Microserver CCTV solution

Tom J · 3 Apr 2014 at 12:47

Hi guys
New to the forum, been reading for a while but now signed up as I need some advice.

So far I have bought the following items:

Seagate SV35 2TB Surveillance Hard Drive
Phillips 1080p 23" LED Monitor (2x HDMI, 1 x VGA, MHL) 5ms

I was planning on buying the HP N40L and had been recommended Xpenology
However the cash back seems to have ended on the N40L and the price has jumped right up. The gen8 looks good but they don't seem to be offering any cashback on these yet. I don't have a massive budget so want to save money where I can.

I'm mainly going to be using the server or NAS to record several full HD IP cameras, I want it to backup my several tablets, iPhones and laptops and be able to stream movies and music from it to those devices. Ideally I don't want to be paying licence fees for cameras which has put me off something like the synology NAS. Any other ideas?

Any help gratefully received

Dimension · 3 Apr 2014 at 14:08

What resolution will the cameras be recording ?

I have three IP cameras, 2 set to 1080P and the third is 720P.
When not recoding they are processing at 2fps for motion detection, this consumes around 20% of a Q9550 processor.
If they all start recording at 20fps all four cores are almost maxed out with the H264 encoding.
I use ispyconnect for the camera monitoring software.

I don't think the microserver will be powerful enough unless your cameras are set to a low resolution which makes them pointless.

I'm looking to upgrade the server to a i7 4770 as this may allow two of my cameras to record at their native 3mp resolution.

Tom J · 4 Apr 2014 at 00:33

I was under the impression, but I may be wrong that the HIKvision 3mp cameras for example are decentralised therefore they process the information on board the camera so the processor in the server would not be doing much?

XL5 · 4 Apr 2014 at 13:42

Dimension said:
What resolution will the cameras be recording ?

I have three IP cameras, 2 set to 1080P and the third is 720P.
When not recoding they are processing at 2fps for motion detection, this consumes around 20% of a Q9550 processor.
If they all start recording at 20fps all four cores are almost maxed out with the H264 encoding.
I use ispyconnect for the camera monitoring software.

I don't think the microserver will be powerful enough unless your cameras are set to a low resolution which makes them pointless.

I'm looking to upgrade the server to a i7 4770 as this may allow two of my cameras to record at their native 3mp resolution.

640x480 is fine for CCTV.

Phantom Shadow · 5 Apr 2014 at 17:42

XL5 said:
640x480 is fine for CCTV.

1080 is better though. What use is cctv if it isnt good enough quality to ID the person breaking into your house.

Ive got a Raspberry pi with camera board monitoring the driveway/front of house. This then copies the files over to a NAS. 1080 video and no demand on a server as the pi does the processing.

Tom J · 5 Apr 2014 at 18:42

Any suggestions on a server solution under say £300?

CyberPunk_1000 · 8 Apr 2014 at 15:20

Are there any reason you're looking at using a server vs. a dedicated NVR unit? There are plenty of cheap Chinese ones out there that work (millage varies quite a bit). Personally I've had pretty good luck with the Hikivision or Dahua NVR's these may be out of your budget. If your cameras support Onvif 2.2 Profile S they should do motion detection on the camera and provided you’re not transcoding the video CPU demand should be pretty low. Network Optix HD Witness is great low CPU consumption software (On Windows) you may wish to trial this. As per an earlier post the Hikivision cameras can even mount plain old NFS and record that way so there’s no real CPU involved just presenting an NFS share, OCUK do a few pretty nice AMD E350 boards which are similar in terms of CPU to a HP Microserver. Just add RAM case etc etc. Hope that helps.