CCTV monitoring and control software

[Lily the Pink]

I have three cheap IP cameras (two wired via PLA and one WiFi). They work fine for my purposes, but I am having difficulties finding good software to run them. iSpy seems to be extremely cumbersome to set up though image quality on the screen is very good. I mostly use IP Camera (P2P Client), but the user guide is hopeless - at the moment I am having difficulty setting up motion detection recording to the onboard SIM card.

What does everybody else use ? And is there any AV/CCTV forum out there which folk can recommend ?

[TwistingMyMelon]

I was in the same position a few years back , Blue Iris is very good and does what you want

It’s easyish but there is a learning curve

It’s great for what it is but I got pissed of running different brands and specs of cameras so switched to one brand with a dedicated nvr

[stewilko]

I'm using Shinobi to record a couple of Reolink IP cameras. It was the easiest option at the time, albeit a bit buggy at first but improving all the time. It uses little CPU if you're not transcoding the video and the GUI is all browser based. I'm nothing bothering with motion detection or anything fancy like that.

For the geeks it uses Node for the web front end and ffmpeg child processes to stream the video directly to disk. Quite neat. I'm running on a Centos machine.

[tight fart]

I’ve had murders with my 2 PTZ external WiFi cameras since changing service providers.
So new router needs new settings for the cameras, need to wire them up temporarily
To put new passwords etc.
Cameras are Sricam and phone software is APCamera, that seems to have had an upgrade recently
that has a lot of complaints.
I’ve had both working for a while but not at the same time.

[Lily the Pink]

My two new cameras were very easy to connect and set up. Quite literally plug in power and ethernet, wait for the camera to calibrate itself, scan the qr code on the camera/box and add the new camera to whatever software you're using to monitor them; then unplug and move to wherever you want them. Mine are all wifi-capable, but I'm hardwiring the new ones via PLAs - is that an option for you as presumably you have a power socket somewhere near the camera ?

I had a duh moment this morning - I guess that motion detection is done by the monitoring software rather than onboard the camera, so it will not be possible to store snippets on the camera's sd card!