What appears simple, seems impossible?

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paulgrillo
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jun 14, 2019 2:42 am

What appears simple, seems impossible?

Post by paulgrillo »

The following is what i'm trying to achieve.

I live in two places.
I wish the camera to scan a lot next to my house, about 180 arc, and straight down.
I wish to record this activity always.

so .... i have
* 1 single POE Omnif camera with PTZ support
* 1 Amcrest NVR. 4 port, with disc drive

* I have it hooked up and working ... ?
* I can access the camera through the NVR using 3rd party software and/or using Amcrest Surveillance Pro

Surveillance Pro Issues?
* it appears my only way of getting the scan to work given a PTZ OMNIF camear is to use the "tour" capability

What i'm seeing.
* I create 6 or 7 preset/steps
* I create a tour and i string them together. very simple. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

and
* it simply doesn't work consistantly. At some point it appears to wander through 3,4,5
* it stops,

Questions:
* when i invoke the tour from the software, is the command sent to the NVR and is the tour set inside the NVR?
* if it is tied to my pc running and the software running, then what is the use of the NVR?
* is there any way to set this up, to run continually through the NVR, and to access it remotely and restart it when needed?
* what is the relationship between Amcrest software running on a phone, pc, inside the NVR. Is the logic inside the NVR? or inside the software. I would have assumed in the NVR, since the software must contact the NVR (not just the camera...)

this seems to be a simply issue compared to all that i'm reading in this forum, and yet?

any suggestions? I understand that there is other software, Blue Iris, etc. If it requires that a PC stay up and running, that is not my preference. But if that is the "only" way to get this fairly simple scenario to work, i'll consider it. But what software will work, because the amcrest software doesn't seem to do the trick.
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Revo2Maxx
Site Admin
Posts: 5820
Joined: Sat Jun 15, 2019 3:05 pm

Re: What appears simple, seems impossible?

Post by Revo2Maxx »

Sorry your Question has been Unanswered.

While I have been trying to understand what to answer as there is a lot going on. Maybe if you were to offer some info about what you have in Detail?

Camera model?
NVR Model?

I am not sure about what you have going on in your system. I know that I have a few PTZ cameras and some are more COMPLEX then others. While I have one that can do alot it lacks in loads of things another camera a couple of years older has. Yet it was a few hundred less in cost lol... So all my PTZ stores the program in the Camera. Like my Most complex PTZ has 7 alarm inputs and 2 out with 2 AUX out. All the things are stored as stated before in the camera. Complex to the point that when you setup Patterns or tours there are things in the programming that can delay trip or make changes to the path it is on.. The key to that is what you have it set like in mine it is Called Home or Guard. So after a set time it will go back to what ever you had them set to run. So in the event that say I changed the camera and set a few programs to run. They would run until 1 of a few things happened. If I had it set to do nothing then it would run the Program and repeat unless I had it set to not repeat. Or if I had it to run my program for a set time and return to Guard then after 3min if I didn't do anything it would return to my tour and it will forever run that tour unless I do something to change it by moving left right up or down on joy stick or zooming in. Or maybe one of my Alarms Tripped and it took control of the camera after no activity for 3 min it would go back to guard. So now lets say that I took every thing away do to power fail and only thing was running was the camera and no software or web view, DVR nothing was powered on beside the camera it would forever run the guard program off the tour I set up... However were the camera is they Alarm Triggers are on the cameras power so if it was triggered it would take the motion and track until it was out of sight. Once out of sight it would return to Guard after 30s or 3 minutes without any other triggers...

The NVR is in most cases a Recording device and should have a HDD installed and setup to Record. However they can in most cases work as a Stand alone device that will let you monitor your camera however in my mind a DVR or NVR without a HDD is useless...

Blue Iris is a Software program that has loads of things... However it is only as good as your computers weakest link... IMHO I wouldn't use it over a NVR or DVR. WHY you may ask? Well the BIGGEST reason is that a computer that would run Blue Iris well enough to do what a good NVR can do would cost about 100 times or more per year to keep your computer running all day and night.. When a DVR/NVR was built to run 24/7 and it does only 1 thing... Protect your life and property.... At a low 12vdc power of 2 to 5 amps. Or About 70w Where my 2 main computers one a server has a 850watt PSU and my normal every day computer runs a 1200watt PSU... While most of that power is going to my Graphics. While I do have a Small FTP server that runs on a 200watt PSU 16gb ram and a VERY low watt CPU it works well as a FTP server. My other computers are between 500watts to 800 watts. In my personal computer line up I have 6 computers only 2 stay on 24/7 and they cost way more to run than my 5 DVR's 2 of them are 5amps and would be 140w between the 2 and my 2 Amcrest DVRs are 2amp or 24w each my last DVR is also 2amps or 24w so with all that All my dvr running 24/7 cost less then my server computer alone. Camera power supply is little differnt power but that isn't important because I was talking about cost of Computer vs Dvr/NVR for 24/7 recording...
Here to help the best I can.
Be Safe
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