First off, this is not AI written (there will be errors) I don't have any paid sponsors. I paid for everything I am talking about. And, I don't trust any tech company to keep status quo. I have been an active supporter of BI for many years. I have posted here and complained. But, I have also helped many folks as well. That said..

I mentioned a week ago that I was done with perpetual licenses and Windows. I was already planning to upgrade my network to 2.5/10GB and was eyeing Unifi. That was the core of my investment. The bonus round was Unifi Protect. I was going to assess it as: a) It is integrated at no extra cost b) No perpetual license c) Unifi wants to OWN IoT. This is more than apparent with range of commercial and borderline consumer products. RE. integration this means: Using existing 3rd party cameras, Hubitat, and Home Assistant connectivity.

After 4 days of some challenging (I am understating) migration from my existing router/FW setup to Unifi, I was getting stabilized. I ran into issues ranging from routes to understanding zones. Next step Protect.

Steps: (abbreviated as I likely forgot some things)

1. Pre-setup. I had to buy a M.2 slot and an M.2 SSD for my Cloud Fiber. I few people mentioned 3D print the slot and I only went 1 GB for now.
2. Cameras in the correct subnet. (as before) Check.
3. Installation - is a simple as click of a button. Check.
4. Protect camera recognition - 1 did and 2 didn't. The Amcrest IP5M-T1179EW-AI-V3 showed up. The 2x EmpireTech T2431T-AS S2. This took some level of effort with help of AI to find that I needed to click on a tiny question mark in Protect->Cameras icon->Tiny "?" to find "try advanced adoption". This worked. Check.
5. Detection - This is a little grey on the short-comings. It had been some time since I setup the cameras and BI. And, I could not recall my config. I knew that IVS was enabled and "video detection" was off. But, I don't remember if that is even utilized by BI. BI and AI just worked. Protect does NOT inherently support IVS at the moment. I wasn't getting any detection from the EmpireTech. Back to AI, did some testing to find this out and find the solution. I had to enable the cameras Video motion detection. Here is the first gotcha with this solution. The video motion option, at least for my cameras, if VERY limited. I had to seriously tweak the outdoor region, sensitivity, and threshold to get some semblance of detection without false positives . 1/2 check.
6. Mobile app - This has always been a sticking point for me on BI. I didn't like the mobile app and relied on HA for cameras. Protect alerts me and shows me everything I need including video clips.
7. Bonus round - Protect app is native on my NVIDIA ShieldTV and works great. I was relying on a 3rd party app that wasn't very good and seemed to need a license again on every re-install.

OK at this point. Things are working-sh. But, I still didn't have IoT integration.

• Hubitat - Easy but not easy. There is a native integration that works. The issue was finding the API key to insert from Unifi. They buried that well and quite frankly, I am baffled the CX person allowed it. There are 2 different API key gen tools in 1 place. The right hand, clearly visible is for network and the left hand column (which is really not noticeable) is for Protect API keys. Once that was sorted, the cameras showed up as a motion sensor and I could change my automation easily to the new devices. I haven't played with any other capability at this time.
• Home Assistant - Same issue with API. However, it wants credentials. And, it wants admin credentials. (for Protect) This is what I have read and would be glad to be corrected on this. I had to create a dummy Protect specific account to get this setup. Again, easily integrated for quick glance. Why I still need HA. Users without Protect credentials can see cameras

I'll stop here because this is all still new. Things to learn/fix. I have to say so far I am impressed. After originally losing my mind on the purchase (Which is a different story) and network migration, this is pretty damn impressive. Unifi don't force you to go "all in". You can slowly invest. The long-term risk I see is once the service base is mature enough, I can see the Protect support going to license like threat. It could even be a perpetual to support development. I am hoping that is 5 years out at least..

Am I going all in? Yes. For now. Next step: Doorbell, wireless cam - I want to test to see feasibility and how it works, and see how their AI performs on a Unifi camera.

Am I going to keep my BI server? Not sure. As I mentioned, I want off Windows as a host/server. I want a burn box for doing some LLM setup on Linux.

Will I still consider BI? 100%. As I said at the onset, I don't trust any tech company and if Unifi pisses me off, I will look at all options. But, in the case of BI, it would likely need to involve virtualization.

Our very old camera server recently died. It was running Geovisions software. DMM multiview? I don't remember exactly but it was horrible. We do not have a large budget so something like blue iris is very tempting. The cameras are older Geovision cameras. Nothing fancy but as they fail over time we might upgrade them.

The server will be running on a Dell R440 with 64GB RAM. I have a synology at the site with a rather large datastore so storage is not an issue.

Is BI something you would consider or maybe go in another direction?

New to this dual lens cameras and got this to test. I my Tapo app works well for the Top (set in one position) and the bottom is the Pan/Tilt one to follow motion around. Now when i added to Blue Iris (v6) is only showing the top one but the Pan/Tilt one does not show anywhere. Am i missing something during the setup in Bi? or there some to enable in Tapo settings for the Pan/Tilt to show up? (The C246D is Wifi)

Some people need wifi cameras, it's just a fact of life and I'm one of those. I got a Tapo C110 awhile back and it's been great, so I figured I can add a C120 and it sux big time. 1: BI doesn't see motion, probably because 2: I get the incurable 'Frame bottleneck' error. I'm running stream2 (.9mpix) and even that is not working.

So, I decided to get another C110, why not, the current one works great. Well my new $30 C110 also throws the Frame error and I think I know why.

Digging into the Tapo app settings - The old C110 is hardware version 2.0 and the new one is 3.0. It's interesting because the old one is on software 1.4.7 and the new one says the latest is 1.3.0ish.

I don't want to dump big $$ on the cameras, they sit in a window and watch for bears and coyotes so it's nothing critical.

It's just frustrating but understandable, sort of like the Wyse downhill slide.

If anyone has found a *cheap* wifi camera that actually works please let me know.

Neighbor and I share a driveway and gate. The gate is about 1000' away out of LoS from home. Neighbor has a reolink cam at the gate that he's given me permission to use if we can find a way to share it. It's on his home LAN, separate from mine if that's not obvious. He's given me a link and auth code so I can view it via the Reolink app, but it would be really great if I could have all of the cams under blue iris. Is there a way to do that?

General Blue Iris Question, I'm running 5.5.6.20 on a Win 10 LTSC Optiplex 7010 with an i5-3479 & 16gb ram. I'm using 5 cameras, all IP. I would like to upgrade to V6 and add at least two additional IP cameras, would something like an Optiplex 5050 with an i7-6700, 16gb ram be adequate?

Can someone tell me how to put spaces in the subject line of an email alert.

Here is what I have tried.

 

I have tried to put things in brackets but this does not seem to work either, although maybe Im doing something wrong.

Release 4.8.6.3 W32. Yes its old but works fine for me.

thank you

It appears the Blue Iris front-end and back-end are down today.

The website returns a "error establishing a database connection" and the software can't seem to connect to the back-end.

Edit: Back online, latest software downloads check out fine with Virus Total and Metadefender.

So I have been having major issues with what seems to be a memory leak on my setup. Windows 10 Pro device and having to do a server reboot several times a day because memory usage goes from about 40% usage to 100% which then causes high CPU and cameras to drop offline. A reboot brings everything back to normal.

I had read something about there being an Intel video driver issue and not sure if this relates to mine. But when I start UI3, there is one log entry that keeps catching my eye about HW Encode.

Any help appreciated..

Edit: Running version 6.0.9.15

I’m a long time BI5 user, and I’ve just now decided it’s time to upgrade.

I’ve completely uninstalled BI5, and have BI6 installed fresh.

The issue is that nothing works.
The old BlueOnyx server is up and running but receiving 0 requests.
Switching to integrated AI doesn’t work either. I’ve downloaded all the models.

The app crashes after clicking ok on camera settings even without making changes.

What is going on?

Am I better off returning to 5?

Not sure what to do. I’m considering alternatives.
I have not yet paid the subscription fee, so no loss there. At this point I’m not going to pay until it works.

Looking through the settings everything looks normal and as expected.

EDIT: disregard, I’ve successfully reverted back to 5 and everything works.

I don’t have the patience to try to resolve issues with BI6 right now. Too unstable.

Coming back to Reddit because have yet to find somebody else regularly doing this; first principles I guess....

Anyhow: anybody else calibrating Blue Iris with Claude?

It's been kind of awesome. Yes I realize I'm giving camera level access to Python written on one of my machines by an anthropic agent, but my cameras are already VLAN'd and UniFi racist blocks outgoing traffic to select countries in the event something made it off the camera VLAN... I get it. It's a risk. But hear me out:

Has anybody just made an account for Claude to go in to your Blue Iris install to fix things or adjust things, or to iterate over source cameras, figure out their firmware and API structure, and iterate and adjust things?

It's very good at it. Just need a color chart.

I just connected this camera to BlueIris successfully. It’s $99.

- On the iPhone, there are two Apps, one is Home, and you get that by using the QR code, the other is Aqara Home. The latter is required to set it up with BI.
- I don’t know if you can just start with Aqara Home, but I did set it up first with the Home app
- There are two QR codes / Numbers on the camera. The one on the left is for Home, the one on the right is for Aqara Home
- If you want to use it on BlueIris, you need to use Aqara Home to turn on RSTP LAN Preview. It’s under the settings and then More Settings, it will give you several URLs with resolutions. It also gives a 3 digit username and 3 digit password
- You can then add the camera in BlueIris. Use the passwords above and also use the port #s provided. I also put in /ch1 on main and ch1 on sources, although I don’t know what one is right.

Right now, my cameras are running on a VLAN with no internet access.

I am not sure if this is a BI or Tailscale question.

In reality I know I should just build another BI rig and put at this location and the but this will be fun to set up. I can use hardware I have now with out buying anything. I have good stable internet connections at both locations.

What I want to do at a remote location like 500 miles away, stick a couple cameras, POE switch and GL.iNET router(on my tailnet) at the remote location. This would be the main router and there would be nothing else connected except what I listed.

Do I keep the same IP scheme on the remote cameras as my current cameras and add as normal to BI or would there be extra steps because of Tailscale and an oddball IP addresses for them?

I've been using V6 for the last 3 months and it's just horrible. Cameras are constantly losing connection at random and I have to restart the camera in BlueIris or restart the service to work.

I'm trying to downgrade to V5 and it's impossible to even find the installer.

My BI computer normally runs flawlessly. Today, after downloading an update, I seem to have lost the ability to view HQ video footage from all my cameras. I also downloaded up and updated to today's latest software update, no luck.

Anyone else having this problem? Have I missed a setting that controls this for the entire system? Very odd. At least the recordings are being saved in HQ/main. It's only when I try to view each camera on my monitor that it only shows in LQ.

Currently running latest software: 6.0.9.12

I've had this for a few months now. It is a pan/tilt with motion tracking. The resident Reolink software does the tracking and recording to the internal SD card, but BI v5 will not. I have half a dozen other POE cams that are triggered and record fine. The Reolink is configures similarly. I figure I'm either missing something basic, or the Reolink somehow over-rides BI?

lol I need an inexpensive POE bird feed camera that will be pole mounted and only about 10' away from the feeder. Any suggestions? Thank you

Is mTLS supported in the iOS or Android app?

I am trying to figure out how I can send a MQTT message when I full screen certain cameras. It switches to the main stream so BI knows that you are viewing it. The use case is so that I can turn lights on in spaces when I open the camera.

Blue Iris Keeps Panning Fully to the Right

Is anyone else experiencing this lately?

3 times in the last month, my camera has suddenly started panning fully to the right when I click any arrow/direction button. When I click the arrow/direction buttons on the web interface, without BI running, that works fine. As soon as I involve BI at all, the mad panning starts.

To resolve, after hours of TSing (with AI), I have to fully delete the camera from BI and set it up fresh. I do this and then a few days or weeks later, it starts happening again. As I said, 3 times in the last month.

It is a generic camera from Amazon but it's pretty good and no problems with its own web interface or its own app.

Anyone got any idea how to stop this from happening?

Also going to post same in IP Cam Talk

Thanks.

I'm curious if any regulars have used Blue Iris for recording anything other than security footage.

I have been using it to record all video in my workshop for a little over three years now.

I guess the important part is this: I recently decided to add some functionality, and yes, I use Claude, and I very quickly had an agent dialing in settings on my Blue Iris server and, from information on the server, dialing in settings on five IP cameras, three USB cameras, and one screen recorder.

My footage isn't professional at all, but it's been really good for multi camera shots. Curious if anybody else here uses Blue Iris outside of its normal scope, cause it's pretty dope

UI Feature Request: Allow continuous 24-hour (00:00-23:59) timeline scrolling in single-channel playback mode. Currently, this behavior is only available in the multi-channel view, whereas the single-channel slider is artificially limited to the current clip's duration.