a single grumpy customer since switching so yea    

best part is customers are sending us video clips when they have something happen at their house

with our Luma jobs we basically have to remote in and help them when they need to extract the video for police etc   
 

user experience is paramount and unifi listened to what the luxury resident space needed   

 

 

[Cinegration]

Also most major brands and lines are all at normal stock levels at this point. The delays caused by Covid and shipping are back to normal so we’re going back to just-in-time inventory for most products

[Cyknight]

3 hours ago, eggzlot said:

I wouldnt use any system that locks me into a camera brand so Unifi would be out.

In my home I have cameras from Vivotek, Dahua, Panasonic and Amcrest.  They all fit different needs for price/size/color/FOV and other misc features.  That is why I never suggest going to Costco and buying 8 identical cameras + an NVR or looking at Unifi that locks you in.

As someone asked above, I am not 100% sure, but I believe Synology will work with any ONVIF camera.

For me, Blue Iris + 1,000's of ONVIF compatible cameras + a free (or for more features paid) C4 driver available.  

To be clear, almost, maybe just all, 'pro(per)' NVRs will be able to use any camera running ONVIF (or RTSP for that matter) - Luma, Clare, Hik, Dahua (plus software based brands like Blueiris) and whomever I'm forgetting on that long list will and SHOULD support the standard of ONVIF at the very least.

 

[Control4Savant]

9 hours ago, lippavisual said:

Completely agnostic to camera brands.  When setting a camera up, you can search through brands for quick setup or just type in the url for the cameras stream.  Can also use it to share lower res video feeds for cameras that don't support multi-streams.

Built-in cloud connection using QuickConnect.  I usually setup a local and remote access for each job.

I have several commercial systems with over 40+ cameras that I upgraded from traditional NVR's and the customers are absolutely thrilled. 

 

Since you already have a NAS, it should have come with at least 2 free camera licenses.  Setup Surveillance Station and try it out.

Positives or negatives versus something like Blue Iris? 

[Control4Savant]

21 hours ago, BXTR said:

Really? The web interface looks 10 years older than the last generation of Luma although the app is a bit better

Cheap too, I had a 16ch that was DOA not long ago and it was a destroy in field 

It was designed to be a Ring alternative for us which is how I use it. Most clients  could care less about a website and are just looking for a very simple app to use which Clare provides. I wouldn’t consider their NVRs any less cheap than most entry level brand NVRs which have all supplied me duds over the years. I have replaced more Pakedge NVRS than I can count.  

Im a big Unifi guy but I agree, the lack of diversity in camera options and the non Onvif compliant nature of the system has so far kept me from using them as a standard install. 

[eggzlot]

10 hours ago, Control4Savant said:

Positives or negatives versus something like Blue Iris? 

I was already down the BI wormhole before I purchased my synology for other needs but with Synology you don’t need a PC running 24x7 and the same hardware can do multi tasks like computer backups, media streamer etc.

[lippavisual]

22 hours ago, Cinegration said:

Also most major brands and lines are all at normal stock levels at this point. The delays caused by Covid and shipping are back to normal so we’re going back to just-in-time inventory for most products

I can’t fully agree with this statement.  I wanted to insert a pic of UI Store showing half the cameras are sold out and on backorder.  Won’t let me upload it, but you get the point.

If it works for you great.

[lippavisual]

13 hours ago, Control4Savant said:

Positives or negatives versus something like Blue Iris? 

I’d say the only con with Synology vs. BI would be BI has an open source API and you can do a lot with it natively.

With that said, I can achieve 95% of what BI does but you do have to figure it out yourself.

Some don’t like the camera license aspect of Synology but I find it negligible.

[oldgreg1]

Does anyone have driver that will connect Synology NVR to OS3?

[lippavisual]

There is no direct NVR access in C4, just able to view cameras.  That can be done several ways.  Either sharing the stream from Synology and using that path, accessing the same stream used for the Synology or creating a new stream within the camera itself and using that. 

[DLite]

On 7/5/2023 at 12:52 PM, lippavisual said:

There is no direct NVR access in C4, just able to view cameras.  That can be done several ways.  Either sharing the stream from Synology and using that path, accessing the same stream used for the Synology or creating a new stream within the camera itself and using that. 

Is there any way to use Synology Surveillance motion or face detection events as triggers to program against in Control4?  
 

Edit: This is probably crazy, but what about using Luma cameras but with Synology Surveillance Station as the NVR?  Could we then use face and motion detection events using the Luma IP camera driver? And would Luma properly integrate with the Synology via ONVIF? That seems like the best of both worlds, but I wonder if I am missing something.

Edited August 1, 2023 by DLite

[lippavisual]

As long as the camera drivers supports those features, yes, you can use them as triggers.

Synology would have nothing to do with those operations, it’s just a recorder.

[Cyknight]

Can't speak for Synology in particular, but Luma uses standard ONVIF protocols, so anything that can handle that, can handle Luma cams.

[DLite]

23 minutes ago, Cyknight said:

Can't speak for Synology in particular, but Luma uses standard ONVIF protocols, so anything that can handle that, can handle Luma cams.

That is great. Synology documentation says they support any ONVIF camera, so maybe it will work out.

[DanITman]

3 hours ago, lippavisual said:

As long as the camera drivers supports those features, yes, you can use them as triggers.

Synology would have nothing to do with those operations, it’s just a recorder.

Sometimes the NVR can have triggers.  I know that the HIkvision Accusense NVR allows you to add smart detection (Car & Person) to a camera that doesn't support it. Then you can build notifications from the NVR into Control4. 

[TundraSonic]

I'm not a fan of all-in-one systems nor of anything proprietary. I've also found the features of Unifi, Synology and C4 surveillance to be lacking.  Our go to is Security Spy on MacOS. Second is Blue Iris but Windows isn't as stable as MacOS. Blue Iris has some better capability for directing a PTZ based on info from other cameras but otherwise Security Spy is the winner.

[cnicholson]

40 minutes ago, TundraSonic said:

Our go to is Security Spy on MacOS

I love SecutitySpy.  I thought I was the only one using it with C4!    I have all my DS2s and Chimes added to NVR.  I have 32 total cameras (mostly 4K) and it works great with AI tagging of human/animal/vehicle (and you can fire off actions based on object type.  Would be cool if they someday add more sophisticated AI (like Face ID and/or License Plate reading).   But pretty seamless.  And they have simple, but good enough Apple TV app for viewing live or achieve footage using Halo (so seems kinda intergated--- or at least "single control device").  I use some workarounds to send NVR triggers to C4 for various automations.   A M1/M2 Mac Mini (with hardware transcode) has plenty of power for most installs, although I did upgrade to a Mac Studio for my 32 cameras (which does not stress the CPU/GPU at all, so might be overkill)

[Cooper]

All camera apps besides Ring, Nest, Ect. are horrible. All cheap, glitchy, and poorly designed software.