Difficult rating: low
Material required:
Milestone "Xprotect Essential" or "Go" software
or
Exacqvision "Start" software (coming May 2011)
or
Luxriot software
or
Zoneminder (for the masochist and/or 1337 linux h4xx0r)
or
Blue Iris Software



When building a PC-based DVR/NVR (Digital Video Recorder or Network Video Recorder... used interchangeably for the most part), one must consider the type of software you'll be using to collect all of those camera feeds, and store the images.  Building a PC to do this job is relatively trivial, but then the hardware portion of the build often is.  One must also consider the software side of things, since one may end up spending more for the software than the PC it runs on (more on this in a minute).

The links above are major software suites that are reasonable in price.   By "reasonable," I mean around $50 per channel or less.  Some software suites run $200 per-channel for the software... over-and-above the cost of the cameras and server!  In my opinion, that's nuts... don't do that unless you literally have money to burn.

So that brings us to the listed software.

Milestone Systems:

Milestone systems is a major commercial provider of VMS suites (Video Management Software).  Their upper-end stuff is very expensive, but very powerful.  However, they have two offerings that are within the budget of a middle-class ARFCOMer, and those offerings are their "Xprotect Essential" or "Xprotect Go."  "Essential" is their small-business version, and can support more channels than you're ever likely to need in your home... it runs about $90 for the initial license (which supports two cameras), and about $50 for each additional camera.  "Go" is their free version, and that low price comes with certain limitations: it supports a max of eight channels, and only records for five days maximum.

"Essential" requires that you register the software with Milestone, and the MAC address of each camera or device.  You'll get an account on Milestone's website that will show you how many licenses you have.  You also only get a couple of "oopsies" (where you enter the wrong MAC address, or add/subtract a camera from your system) before it stops you.  I've never gone to that point, so I don't know what happens if you run out of changes.  Your license management screen looks like this, and lists your SLC (Site License) and DLKs (Device License Keys).  PMA is their update plan, and entitles you to the next version of their software... but PMA costs more money.






My recommendation is to start with the "Go" version, and if you like it (or need >5 days of recording), just upgrade to Essential at that point.  I'll take you through a quick installation of "Go," and show you how to add cameras to the device:

Start by downloading... it's about 120MB:










Run it, click through the EULA, and let it install:











Start the management application:








And go ahead with the "Add Hardware Devices" wizard.  The wizards are actually pretty good, and will walk you through the configuration.  If you know your hardware (namely, your cameras) intimately, you can use the "manual" configuration.  You'll need to know IP addresses, make/model of cameras, and login/password.







Here we're adding an Acti ACM-3411 IP dome.  We know the address, the login/pass, and will simply use "Acti" as the model, since they lack a specific setting for this camera:







Alternatively, if you aren't sure about your hardware, you can do the "Express" (basically auto-detect) route.  I uninstalled the Acti camera mentioned above, then did the "auto-detect" with the Analog capture card we installed in the previous thread (a Provideo PV-149, IIRC), and Milestone detected the four video channels without any problem.  I then re-added the Acti camera.  The nice thing about "Go" is that you can add/subtract cameras from your install with relative ease... "Essential" isn't quite as forgiving.  With this in mind, I'd recommend configuring your system with "Go" first, make sure it's exactly what you want, THEN buy "Essential" if that's what you want.








And here we are with the analog capture card, and one Acti camera... so we have five cameras on our Lenovo Thinkcentre.  Take note of that left-hand frame.  Everything in Milestone is under that "tree" type menu, and you can expand/collapse those menu trees however you want.







Here we are looking at some random website through that Acti camera:







They also have a remote client you can use to connect to your system.  The "Xprotect Smart Client" allows you access to your camera streams from anywhere in the world.  A limitation of the "Go" software is that you are only allowed ONE remote client connection at a time.



Verdict:  Good, commercial-grade VMS software, and very user-friendly.  Price is fair, but having to pay for updates is painful.

Tag

All of the commercial offerings are expensive. I've been looking for an alternative that doesn't break the bank.

(I've got a bunch of extra PCs lying around)

Exacqvision software (placeholder for when "Start" comes out)

Let's talk about Luxriot... this page is a good starting point to understand the rough costs involved.  Similar prices can be found here (both links grabbed from the first page of Google shopping).

Luxriot requires registration of their software, and that registration is bound to the MAC address of your server's NIC (network card).  This, in addition to the fact that many Motherboard-integrated NICs are crap, is an excellent reason to use an add-in PCIe Gigabit NIC (I'm a fan of the Intel Pro/1000 series), since you can move that network card to another PC and rebuild the server, should your original one die, or be insufficient for the task (too little processing power for the number of cameras you're using, for instance).

Luxriot also limits the number of remote clients you can use, based on version:

Version___________Clients:___________Price____________Price-per-channel:

1 camera....................  1  ........................ $89 .......................... $89
4 cameras..................  1  .......................  $269 ........................ $67.25
9 cameras..................  3  ........................ $449 ........................ $49.80
16 cameras................  5  ........................ $539 ........................ $28.26

You can see that the sweet-spot in channels-for-the-money is in the 16-channel version.... you cannot beat $28/channel with ANY commercial VMS software.  Luxriot also gives you virtually unlimited flexibility in changing/deleting/adding cameras.  Unlike Milestone, the MACs of each camera are not registered, and you can easily add/subtract devices at-will.  This is a HUGE benefit if you're tinkering, plan on adding more cameras in the future, or plan on upgrading existing cameras.  Luxriot provides easy room-to-grow... as well as FREE software updates.  Other software suites make you pay for those same updates.

Their tech support also answers their phones, or gets back to you quickly.  I've only dealt with them a couple of times, but they've never failed to get back to me the same business day (provided I didn't call at 4:59PM).

Getting Luxriot is easy... go to their website, and download it.  It's about 28MB










Choose your preferred language, click-through the EULA.









And ensure you're clicking the necessary components in this pane.  For your actual video server box, you'll want the server component installed (the "Broadcast Server" application is supposed to send video to smartphones, but I've not played with that part of it).  For your remote clients, you'll just want the client application.






Let it install:







And I would recommend the wizards.  The Luxriot wizards are pretty good, and are an excellent way to add/subtract cameras.  I use them... I'd recommend you do the same.







Version?  We're doing this strictly as a demo version, so we have the "Shareware" box checked.  I'd recommend internet activation once you've had your license key emailed to you.






Enter an appropriate password:






I recommend the software be run as a windows service.  The shareware version won't allow you to do this, but the fully-licensed version will.  This ensures that the computer will restart the application at boot time.







Once installed, you can right-click on the little blue icon down in the system tray, and it will give you the option of opening the client application... or you can do it from the shortcut that the installer placed on the desktop.  Your call.







Now I'll walk you through adding a camera (we'll use the same Acti 3411 we used in the Milestone thread.  Going to the drop-down menus, it goes Server ––> Selected Server ––-> Tasks ––-> Camera Setup Wizard... like so:







That brings up a dialogue like this.  In this case, we're adding a network device, so we highlight that line and click "next"







Give your camera a name so you can recognize where it is and/or what it does.  Click "Properties"







And that brings up the camera model configuration dialogue.  Start with the manufacturer, the move to the right pane and specify the model, then click "apply"







And now we come to the real configuration panel.  Note carefully the tabs across the top.  This is the pane that will allow you to specify IP address, login/password, port numbers, video channel (in the case of a multi-port encoder), etc.







Click "Next" again:







And use the "properties" button on the page to adjust motion-detection sensitivity, and exclusion zones.  Luxriot uses a standard grid where you can select/deselect areas for motion detection to ignore.  Their motion detection algorithms are VERY sensitive, so I tend to turn the sensitivity slider way down.







This process can be repeated for as many devices as your version will allow you.

Verdict:  good functionality/flexibility, and at a fair price... free updates are a nice bonus.

Let's talk about Zoneminder.  It deserves a long post of its own.   Zoneminder is a free-as-in-beer, Linux-based (or "GNU/Linux" if you're RMS.  I doubt he has an account here, but ESR might... so hat-tip to both of them) software suite that talks to surveillance cameras, records, and stores the images/events.  I had a chance to wrestle with it just before Christmas, and I'll detail some of the experience here.

Allow me to make a recommendation right up-front:  If you have never used Linux before, this probably isn't for you.  

Seriously.

I've been a personal Linux user for >10 years.  I don't make my living in the IT world, and I'm no grey-beard, but I'm comfortable working through the Command-Line, have hacked a few kernels, and can troubleshoot with reasonable skill...

But I had real trouble with this one.

A more-elite *nix user could probably avoid the trouble I had (I know there are a few on ARF), but the time investment was more than I had available to me over the holiday... so I punted (I'll get to that later).

I started with a 10.10 install of Ubuntu Linux:







The install was pretty much automatic, and GUI-based.  Just follow the prompts.  At the end, restart the machine.







After the install, I used Synaptic Package Manager to update the OS.







And what did I find under the packages?  Zoneminder!  







There are a bunch of dependencies...







Downloading the additional packages...







Reboot... and it fails.







And with that failure (and crashing two different Ubuntu boxen during this process), I looked for an easier way... and found it.

Surf on over to this page, and read... or if you want skip the reading part and get right down to business, simply click here to download the .iso image.  Burn it to the appropriate optical media with your preferred CD-burning program, and follow along.

Insert the Live CD you just created above, and go through the install.  After you reboot, you'll see a link on the Ubuntu desktop that says "Install Zoneminder install."  Double-Click on the icon, and go through the install.  Note that I deliberately chose NOT to download updates during the install... just because I didn't want them to break anything.  You laugh, but it happens...







The install process goes on:







You have to enter your time zone:







After the install finishes, connect to the Zoneminder machine via your web browser from another computer.  Simply enter "http://zoneminder.IP.address.here" (obviously, you substitute your actual IP address for the "zoneminder.IP.address.here").  In the case of this machine, it's http://192.168.0.106/








Good... webserver running.  Now that we've verified the functionality of the apache webserver, we can check out the ZM webpage.  The ZM web interface allows you to administrate the Zoneminder install.  It's "http://zoneminder.IP.address.here/zm/"  (in this system it's http://192.168.0.106/zm/)  The default login/password is "admin"/"admin"








When you log in to the administration webpage, you're hit with a donation popup.  If you find this program useful, please consider donating... guys spend a lot of time writing software like this, and they could probably use a few bucks.








Here is the main screen, without any cameras added yet:








Here is the view through an Acti ACM-1231 megapixel camera.  For some reason, I cannot get the megapixel resolution to work... so this is 640x480:










Here is the camera looking at a picture of itself, of itself, of itself...








Here's the admin screen with two cameras added (getting the Pano to work was not easy)







The bottom line with this software is that you'd better be ready to tinker.  This took me a couple of days, a few hours a day, to get this config to work (this is running off one of those frequently-mentioned, cheap-as-dirt-on-Ebay IBM Thinkcentres).  Note the other browser tabs I have open... I strongly recommend the zoneminder forums if you run into trouble... somebody has probably already had the same problem you're experiencing.

Zoneminder IS free-as-in-beer... but how "free" it actually is depends on how much you value your time.  

If you've got the time, then you can save yourself some money... just choose your cameras carefully... and realize that megapixel might not be functional (as in the case of my ACM-1231).  Here are some screenshots from the Zoneminder box itself, using the "top" command (details here if you're interested)

Here is the server load with one camera (the Acti ACM-1231 @640x480), and no remote clients:







Here is the server load with one remote web client streaming that same Acti camera (at 15FPS) to another computer.  Note the difference in the server load:






That's one camera.  That tells me that if you're going to use Zoneminder with any significant number of cameras/clients, you might want to go generous on the specs of your host machine.  

As for analog cameras, Linux has pretty fair hardware detection.  In fact, if you dig into Linux's logfiles, you can find out a great deal about what kind of hardware you actually have... Knoppix "Live CDs" are great for determining exactly what kind of computer hardware you have.

I also did Zoneminder with that Provideo PV-149 card installed.  Once up-and-running, bringing up a Terminal (Command-Line Interface), and entering the command "cat /var/log/messages" will cause a whole lot of cryptic-appearing stuff  to scroll past your screen.  Move the cursor back up, and look for anything that says "bttv,' like so:








Looks like it detected the card just fine.  There's an additional tool called "XAWTV" that allows you to watch TV under Linux (it's actually a set of applications).  It can be downloaded to check the status of your BTTV card:







Once installed, you can check its output with the "xawtv -hwscan" command:








Looks like everything is working... and now we know how to access the video streams from each of the four channels:

/dev/video0
/dev/video1
/dev/video2
/dev/video3

We have a Panasonic dome hooked up to the first video channel (/dev/video0):








Going to the web interface via "http://192.168.0.110/zm" (obviously, you'd enter your own Zoneminder box's IP address), we start configuring the application to talk to the card:








And clicking on the link from the management homepage, we actually get the picture.  Thumbs up!







We can repeat that config, but change the resolution, and get a bigger picture:









Here's the problem... I can only get black-and-white out of it, and this is supposed to be a color card (and it is... under windows).  Further hacking provided no success, and no insight on why this was occurring.  Also, 2/4 of the video channels on this card did not work under Linux/Zoneminder.  The resolution is also only 320x240, not the D1 the card was advertised as being able to provide.  



Verdict:  Avoid Zoneminder... unless you're really elite in your Linux skillz... or like pain.

So let's talk about Blue Iris.

Blue Iris is a budget-priced piece of downloadable camera software that grabs and records camera streams from IP cameras, encoder cards, etc.  It comes in an evaluation version (free for 15 days, and they watermark all your pictures), a single-camera version, and a theoretically-unlimited version (up to 64 cameras).

Pricing:

Evaluation = free
Single camera "Lite" version = $29.95
Multi-camera version = $49.95

Blue Iris supports a modest list of cameras (list can be found here), as well as the exact PV-149 encoder card that has given me so much trouble with some other software suites.  We installed it on the exact system we built in this thread, and I'll show you some screenshots of the results.

Important note:  As far as software goes, Blue Iris seems to be pretty resource-hungry.  It eats up some CPU cycles... so if you're going to install it on an old cast-off system, you should use one that still has some horsepower.

Anyway, here we go.  Go to their download page, and grab the software.  It's about 42MB:











Install the software, and click-through the EULA:











Here's the first interface screen that comes up... right-click to add a camera:







Here's the configuration window, with various tabbed fields.  The first important one is the "Video" tab:







Hit the configure button, and enter the IP address of the network camera.  We're entering the info for the same Acti 3411 dome we've used throughout these software trials.  Also ensure you enter the correct stream-type under "Model."  I screwed this up the first go-round, and had to go back and enter "Acti MPEG"






As you can see, it choked the first go-round:






So I went back into the IP Configuration field and chose the right stream type... and it worked:









Maximize the camera stream, and it looks pretty good... note the watermark:








So now let's plug some analog cameras into that PV-149 encoder card and see if it works.  I used three identical Panasonic 484S domes I had in the garage (didn't have an extra 4th analog cam laying around), in addition to the Acti camera.









Video through the analog dome camera... looking up at my wall-mounted battery charger:







Added a couple more in the same fashion:







Here's a stat page... took me about 15 minutes to add all four cameras (three analog and one IP)







Here it is with all four channels recording (note the red highlighting around the windows):







Set up motion detection on all four cameras:








Here we are with four cameras (one megapixel, three analog), all running motion detection, and one remote client running over the network... when it detects motion, the CPU usage (on both cores) goes up to 60%+:







It also interlaces with that analog encoder card... note the horizontal lines in the following video, as I pass my hand back-and-forth in front of one of the analog domes.  That will play havoc with picture quality... the Acti is better, but it really jacks up the CPU usage:






For what it gives you, this seems like a pretty bargain-priced piece of software.  I can't speak to the long-term stability of it, or how well it utilizes hard-drive space, but it does seem to work.  The remote client connects to the web address of the server box, and serves up a screen that looks like this:






You can view the live stream, recorded events/clips, etc.  

verdict:  not bad for $50

Linux Tip: - If you are doing your own install - not using a canned ISO with Zoneminder.

ALWAYS start with a LTS release version.

In the example above version 10.10 was used. Problem is its only supported for 6 months then you are expected to upgrade to the next release version... and all updates just stop and disappear for the version you are running. ( Guess how I know this... )

LTS versions are supported for 5 years so you don't have to worry about your hardware/software once you have it the way you like it. Updates are normally pretested before release so they are very unlikely to brake something in a stable LTS release. On the more frequent releases, roll the dice and click OK.

Edit: Figure I better define LTS = Long Term Support.

Think you will be getting around to the Exacq software? I like the looks of it, but never did find a price on their site...

You also may want to check this out, its free unless you want online services, and the price even isn't too bad then. Ispy Connect
I played around with it for a bit, but cannot get it to find my capture cards... unfortunately posting on their forums didn't help much.

Maybe you can help me here. We have been getting vehicles broken into monthly at our shop, so we installed a bunch of lights and a Netrome DSS-X8 camera system and while the lights slowed it down a bit, they are still breaking in and the cameras are too far from the parking area to get a good view of anything. Our other shop that is out of state bought a Netrome Blackbox system and decided not to use it so we inherited that as well, as we expanded the shop to another building about 100' from the first. The DSS-X8 crapped out so I built up another computer from spare parts and threw the capture card in it, but the Netrome software won't load on it as it only supports Intel processors. There is a Cat6 cable running to the new shop with the spare parts computer, so it is all on the same network and I have a 5-port switch at each shop and a 24 port managed switch in the main shop. (Recently the burglars got a spur of confidence and sneaked (snuck?) into the shop while I was there, waited for me to leave and then let all of his buddies in to scout the place out... so the 24 port switch is there for me to setup reed switches on the doors and have it use SNMP to email me when they are opened after hours.) I still want some good cameras to see exactly what is going on before I run down there with a truck full of AR's (Its a joke, I understand the implementations.)

Basically I need software to run on two separate computers and have both web and smartphone viewing. Also, have you had any luck with wireless cameras? Some of the places I want to put some cameras are across an asphalt parking lot with no good way to trench a cable. I've been looking at some nice cheap ones here: Foscam But you get what you pay for comes to mind real quickly. Only 5 of the original 8 Netrome cameras are working and we paid upwards of $1,000 per system. Neither of the original monitors still work, but they are a hell of a lot better than the Lorex I first tried out.

The ISpy Connect is about perfect, but I just cant get it to find the capture card on either computer and one was known good before installed in the new computer (it did find and install a driver when booted up) and the other is still being used by the Netrome software so I am positive it works and the driver is there. The biggest problem with the Netrome software is lack of support for IP/wireless cameras and multiple systems... Honeywell bought them out so support is completely gone.

Here is how I see it all working together...
1. I get and email saying "Front door opened"
2. I check the cameras on my phone/computer to see if lights are on (Motion lights were installed recently inside after we found they were inside the shop with flashlights)
3. I check the front and back cameras to make sure there isn't a company vehicle there.
4. Call the cops if needed and haul ass down there.

I'm 95% sure the people doing this are the same group, and as they have been doing it for about 4 years now regularly, and it needs to be stopped... The only way that will happen is to physically catch them down there with the police (if they actually show up this time... last time it was an hour and half wait after calling them) or get good enough footage to possibly identify them. Right now all the cameras are doing is telling us when they broke in and if they stole something really big or not.

Lastly, Thanks for all the help in this and the other posts!

Yeah it is all analog, and I've basically already got two of those DVR units. To make the second one work all I need to do is buy an Intel processor, and then they would both have remote viewing, but I want the option to add in IP cameras and the software is my limitation. The current software doesn't support IP cameras and the one software so far tried doesn't support my capture cards. The alarm input interface is actually already installed and tested, I just need to buy some reed switches and wire them up, going with one of those DVR's will just be extra equipment as I will still need the computers to run the alarms.

Really I only want one or two wireless cameras to catch the entrance to the parking lot to see when vehicles drive in, I'm not concerned much about quality there. I then want some good cameras inside of the shops on the only two door entrances to capture the faces.

No luck on any of the listed softwares, I even tried opening the stream on VLC media player but it doesn't find anything.

A bit of searching found that it is most likely a Conexant BT878 or some variant of that and that they are rarely supported by the "aftermarket" DVR softwares out there. I did find a driver for it, but it didn't help any. I think the simplest solution now is to just buy a new capture card that I know the driver will work with or to switch entirely to IP cameras. Its probably the best option for the long run anyways, as these cards are a few years old each and most likely don't have much life left.

I appreciate the help.

I have been using IPView Pro from Trendnet. Software is free and supports up to 16 cameras. You can set up email alerts with stil images, adjust the level of motion detection and also set up detection zones for each camera, the size limit of the video file it creates. Also can set up watch only account and depending on your networking knowledge you can allow access  to 1 camera or more from the internet so you can remote in and check if needbe Iam currently using 6 cameras that ive purcashed from ebay and other sites that were used for less then $90 each. The dedicated server is down in the basemnt in a very conveinant rack.

Security server specs-
XP pro
Intel core2 duo E7500 2.92Ghz
2GB ram
2 x Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s set for raid 0
1 x HighPoint Rocket 620 PCI-Express 2.0 x1 SATA III (6.0Gb/s) Controller Card
Open box- SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SLM-L-O LGA 775 Intel 945GC Micro ATX

(also for entire server rack 2 cyberpower battery backups)

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-dTBHTWnhDcg/TUQwdOfzUUI/AAAAAAAABzg/-8BcDV1ev28/s512/DSCN0778.JPG

Excellent info!  Do you happen to have a summary of which Software packages offer mobile phone/iPhone/iPad apps to access them remotely?  Also, I would assume all would be able to be accessed remotely via a secure web page login from a remote site but would that assumption be incorrect?

Thanks!

So this runs separately from any DVR software you may install?  For now I will have a 2 IP camera system with a computer based DVR setup.

I am impressed with Luxriot's support.

Had an issue setting up a camera that wasn't on the supported list.  Tech remotely logged into my server a couple times, updated the Luxriot software with a new build, figured it out, got it working.

All with the shareware version, I hadn't even paid for a license at that point.

TGM, any luck using zoneminder?




 

I'm a goof....



I will give it a run soon.





 

are there any IP camera control software packages that will automotically control cameras' pan & tilt functions to track movement of objects as they are detected?

Has anyone here tried getting the ubiquiti aircam to work on milestone's xprotect go?  Since ubiquiti's products aren't supported by milestone, getting it to recognize the camera is giving me fits.  The wizard doesn't pick it up.  I'm not sure whether my issues with manual configuration are me or something with the system.  I've tried the universal driver.  I know the hardware is set up correctly because I can get the camera to work with ubiquiti's controller software.  I've gotten to the point where it may be time to see if I can find someone who has jumped through the hoops and made it work.



ETA several hours later in the wee hours of the morning:

TGM, I see in the other thread that you were able to get hooked up to luxriot after contacting tech support.  Was whatever they had you do involved, or fairly simple?  (I downloaded luxriot's shareware version as well to see if it was any easier than xprotect to get this camera up and running.)

Next month's disposable income will be spent on a camera that is supported by the software I am going to end up using.  On this side of the attempted/failed setup, the main lesson I've learned over the last few days is that the extra money in a supported camera seems like it would be well spent.

Thanks.  I found the luxriot tutorial and make it to the bottom of the page before getting to the very last screenshot which asks for "Path to Session Description Protocol File".  Any ideas on how to figure out what I should be putting in there?

Sorry if you already mentioned it, but I did look.





Here is what I'm looking at:





Sharx-Security-SCXSC200-Recorder-Internet





Unfortunately I can't find one with 8+ channels that is worth a flip (looking at reviews). Only 4, which means two cards at a minimum, and that leaves me with zero expansion.
 
 

I looked again and figured it out.  Meanwhile, I'm feeling a bit dumber about the situation.  Believe it or not, you weren't the first place I was looking for information .  I've been in and out of ubiquiti's forums several times over four days messing with milestone and didn't search luxriot when I started looking at that last night.  In the meantime, I completely missed this page, which now has me up and running.  I'm still not sure exactly what I am doing, but I can't be too far off.  I have moving pictures on the computer I set up for the purpose.

At the beginning of this journey a search for "luxriot" rather than "xprotect" would have gotten me more useful information on their forums.

Anyway, once again, for anyone trying to figure aircam out in the future, here is the important link for getting an aircam running on non-supported systems.

Thanks again TGM.  You've helped a lot.

I assume that you are using luxriot for your personal setup.  Is this true, and if so is it the route you would go again if you were to spend the money today?

On the hunt!



I've found a few, but I'm shopping prices now.





 

Are you familiar with these?



http://www.camera2000.com/en/8-ch-video-power-bnc-to-utp-rj45-balun-for-cctv-camera-dvr-system.html






 

Right, I was thinking of using it between all of my cameras and it would alleviate the need to terminate the BNC connections into anything.



Then I can build a proper network camera server that won't have the same limitations as the analog ones.



I just didn't know if these had any unusual side effects or problems I wasn't able to forsee.



 

So I purchased the Trendnet outdoor camera.  The Trendnet software I noticed is re-branded Luxriot software that will only pickup/detect Trendnet cameras.    While I like the software I am going to be purchasing other outdoor cameras because the field of view for the Trendnet is simply too narrow.  The night vision range is awesome and so is the picture quality but the FOW is only good to use for the top of my driveway.

Are there any apps out for Mac users?

I am having a lot of trouble figuring out how to re-register my Xprotect Go. Their website gives me error messages.  When I actually get a license emailed to me they all are seen as invalid by the software.  I'm downloading blue iris to evaluate it.

Blue iris would not recognize my camera. I then tried uninstalling and reinstalling milestone go. However, now milestone has issues installing.  I am using my camera via web browser which works for real time viewing but does not allow recording.

It certainly has some quirks. After I upgraded to the latest version (do that, if you haven't lately) it has been running much more smoothly.



From a set-it-and-forget-it standpoint, it does well, but like you said, it doesn't take changes very gracefully.



 

From the milestone forums it seems like the new Xprotect software only works on 64 bit operating systems, i need to confirm but I believe I am running 32 bit.

I've replaced all of my Trendnet outdoor cameras with these
http://www.amazon.com/Hikvision-DS-2CD2032-I-Outdoor-Bullet-Security/dp/B00E3VV3AI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1386096971&sr=8-2&keywords=hikvision
This is one of the reviews, not mine but it's pretty accurate.



Running these and Axis cameras on BlueIris.  It's been in the single digits and some rain and so far good to go.  For that price range they are pretty hard to beat.



 

Yeah so the system requirments even show as 64 Bit now on the specifications sheet.  Looks like I will be trying Blue Iris and see if I can get it to work with my GE Rugged Dome.  The webpage for blue iris says it should work with most MPEG4 cameras which my GE is, I'm sure I will just have to play with the settings.

The good thing is BlueIris has a evaluation period.  So you can test it out before you have to purchase it.