I have a total of 16 camera's, a couple of Panasonic BL**, Linksys, Foscam FI8910w and Askak Mole IP cam for indoors along with a SWAN DVR system for outdoors that i just figured out how to add onto the software. I absolutely love it, and it's been working great over wifi, and the customization is awesome. I mainly bought it for home security and to monitor my newborn. I can setup to record motion for all the camera's and motion + email/sms alerts on specific ones that I would want to know about like front door, drive way and side gate access. I like using the text feature because it's almost instant. I get notifications on my iphone within 6-10 seconds of a trigger. It's awesome, example my text will read "Alert Motion detected on Side gate" ...I log in with my iphone Blue Iris app ($10) to see that the PGE guy is in my backyard reading my meter and throwing in lunch away in my trash can. If i miss it, the the iphone app has the ability to watch the DVR'd recording (with audio if your cam supports it). This feature alone is why i bought it. It is invaluable. Since most break in's happen in the day time, and thief's usually ring the door bell to see if anyone is home then go to the backyard where no can see to break in, this alerting system is critical along with the ability to review the alert to determine if it's legitimate or not. With the iphone app along with the PC version, I have reduced my remote viewing iPhone apps from 3 to just 1. Its so cool, i show it off to all my friends and co workers. Since I figured out all the settings, i helped them get it setup up to at their homes. They all love it. I use it all the time, even when I miss place something, it's awesome to have to abiliy to replay past events to find what you lost.The web browser functions works pretty good as well, I have noticed sometimes the image will get frozen and I need to refresh the browser to start up again using Firefox. This could be due to my companies firewall and proxy settings. The fix for this is to download the free add-in Auto Refresh v.1.02. I like this one the best because it has the option for hard refresh or the just a "soft" refresh of the view you are on. this is helpful if you have groups setup. I have Outdoor cams, Indoor Cams / and Kids room cams groups. Doing a hard refresh goes back to the default view which is view All camera's. I do not select this and only do a normal refresh every 1min (adjustable). This way when I only want to watch my kids rooms to make sure they are doing their homework or chores, when the page refreshes it remains on my 3 large camera's views of my kids rooms instead of going to the main "All camera's" view like with a "hard refresh" which makes them all very small b/c it's showing all 16 cams.
I have and monitored ADT security system as well but the Blue Iris application is like my front line of defense in case thief's try to cut the power or disconnect the phone line. Additonally it has the best user interface and endless features that are not available on any of the other security applications. I have the BI software running on a desktop PC for now recording to an external HD hidden behind some books on my bookshelf with a 15FT usb cable. A laptop would be better since you can hide it more and it has a battery for power outages. Just keep your router and a few camera's on a UPS and you should be fully protected.
Another cool feature is the ability to not only send alerts but it can play audio or turn on lights if alerts trigger. I have a profile setup for when I'm on vacation to play a 30min audio track of some action movie with explosions and dialog to simulate someone watching TV. The audio plays on my computer BOSE PC speakers that are turned up pretty loud. I also split the speakers out to they play on the opposite side of the house so that thieves could hear it from whatever entry point they are thinking about going in.
I did run into an issue with my Astak mole cam is very flaky on the BI software. I can get to it fine using its own webserver and on the Free IP cam app I have on my iphone, but with the BI software, it's hit or miss, sometimes it working and sometimes its not. This could be the camera though so I'm not going to knock off a star until I do some more research. I submitted a case with the BI support and got a response a few hours later from support. Ken offered some suggestions and also offered to help work on it if I put it online for him to take a look. Working in IT support myself, I was impressed with the support I received from the BI software developer.
Other features that would put this over the top would be the 2 way talk feature for both the remote web view and smart phone app. Some of my cameras (foscam/Astak) have the ability to speak into your phone or computer and with the built in speaker on the camera, it will output your voice on it. This is a neat feature to communicate to someone in the house when they are not picking up the phone. I purchased the foscam iphone app just for this feature alone, however it is lacking big time in comparison to the BI iphone app.
All in all I'm very impressed with both the Blue Iris PC app and the iPhone app. With the rising crime rate across the country because the cities have no money to fund police and investigators, burglar's know this and are taking advantage. As a homeowner, I understand that this will not prevent a break in, but at least it may catch one, or better yet deter one. I would highly recommend this to anyone wanting the flexibility of remote viewing and alerting for their security camera's.
UPDATE 6-21-2013:
Stability: I have had this thing running no stop for almost 4 months. There have been a few updates for BI since then and they have been all very nice enhancements and or fixes. The BI web server is bullet proof; I have not had the webserver crash at all since it's been up. I do restart my computer ever now and then for Windows critical updates but I have it setup so that when my computer reboots, it auto starts the BI software but minimized and password protected.
BI Mobile App: I have asked for it and now it is hear. The ability for two way communication with the foscam camera¡¦s. I can now hear and talk through the foscams via the BI mobile app. It works pretty good, but I do have to admit the quality and responsiveness is not as good as the native Foscam iphone app perhaps because it is going through the BI desktop webserver first then to your phone, whereas the Foscam app goes directly to your camera. But it is a good feature and probably needs to be optimized a bit to be on par with the Foscam mobile app. But I wouldn¡¦t buy the foscam iphone app to make up for it, I just happened to have both already so I¡¦ll continue to use the foscam for now.
Wireless Speeds: Since I have 16 Camera's, 6 of them are foscams and 2 other ones that are wireless, I notice that my wifi speeds for the home have decreased dramatically. My wired speeds are great getting 21mbps down and 3-4mpbs up. But when I run speed tests for my wifi, i'm getting 128-256 kbps transfer speeds on my N wireless network. Turning off the BI software gets me back to almost my wired speeds using the speedtest.net 6000-7000 KB/sec. Looking at the BI logs, I see that my wifi cams at 5 fps (frames per second) are sending about 64-128kbs per sec for each wireless cam (8x) so it¡¦s not that bad, and my wired cams are sending about 400-500kbs per sec at 15 FPS. There is a constant flow of data across my wireless network. I have an Linksys N router and a Cisco repeater/access point (G). My speed tests are done while connected to the N Linksys router.
Now this does not happen all the time which is frustrating, meaning sometimes when BI is on and running, I get normal fast wifi speeds, and sometimes I don't when it's running so I¡¦m thinking there is something else saturating my wifi network like the camera¡¦s internal web server. I need to do more investigation, but it seems like BI has a hand in it since when I do disable it my speeds come back instantly. I have since moved a lot of the camera's on Ethernet since the picture quality and frame rate is way better anyway, this has helped with intermittent wifi. I run a lot off wifi, TV Netflix, Apple Air Play, iPads, laptop, etc so this was of great concern. I now have only 4 cams on wifi and it seems to be working fine now. Just food for thought if you were running more than 8 wireless camera¡¦s you may see saturation on your wifi network.
Storage: I bought BI because I wanted to keep an eye on things due to the increased crime rate in our neighborhood, but also because I have a new born and 4 year old in the house and it¡¦s nice to capture those cute diaper changes and funny things kids do that made you wish it you had a camera recording while it happened. I have found myself going through these recordings and not wanting to delete anything ยบ!!!! Storage is cheap these days, and I picked up a Seagate 3TB backup plus drive for about $130. At the rate I¡¦m capturing videos, I have managed to fill up 400GB over the last 4 months. About 100GB per month, so I figured a 3 TB (275Gb usable) will last me for 2 years of cuteness before I buy another 3-4 TB drive. I¡¦m sure by that time they will be absurdly cheap. The other nice feature of this is that this drive doubles as a SATA drive docking station so I will just need to buy a HD only with no fancy case and slap it on.
Final thoughts is that I Still love this App and one of the best purchases I have made all year. I use it everyday not just for security, it has become the number on of my top apps I use on my phone and the live view and alerting feature has been invaluable. With the web security feature, I have allowed my parents to view my baby's room camera's during a specific time period so that they can just pop in and see the new baby sleeping and playing without having to face time me every few hours :-)
At first my wife and friends thought I was a little weird to have so much visibility/security camera's at my house, but after I show them the value of what it does for a home owner, parents of kids and dogs, I find them calling me a few weeks later asking how to set a system like that for them. If you have something to hide from your spouse then I would avoid putting camera's inside your home, but for us, we enjoy the sense of security and priceless moments it has allowed us to replay. Next up are some HD Cams :-)
Note that the BI software license is for ONE HOST COMPUTER. If you monitor/control your cameras from more than one computer you will need a separate license for each additional host. So be sure to install your software on your primary host.
For the price, this is an excellent buy. Full-up professional IP camera control packages typically cost 4X the asking BI price.I know you can run BootCamp/Parallels/Fusion to make this work on a MAC, but it would be nice to have a native MAC version. I did purchase this via the download from the Blue Iris website and did setup Bootcamp to run it and it works very well. It has all sorts of cameras and covers the many different cameras I use from Foscam, to Q-See to Swann and others.
The Blue Iris App works well, but you need to have it connect to the machine running the software. Once that is done, it's a no brainer
For the price, you cannot go wrong if you are running Windows. It works very well and is really easy to setup. The help files are well written and tell you everything you need to know for any setting. Just click the question mark on the page where you are and the help opens up to show you every option on that page and what you can do. You can also open the help from the home page and do all the normal things you can do with a Windows help searchThis software is can be quite complicated. It is NOT plug & play. There are many, many configuration options. The software requires extensive knowledge of settings and the language that go with knowing HTTP, FTP Servers, WEB Servers, IP configurations. I have written & currently support multiple web sites & maintain a Windows 2008 R2 network for a company of 35, so Im somewhat familiar with what it takes. If you want to record activity from installed cameras, logic says you need to move or copy those recordings "off premises" to be reviewed later, which this software does provide. Why? Because if your property is being stolen or destroyed, so are the recordings if they are only being stored locally, on premises. Its like any good backup. So an FTP off-site or cloud is necessary to protect your files. Read and take your time or you will find yourself being overwhelmed by technology. Update to backing up your files off-site. I discovered that the popular cloud-type backup companies do not support backing up video file types, ie: MOV, AVI or MP4. What you can do is to purchase an ISP account which generally gives you about 10GB to start. Then you need an FTP enabled synchronization type software to copy the jpg & video files to that off-site location. I have it set to copy from the directory every 10 min. These are just things you can never know up front.This is great remote viewing and recording software for the Foscam IP cameras. It does everything I want it to do. Email alert functionality works fine for me, and the motion sensing algorithm is easy to adjust and seems to work remarkably well. The pan, tilt interface for the Foscams works very well also better than the software that comes with the cameras. There are a plethora of feature controls, triggers, alert settings, and record options more than I will probably ever use. The navigation is well laid-out and things are easy to find.
My only criticisms are that it does not seem to provide a control for the IR lamps on the cameras, and the user interface is a bit "clunky" looking. But the latter issue doesn't affect functionality or usability, so who really cares? Overall, I'm quite pleased.
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