NVR recommendation
Posted by Living_Illusion@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 11 comments
Hello everyone,
I am looking for an NVR system for my workplace.
We want to install multiple NVRs at different branches, most of them with only a handful of cameras that save the footage locally. Many branches just do not have the bandwidth to save it elsewhere. The system should also have notifications. It doesn’t need to have facial recognition or similarly fancy features—simple motion detection at nighttime would be enough, so we can protect our server room. We would also prefer if it could run on Linux, since we don’t want the hassle of Windows updates and restarts. The NVR also needs to be compatible with many different cameras, as there has been zero consistency regarding those in the past.
After researching, I think ZoneMinder looks quite interesting, but I would like to ask if you have any recommendations.
Ty very much in advance.
ITMasterOfNone@reddit
I'm currently covering a half million square feet of mostly warehouse & light production with the Reolink system. This won't meet your camera compatibility requirements, but it's so cheap that might not be a concern. For our needs, it works and has been generally reliable, AI person/vehicle alerts work well.
Downside is it records all of the time and marks the events, so retention in-NVR is limited by the single drive (8-ch) or dual drive (16-ch), HDD size is limited to 6TB as far as I know. I have one 8-ch with a 6TB drive and have about 2 weeks on mostly 4k cameras (same for 16-ch systems with dual 6TB). This works for us since we mostly need to know who wrecked a forklift yesterday, not something from months ago. I think you can dial down the recording resolution and/or the FPS if necessary.
Gaijin_530@reddit
The 16-ch units can hold a pair of 6TB drives. They also have a 36-camera system now that can do up to 48TB.
24/7 recording is a good thing. It's better to have a continuous video stream than a bunch of stop/start short clips to dig thru.
Living_Illusion@reddit (OP)
I would agree, but my boss doesn't. He wants to keep the existing Camera stock for now, there are so e really expensive one in certain areas, which he doesn't want to replace, but he wants the same NVR for all subsidiaries, so our technicians have it easier. We already have reolink cameras in many places, but we also have at least half a Dozent additional brands.
Gaijin_530@reddit
Reolink stuff is pretty good for the money, but with any system be prepared to rip & replace all the various/junk mismatched cameras.
CulinaryComputerWiz@reddit
+1 for Hanwha WAVE
I have 4 Different NVRs in different buildings (3 Win, 1 Linux) and about to add a 5th. They can all be linked together in a "Hive" and viewed and managed as a single installation with Wavesync.
Cameras are a mix of WAVE, Hikvision and Digital Watchdogs and some Generic ONVIF-capable. So far every camera I have thrown at it just works.
sembee2@reddit
Frigate. Runs on Linux and you can then do what you want with the camera feeds. Originally designed for the home automation crowd, but is very stable.
Living_Illusion@reddit (OP)
Yea i have seen Frigate too, it seemed quite similar to ZoneMinder. Do you have alot of experiance with it?
sembee2@reddit
I use it at home with eight cameras and it works well. It is under active development and does a simple job very well. It wouldn't take you long to spin up a Docker instance to run it in and you will soon know if you get to grips with it. I found it easier to setup and configure than Zoneminder. ZM is a mature project, but it has got a bit bloated in my experience.
theoriginalharbinger@reddit
Zoneminder.
As long as your cameras are ONVIF-capable, the camera choice shouldn't matter. Most of the ChiCom stuff is Shenzhen and cloned from Hikvision or Dahua. But unless you've got old-school HD-TVI or BNC connected cameras, what you have you should be ONVIF supported.
Put the cameras on their own VLAN (easy to do) to each NVR to avoid them being used for DDoS stuff (as notably happened a couple years ago).
slugshead@reddit
Hikvisions lineup ticks all these boxes, from the 2 channel kits through to the 256 channel ones.
Scared about the Chinese bit? Firewalls and ACLs.
greaseyknight2@reddit
Hanwha WAVE as a VMS, one time licensing, run it on Windows or Ubuntu.
But, Uniview NVR's would probably be your best bet, problem you will run into is motion recording when mixing and matching cameras. Wave VMS, takes care of that on the server side.
Those are our favorites as a security integrator.