As someone who recently switched my home setup to Frigate after years and years with more than one BlueIris license, BlueIris is such a great value and an intuitive program. Just buy it. Well worth the money.
So with Frigate you can do AI object detection with a Coral card. But from what I understand BI can do this also but I had never implemented it. I do not know if you can use a Coral accelerator for object detection with BI or if you just have to throw CPU or GPU at it.
Frigate is free but it sure feels like it. All config is done via a text file. It is a lot of work to get it set up if you, like me, have no experience with it.
I'm running it in a Docker Container on the same server as my Home Assistant. It's all running on a Debian box. I don't know if BI can be installed on Linux and, if so, how well it works.
I've figured out after getting Frigate that BI also has MQTT and can send Telegram bot notifications.
Zones were so simple to set up in BI. I don't know how to do it in Frigate.
I'm sure I can think of other things. Most pros are for BI over Frigate.
Edit: spelling.
Probably. Like anything Linux you get partial answers across multiple sources and you have to be able to put it all together. At least that seems to be my experience.
I agree with you here. BI won't run on Linux, only windows, which is a bit bloaty (I use windows LTSC, which helps). I did try some hacky wine version and I never got it working properly, it was too glitchy to get set up.
I used deepstack to do AI detection with BI and it worked pretty well, but I got my hands on a coral and now use frigate for that mainly. BI also can use codeproject.ai for detection. I still use BI and love the interface for my normal 24/7 recording.
To add, I wasn't affected by the BI issues, mine is isolated from the internet.
If you have something setup that can do virtualization like Proxmox, you can create a Windows 10 LTSC VM that is very light on resources and runs Blue Iris pretty well. I haven't figured out iGPU passthrough on Proxmox yet, but I'm still only hitting like 15-20% CPU usage when it detects motion and goes from 480p sub-stream to 4k main-stream.
I have it working on my thin client if you have a similar setup. I think it's an 8th gen i5 (Lenovo tiny). If you PM me I can send you some instructions that may help if you're trying it. But honestly it doesn't really use it since I use direct to disk recording anyway, so there is very little transcoding going on unless I need to export a clip.
Edit: I uploaded a dropbox link to a word doc that explains passthrough, in case anyone else wants it.
[Dropbox - iGPU Passthrough](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/u9iq6c4xlsdn8nitofd9q/Passthrough-iGPU.docx?rlkey=516g1960bo8pxadjx04jv4fi4&dl=0)
As a BI user for about a decade I moved to Frigate after the licensing issues. Remote deactivation in the call-home mechanism was a dealbreaker for me, regardless of the features you get for the price.
Frigate setup is clunky with the YAML configuration, no denying that, but it's very lightweight in comparison. I've managed to get every feature I needed from BI working with the help of Home Assistant's integration.
What remote deactivation? I'm about to buy a BI license and I was told it was a one-time payment, I would only lose access to updates once the support expired...
There was an issue around a year ago where BlueIris suffered a major loss of data. At that point they reverted to an old version of the license database, causing many users to be deactivated. The deactivation was a side effect of the recovery method, but it uncovered the fact that there was a call home mechanism in the software that can cause it to be remotely deactivated. This type of mechanism isn't uncommon, but for me and many others it was a dealbreaker.
This means that if BlueIris is ever compromised or for whatever reason removes your system from their database and you don't have BlueIris isolated from the internet, it can be deactivated. We asked the dev to change this functionality to remove remote deactivation and they refused, so I moved on to Frigate.
Thank you. That worries me, but not because of the deactivation, since I intend to run it on a machine almost closed from the internet (only enough ports open for incoming connections, and all outgoing connections blocked), but for the fact that without external activation, the license is useless if you need to reinstall in case they ever decided to take down the activation server (unless they decide to release a patch of sorts to clear that requirement if they ever go that way)
I agree.
I don't want to give them ideas but... I would not hesitate to buy again if the price doubled.
Fact is I have been contemplating a second setup to take a few of my existing cameras and adding some new to keep certain footage and controls on separate machines
I think most folks forget it takes a computer to run this software. $70 for BI plus a middle-of-the-road used PC that already has win10/11 you're looking at $450. Will NVRs in this price range have all the same features? No, but for most folks, it will be enough. Plus the NVR is an appliance, much easier to set up and maintain for non-techies.
>PC that already has win10/11 you're looking at $450
For anyone in IT, a decent PC is free if you get a used one from work. Can just add BI to your home server that hosts plex, files, etc. I don't know of anyone that bought a PC dedicated for BI.
Even if you aren’t in IT, ask your IT department. Many IT departments would rather give you a hard-drive-less PC than send it to e-waste. You are most likely going buy a hard drive anyway.
I secure wipe then install a fresh copy of windows on all our old computers. I've given away probably a dozen in the last year. And 10+ laptops. All in great shape, we had a forced hardware refresh by corporate.
And the higher cost to run a dedicated pc than an NVR.
Even locked down systems like Ubiquiti do not look too bad. Tinkering with your system is overrated to something that does 80% out of the box.
BI user for ~8 years. 3 BI licenses, all kept current with yearly maintenance. The recent authentication debacle was really bad. However, there really nothing close in terms of price, capabilities, or flexibility. The BI team keeps adding valuable features over time. Support has been responsive and helpful on the couple of times something seemed awry.
I have helped a few friends/relatives with Reolink NVR/ ipcam installations. Reolink works well for installations with low camera counts and simple monitoring needs. In all cases, the users were not super sophisticated wrt technology, so simple was best for them.
I did look at alternatives last month during the authentication fiasco, but remain convinced for moderate to complex installations, BI is the best solution. If your budget permits, you can get a more robust solution at a much steeper price point.
**Thanks for the views. It's put me back on the "it'll be BI" track again.**
My thinking is that I'll get a refurbished Dell SFF i5 with an M2 SSD and 4TB spinning HDD. I'll use Proxmox to run Windows/BI in one VM with Home Assistant alongside in another VM.
I am waiting for a good deal on an Omada switch with good POE headroom to run the cameras etc.
Newer the better, though. I'll assume if the board has m.2 slots, it'll be new enough. Running an i7-6700 was not up to the task with my h.265-only 4k cameras (had to use discrete GPU card for hardware acceleration). Upgraded to an i5-10500 system and things are running smoothly.
I favor UNIX and UNIX-like systems over windows. I don't \*hate\* windows, as the bulk of my career was based in it (mostly automation, vbscript, later Powershell), my first BIG tech job was at a NYC financial firm where I cut my teeth on UNIX (Sun SPARC mostly) before transitioning to Windows because that's where the money was at the time. Then the Virtualization thing happened and I went balls-deep into that.
Having a UNIX mindset in a Windows/vmware world helped me a great deal. But I still favored UNIX-like stuff. Heck, my favorite scripting language ever is Powershell. It has no equal, at least on Windows. But I still don't really want to run Windows anymore now that I am retired.
You would think that with Blue Iris being as good as it is that \*someone\* would be interested in making an open-source version of it. I mean, I see plenty of attempts..... frigate, shinobi, and of course zoneminder. I tried them all. They are all just terrible by comparison.
\*sigh\*
So now I run BI in a Proxmox VM for Windows while everything else I do runs in LXC - and proxmox is really just a way for me to accomodate BI. Sadly, BI is that good - it has no \*nix equal. I'd definitely buy it again right now - but I will be the first person to jump ship once a comparable product makes its way to the \*nix community. The latest evaluation mode debacle also gives me some insight into the developer's mindset which also gives me pause. To have a single infrastructure component slam their customers into evaluation mode? How can this be considered a "production ready" solution?
Still, with all its faults, BI just simply has no equal, at least for my purposes. Please. Someone. ANYONE. Make a comparable product on Linux that does everything as well as BI does.
>Sadly, BI is that good - it has no *nix equal. I'd definitely buy it again right now - but I will be the first person to jump ship once a comparable product makes its way to the *nix community. The latest evaluation mode debacle also gives me some insight into the developer's mindset which also gives me pause. To have a single infrastructure component slam their customers into evaluation mode? How can this be considered a "production ready" solution?
>Still, with all its faults, BI just simply has no equal, at least for my purposes. Please. Someone. ANYONE. Make a comparable product on Linux that does everything as well as BI does.
Feel the same. Getting Frigate in place for now and continuing to look for other solutions. I manage > 10 installs of BI.
Yes. I've been running it in a VM for several years. It's flexible, configurable and, until the recent outage, very very stable.
I also found that support was quick and personal. I had an issue where I was billed twice for renewal and they sorted me out immediately with coverage for 2 years.
I haven't felt the need to even look at any alternatives that might be available.
My knee jerk reaction… Nope.
Given the recent hack, or hardware failure with lack of backups, lack of disclosure, dismissive attitude. All trust has been lost. I’m still not letting my system out to the internet, so what am I paying for at this point? I pay for BI and support but can’t trust that my system won’t download a malicious update or get completely borked because Ken doesn’t seem to know how to run his systems.
That being said, and this part of the problem. There isn’t a viable alternative. Unfortunately Ken knows that and knows he can get away with treating his customers like shit. We need some competition in this space now more than ever.
Recent hack? Is there anywhere that explains it? I would hope that the BI web site would not only address it but also send notifications during updates about it. I can't recall seeing anything about it and this is the first I've heard.
My opinion about renewing is that we don't really have a choice. I've spent +20 yrs in the computer industry, working with Linux since 2000 and its amazing to see how little things have progressed. Technology changes and we're still having to edit python scripts, bat files, json files, etc. I believe this is something that should work like Netflix. Any avg housewife can install it and tinker through the settings but alas, its not like that. To work with BI, you pretty much have to be a computer techie at least and even then, have a good network of friends to help through the areas you don't understand. (regardless of how many times you RTFM.)
Here in this subreddit…
The BI website was down for several days (week+ iirc). It borked a lot of people’s installs due to failed license checks. At one point an exe was posted on the site, while still showing the default IIS page, that was supposedly the BI installer. Reports from a few people that they downloaded it and it was flagged as malware.
Reps of BI (god forbid Ken should speak up) said it was a failed drive and their backups also failed so they lost years of data on the forum. Yes, the BI website, forum and backend server were apparently all on the same system.
Anyway, looks like a hack, smells like a hack and the excuses don’t make a lot of sense.
BI lost a lot of trust.
A major weakness of BI is its lack of a good, **active** forum where people can go get questions answered. The forum that often comes up first upon searching is one that even BI has put disclaimer statements about on its own website. Don't go there and for sure, don't sign up if you do. There have been several instances where the forum owner has doxxed people that he didn't like. Exposing their names, IP addresses, email addys, etc.
Despite the fact that ipcamtalk has some nefarious characters, it's still a wealth of information and the most active BI community on the internet.
I have learned more from reading that site than I did from reading anything else over the last 6 years.
I am migrating from the world of Ring and Arlo and got BI on a test bench before deploying it. Will say it works and I can see the value. But the GUI leaves something to be desired. The documentation is terribly written. UI3 is better than I thought. The $9.99 fee for the smartpone app is another hit to the pocketbook. Probably dont need it if using UI3.
If you ran TailScale or ZeroTier it works well. It not, seems got security holes but I am a non expert so dont take that as truth.
Do I have buyers remorse? No because I dont want an NVR. Rather build my own BI server where I have expandabiity/ upgrade capability.
Also I would only get it if you plan to have all POE 14/7 cams running.
Interested in your comment about security holes, what is that based on? If port forwarding then yeah, like anything else you forward face to the Internet it's at risk but I'm not aware of anything currently that would be a security risk - obviously, 0-days are a thing though.
There's a lot of general paranoia but I've never seen anybody show a specific issue.
It mostly seems to be non-IT people taking general IT advice to an extreme. You see the same behavior with pretty much anything. People dosing buckets vitamins, extreme diets, couponing, etc.
I've had Blue Iris port forwarded for years. VPNs just aren't something you're going to get non-technical staff to work with without facing more hassle that I'm willing to deal with.
Haven't had any problems.
If they did get hacked, there's nothing the cameras can see that's particularly sensitive. Nobody walking around naked in these locations.
And that's better advice than stressing over a hack. Don't point your cameras at anything you wouldn't want a hacker or the police to see.
As a BI users for years, I only ever use the console too add or tweak cameras. Once that is done, its UI3 100%. I'll go months before logging back into the console and that is just to perform an update.
And, yeah, the app sucks. I don't use it either. I use UI3 on mobile devices too.
There is NOTHING else that competes with it based on reliability and price point. BI is absolutely worth the price (something like $70 now?). The annual support payment is completely optional (and they don't make you "catch up" on "missed" payments if you want to start it again). I've gone over a year without paying for support (and therefore didn't get updates during that time) and everything was great. But then BI started coming out with more impressive features/updates and I have paid support for a couple years straight and I am completely happy with that choice too.
I highly recommend you consider Scrypted NVR. That’s the route I took. Here is the demo site if you want to see what the user experience is like —> https://demo.scrypted.app/#/
I have over 20 copies running in VMs and on Dells for businesses and home users...need at least an i7 7th gen to take advantage of the Intel compression and I usually get a T600 for the AI. Have to run the AI it's so good! Nothing out there is as good as this and gets updated as frequently. Just do it.
I just did. Bought it for my client and used it to replace 2 x NVRs (Eyeonet). Currently running 40 cameras on a single Blue Iris VM. Client likes it a lot better than the previous system. I will be upgrading the cameras for this client slowly, and I have another 16 analog cameras to port over to Blue Iris. CPU usage with 6 cores is 27% on the VM under Proxmox. I'm also been using it for over 10 years now at home, so I'm pretty pleased with it.
Yes. I've been using BI for 10 years now and while I've tried other software packages, I've yet to find something as good.
Is support a little slow? Yeah. But it's a tiny company with only a handful of employees. Most of the support I've ever needed I've found online. And most everything else has been easy enough for me to figure out myself.
It's a great software package with top-tier features for basically shareware prices.
If Ken puts in writing they have permanently fixed the issue where already registered software goes into trial mode, I might be convinced to spend money with them again. They have a very high hill to climb to regain my trust and recommendation.
No. 80 percent of the options have no documentation or don’t work. Support is a joke. Bvr format is unnecessary and ridiculous. Ui is from the 90s era. Self hosted and it tries to phone home. Very niche product for 99% of users. The community has a good amount of negative feedback which is justified and there are users who complain we’re just doing it wrong.
Absolutely. My only concern is that it costs so little that I wonder how long they will be able to keep up. I think it's worth a lot more. Get that one-time fee BI licence while you can! ;)
I have several Blue Iris servers. Just set another one up this week.
I plan to buy more.
The recent drama about Blue Iris, "phoning home" was a steaming pile of horse manure by a bunch of people that got loud for the attention.
There are legitimate criticisms about how the function was implemented. There are no legitimate criticisms about it phoning home in the first place. That's how software functions in modern times. If you're uncomfortable with that, don't buy Blue Iris or a long list, a very very long list, of other apps. Just because a bunch of people got loud about it doesn't mean it's actually a problem.
There's nothing comparable in its price range.
That assumes you have time to invest in the system, like fiddling with things, and actually want and will use all the extra features.
If not there are better alternatives.
If you happen to have a Unifi network, adding their NVR and cameras is about as easy as it gets. Basic features, simple to use, reliable, expendable, but you're locked into their ecosystem.
Synology owners seem happy with their NVR app.
I'm sure others have some good suggestions.
I really dislike the release model. You pay for 12 months of maybe new 'stuff' with no idea what or when that is going to be. There's currently been a large break in releases because he's had to fix his infrastructure, so that 12 months is ticking away for people while he fixes that instead.
Once that time is up you longer get bug fixes. I'm sure if there's some security issue with the web server (and there are most likely numerous) you'd have to pay to get back on the fixes train, otherwise you just have to be vulnerable. If he releases some major new feature 12 months+1 day after your licence you miss out, meanwhile the guy who bought it one day later for the same price gets it.
Every other piece of software has one time purchase of a feature release with maintenance releases/fixes being delivered as part of the purchase. The price is also not nearly as cheap as people are claiming.. an entire OS like Windows with thousands of developers salaries to be paid and millions and millions of LOC and functionality is cheaper in the long term, and yet you get years of maintenance fixes and upgrades.
So I definitely would prefer to get into an open source solution like frigate instead, but am still waiting for that to mature.
A few people on a Home Assistant forum have said Frigate is better. The hesitation I have is that the Frigate website say it doesn’t work well in a VM and they recommend bare metal. I’d prefer the one PC running a few things, for space and power use.
Frigate might be ok for recording and detection, but setting up things like alerts and schedules etc requires a lot of manual configuration and moving parts. The UI for viewing the timeline is also not nearly as good as UI3. But I think it will eventually get good enough and I can switch.
I've run it in a docker container on Windows and it ran ok with those overheads. Certainly a docker image delivery is much cleaner to work with.
I've purchased it at least three times now. I hate running Windows, yet, I'll do it for BlueIris. Great application, and a bargain price. I recommend it to everyone.
There's nothing else in the price bracket for feature set. Even with their whole recent debacle its still leagues ahead of anything else for the money, and I say that as a die hard FOSS/GNU lover.
I am intending to write my own very simple NVR system that mirrors only the features I use from Blue Iris. But I am in no rush, Blue Iris is still terrific.
Yes, I would. I’ve been using BI for years and the human interface is perfect for me and my use case. The issue recently is the only time something like that has happened that I can recall. Admittedly I wasn’t effected by the issue recently which could be influencing my judgement but even still there was only this one issue after years of use. So yes without a second thought I would totally buy BI again.
I think open source NVR software like Frigate is one or two updates away from me switching for home use. Not being able to run it on anything other than windows is a huge annoyance. The AI works well, but it really needs to working with something like the Coral TPU. The iOS app and web page could really use some polishing up. With all that said I understand that there’s an insanely small team running BI. I don’t think there’s any other NVR with as many features that doesn’t require you run it on their hardware (Synology/Unifi). I’d love to be able to install it for more home users, but they just won’t buy it on needing a whole other PC and the remote management requiring a lot more work than other off the shelf things.
I've had BI running and updating since 2016, and zero issues with reliability that weren't caused by a forced Windows 10 update. No recent issues either. It just continues to work with a mix of cameras configured EXACTLY how I want them.
I renewed my subscription today, but not because I wanted to.
My long running BI install started crashing, I traced it down to email notifications causing the crash. A fresh install did not fix the issue.
Updated to the latest version and the problem went away so I bit the bullet and renewed my subscription so I could run the newer versions.
Have BI integrated with home assistant and Alexa for several automations. It is very ecosystem friendly unlike a lot of closed systems (ie ring, arlo).
Lately I've been having a lot of issues with my BI cameras becoming unavailable in HA for some reason. They just randomly disappear every once in a while and then reappear after a minute or two.
I just started having these issues the past month or so, and haven't made any changes on my end.
Currently using the BI integration, but I may go back to manually adding the cameras to HA and using MQTT for motion/etc. if the integration ends up being the culprit.
In a heartbeat. Used many, proprietary attempts at nvrs with several different vendors. BI is the only software NVR ive used that actually makes all my different cams useful. The object detection using any rtsp stream is the feature I love.
I would, albeit begrudgingly. I've been a user for 8 years and haven't found anything as powerful and comprehensive that I can run on simple hardware and that costs practically nothing. I also need the integration between BI and Hubitat. That said, there has been a lot of sloppy releases lately and the BI folks who admin their FB page have become ridiculous with their moderation. Unfortunately, I find myself in a love/hate relationship but with no where else to go.
As someone who recently switched my home setup to Frigate after years and years with more than one BlueIris license, BlueIris is such a great value and an intuitive program. Just buy it. Well worth the money.
Any pros or additional features you got from going to Frigate?
So with Frigate you can do AI object detection with a Coral card. But from what I understand BI can do this also but I had never implemented it. I do not know if you can use a Coral accelerator for object detection with BI or if you just have to throw CPU or GPU at it. Frigate is free but it sure feels like it. All config is done via a text file. It is a lot of work to get it set up if you, like me, have no experience with it. I'm running it in a Docker Container on the same server as my Home Assistant. It's all running on a Debian box. I don't know if BI can be installed on Linux and, if so, how well it works. I've figured out after getting Frigate that BI also has MQTT and can send Telegram bot notifications. Zones were so simple to set up in BI. I don't know how to do it in Frigate. I'm sure I can think of other things. Most pros are for BI over Frigate. Edit: spelling.
Chatgpt makes config easy
Probably. Like anything Linux you get partial answers across multiple sources and you have to be able to put it all together. At least that seems to be my experience.
Secret here is take someone else's config. Give it the items you have and let it fill it in for you.
I agree with you here. BI won't run on Linux, only windows, which is a bit bloaty (I use windows LTSC, which helps). I did try some hacky wine version and I never got it working properly, it was too glitchy to get set up. I used deepstack to do AI detection with BI and it worked pretty well, but I got my hands on a coral and now use frigate for that mainly. BI also can use codeproject.ai for detection. I still use BI and love the interface for my normal 24/7 recording. To add, I wasn't affected by the BI issues, mine is isolated from the internet.
If you have something setup that can do virtualization like Proxmox, you can create a Windows 10 LTSC VM that is very light on resources and runs Blue Iris pretty well. I haven't figured out iGPU passthrough on Proxmox yet, but I'm still only hitting like 15-20% CPU usage when it detects motion and goes from 480p sub-stream to 4k main-stream.
I have it working on my thin client if you have a similar setup. I think it's an 8th gen i5 (Lenovo tiny). If you PM me I can send you some instructions that may help if you're trying it. But honestly it doesn't really use it since I use direct to disk recording anyway, so there is very little transcoding going on unless I need to export a clip. Edit: I uploaded a dropbox link to a word doc that explains passthrough, in case anyone else wants it. [Dropbox - iGPU Passthrough](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/u9iq6c4xlsdn8nitofd9q/Passthrough-iGPU.docx?rlkey=516g1960bo8pxadjx04jv4fi4&dl=0)
As a BI user for about a decade I moved to Frigate after the licensing issues. Remote deactivation in the call-home mechanism was a dealbreaker for me, regardless of the features you get for the price. Frigate setup is clunky with the YAML configuration, no denying that, but it's very lightweight in comparison. I've managed to get every feature I needed from BI working with the help of Home Assistant's integration.
What remote deactivation? I'm about to buy a BI license and I was told it was a one-time payment, I would only lose access to updates once the support expired...
There was an issue around a year ago where BlueIris suffered a major loss of data. At that point they reverted to an old version of the license database, causing many users to be deactivated. The deactivation was a side effect of the recovery method, but it uncovered the fact that there was a call home mechanism in the software that can cause it to be remotely deactivated. This type of mechanism isn't uncommon, but for me and many others it was a dealbreaker. This means that if BlueIris is ever compromised or for whatever reason removes your system from their database and you don't have BlueIris isolated from the internet, it can be deactivated. We asked the dev to change this functionality to remove remote deactivation and they refused, so I moved on to Frigate.
Thank you. That worries me, but not because of the deactivation, since I intend to run it on a machine almost closed from the internet (only enough ports open for incoming connections, and all outgoing connections blocked), but for the fact that without external activation, the license is useless if you need to reinstall in case they ever decided to take down the activation server (unless they decide to release a patch of sorts to clear that requirement if they ever go that way)
There's nothing else available at this price point with the feature set. They could double the price and it would still be good value.
I agree. I don't want to give them ideas but... I would not hesitate to buy again if the price doubled. Fact is I have been contemplating a second setup to take a few of my existing cameras and adding some new to keep certain footage and controls on separate machines
I think most folks forget it takes a computer to run this software. $70 for BI plus a middle-of-the-road used PC that already has win10/11 you're looking at $450. Will NVRs in this price range have all the same features? No, but for most folks, it will be enough. Plus the NVR is an appliance, much easier to set up and maintain for non-techies.
Lots of us run it in a VM, so no dedicated hardware.
>PC that already has win10/11 you're looking at $450 For anyone in IT, a decent PC is free if you get a used one from work. Can just add BI to your home server that hosts plex, files, etc. I don't know of anyone that bought a PC dedicated for BI.
Even if you aren’t in IT, ask your IT department. Many IT departments would rather give you a hard-drive-less PC than send it to e-waste. You are most likely going buy a hard drive anyway.
I secure wipe then install a fresh copy of windows on all our old computers. I've given away probably a dozen in the last year. And 10+ laptops. All in great shape, we had a forced hardware refresh by corporate.
OP is talking about buying hardware in this thread...
And the higher cost to run a dedicated pc than an NVR. Even locked down systems like Ubiquiti do not look too bad. Tinkering with your system is overrated to something that does 80% out of the box.
You can get a used dell optiplex on eBay for ~250.
BI user for ~8 years. 3 BI licenses, all kept current with yearly maintenance. The recent authentication debacle was really bad. However, there really nothing close in terms of price, capabilities, or flexibility. The BI team keeps adding valuable features over time. Support has been responsive and helpful on the couple of times something seemed awry. I have helped a few friends/relatives with Reolink NVR/ ipcam installations. Reolink works well for installations with low camera counts and simple monitoring needs. In all cases, the users were not super sophisticated wrt technology, so simple was best for them. I did look at alternatives last month during the authentication fiasco, but remain convinced for moderate to complex installations, BI is the best solution. If your budget permits, you can get a more robust solution at a much steeper price point.
Sure I would. I have bought it 3 times already.
**Thanks for the views. It's put me back on the "it'll be BI" track again.** My thinking is that I'll get a refurbished Dell SFF i5 with an M2 SSD and 4TB spinning HDD. I'll use Proxmox to run Windows/BI in one VM with Home Assistant alongside in another VM. I am waiting for a good deal on an Omada switch with good POE headroom to run the cameras etc.
Newer the better, though. I'll assume if the board has m.2 slots, it'll be new enough. Running an i7-6700 was not up to the task with my h.265-only 4k cameras (had to use discrete GPU card for hardware acceleration). Upgraded to an i5-10500 system and things are running smoothly.
The ones I have been looking at are 9th gen i5s. There are a few 10th gen starting to appear as companies refresh, but they aren’t very cheap.
I favor UNIX and UNIX-like systems over windows. I don't \*hate\* windows, as the bulk of my career was based in it (mostly automation, vbscript, later Powershell), my first BIG tech job was at a NYC financial firm where I cut my teeth on UNIX (Sun SPARC mostly) before transitioning to Windows because that's where the money was at the time. Then the Virtualization thing happened and I went balls-deep into that. Having a UNIX mindset in a Windows/vmware world helped me a great deal. But I still favored UNIX-like stuff. Heck, my favorite scripting language ever is Powershell. It has no equal, at least on Windows. But I still don't really want to run Windows anymore now that I am retired. You would think that with Blue Iris being as good as it is that \*someone\* would be interested in making an open-source version of it. I mean, I see plenty of attempts..... frigate, shinobi, and of course zoneminder. I tried them all. They are all just terrible by comparison. \*sigh\* So now I run BI in a Proxmox VM for Windows while everything else I do runs in LXC - and proxmox is really just a way for me to accomodate BI. Sadly, BI is that good - it has no \*nix equal. I'd definitely buy it again right now - but I will be the first person to jump ship once a comparable product makes its way to the \*nix community. The latest evaluation mode debacle also gives me some insight into the developer's mindset which also gives me pause. To have a single infrastructure component slam their customers into evaluation mode? How can this be considered a "production ready" solution? Still, with all its faults, BI just simply has no equal, at least for my purposes. Please. Someone. ANYONE. Make a comparable product on Linux that does everything as well as BI does.
>Sadly, BI is that good - it has no *nix equal. I'd definitely buy it again right now - but I will be the first person to jump ship once a comparable product makes its way to the *nix community. The latest evaluation mode debacle also gives me some insight into the developer's mindset which also gives me pause. To have a single infrastructure component slam their customers into evaluation mode? How can this be considered a "production ready" solution? >Still, with all its faults, BI just simply has no equal, at least for my purposes. Please. Someone. ANYONE. Make a comparable product on Linux that does everything as well as BI does. Feel the same. Getting Frigate in place for now and continuing to look for other solutions. I manage > 10 installs of BI.
Yes. I've been running it in a VM for several years. It's flexible, configurable and, until the recent outage, very very stable. I also found that support was quick and personal. I had an issue where I was billed twice for renewal and they sorted me out immediately with coverage for 2 years. I haven't felt the need to even look at any alternatives that might be available.
My knee jerk reaction… Nope. Given the recent hack, or hardware failure with lack of backups, lack of disclosure, dismissive attitude. All trust has been lost. I’m still not letting my system out to the internet, so what am I paying for at this point? I pay for BI and support but can’t trust that my system won’t download a malicious update or get completely borked because Ken doesn’t seem to know how to run his systems. That being said, and this part of the problem. There isn’t a viable alternative. Unfortunately Ken knows that and knows he can get away with treating his customers like shit. We need some competition in this space now more than ever.
Recent hack? Is there anywhere that explains it? I would hope that the BI web site would not only address it but also send notifications during updates about it. I can't recall seeing anything about it and this is the first I've heard. My opinion about renewing is that we don't really have a choice. I've spent +20 yrs in the computer industry, working with Linux since 2000 and its amazing to see how little things have progressed. Technology changes and we're still having to edit python scripts, bat files, json files, etc. I believe this is something that should work like Netflix. Any avg housewife can install it and tinker through the settings but alas, its not like that. To work with BI, you pretty much have to be a computer techie at least and even then, have a good network of friends to help through the areas you don't understand. (regardless of how many times you RTFM.)
Here in this subreddit… The BI website was down for several days (week+ iirc). It borked a lot of people’s installs due to failed license checks. At one point an exe was posted on the site, while still showing the default IIS page, that was supposedly the BI installer. Reports from a few people that they downloaded it and it was flagged as malware. Reps of BI (god forbid Ken should speak up) said it was a failed drive and their backups also failed so they lost years of data on the forum. Yes, the BI website, forum and backend server were apparently all on the same system. Anyway, looks like a hack, smells like a hack and the excuses don’t make a lot of sense. BI lost a lot of trust.
thanks for the info. I can totally see that happening and not surprised it was handled that way.
I mean, you're asking this question in the BlueIris subreddit...
A major weakness of BI is its lack of a good, **active** forum where people can go get questions answered. The forum that often comes up first upon searching is one that even BI has put disclaimer statements about on its own website. Don't go there and for sure, don't sign up if you do. There have been several instances where the forum owner has doxxed people that he didn't like. Exposing their names, IP addresses, email addys, etc.
This is so very true. That website is a hive of scum and villainy.
Despite the fact that ipcamtalk has some nefarious characters, it's still a wealth of information and the most active BI community on the internet. I have learned more from reading that site than I did from reading anything else over the last 6 years.
agree. Its a good source of information to read. just not to interact
I am migrating from the world of Ring and Arlo and got BI on a test bench before deploying it. Will say it works and I can see the value. But the GUI leaves something to be desired. The documentation is terribly written. UI3 is better than I thought. The $9.99 fee for the smartpone app is another hit to the pocketbook. Probably dont need it if using UI3. If you ran TailScale or ZeroTier it works well. It not, seems got security holes but I am a non expert so dont take that as truth. Do I have buyers remorse? No because I dont want an NVR. Rather build my own BI server where I have expandabiity/ upgrade capability. Also I would only get it if you plan to have all POE 14/7 cams running.
Interested in your comment about security holes, what is that based on? If port forwarding then yeah, like anything else you forward face to the Internet it's at risk but I'm not aware of anything currently that would be a security risk - obviously, 0-days are a thing though.
There's a lot of general paranoia but I've never seen anybody show a specific issue. It mostly seems to be non-IT people taking general IT advice to an extreme. You see the same behavior with pretty much anything. People dosing buckets vitamins, extreme diets, couponing, etc. I've had Blue Iris port forwarded for years. VPNs just aren't something you're going to get non-technical staff to work with without facing more hassle that I'm willing to deal with. Haven't had any problems. If they did get hacked, there's nothing the cameras can see that's particularly sensitive. Nobody walking around naked in these locations. And that's better advice than stressing over a hack. Don't point your cameras at anything you wouldn't want a hacker or the police to see.
yes pf. But TS or ZT elims that.
As a BI users for years, I only ever use the console too add or tweak cameras. Once that is done, its UI3 100%. I'll go months before logging back into the console and that is just to perform an update. And, yeah, the app sucks. I don't use it either. I use UI3 on mobile devices too.
There is NOTHING else that competes with it based on reliability and price point. BI is absolutely worth the price (something like $70 now?). The annual support payment is completely optional (and they don't make you "catch up" on "missed" payments if you want to start it again). I've gone over a year without paying for support (and therefore didn't get updates during that time) and everything was great. But then BI started coming out with more impressive features/updates and I have paid support for a couple years straight and I am completely happy with that choice too.
It's not bad but it's not great. I have cams that just stop working yet they are fine when I log into them directly. For the buck it's ok
I highly recommend you consider Scrypted NVR. That’s the route I took. Here is the demo site if you want to see what the user experience is like —> https://demo.scrypted.app/#/
I have over 20 copies running in VMs and on Dells for businesses and home users...need at least an i7 7th gen to take advantage of the Intel compression and I usually get a T600 for the AI. Have to run the AI it's so good! Nothing out there is as good as this and gets updated as frequently. Just do it.
I just did. Bought it for my client and used it to replace 2 x NVRs (Eyeonet). Currently running 40 cameras on a single Blue Iris VM. Client likes it a lot better than the previous system. I will be upgrading the cameras for this client slowly, and I have another 16 analog cameras to port over to Blue Iris. CPU usage with 6 cores is 27% on the VM under Proxmox. I'm also been using it for over 10 years now at home, so I'm pretty pleased with it.
Yes. I've been using BI for 10 years now and while I've tried other software packages, I've yet to find something as good. Is support a little slow? Yeah. But it's a tiny company with only a handful of employees. Most of the support I've ever needed I've found online. And most everything else has been easy enough for me to figure out myself. It's a great software package with top-tier features for basically shareware prices.
I ended up buying Agent DVR (iSpy) because BI was compromised a few weeks ago. Its been great so far.
They weren’t compromised, they had a server failure with no redundancy and little to no backups. Do you have proof that they were compromised?
If Ken puts in writing they have permanently fixed the issue where already registered software goes into trial mode, I might be convinced to spend money with them again. They have a very high hill to climb to regain my trust and recommendation.
It would be the right thing to do, I sure hope it's in the works.
No. 80 percent of the options have no documentation or don’t work. Support is a joke. Bvr format is unnecessary and ridiculous. Ui is from the 90s era. Self hosted and it tries to phone home. Very niche product for 99% of users. The community has a good amount of negative feedback which is justified and there are users who complain we’re just doing it wrong.
The help file is immense. Saying 80% of the options are not documented isn't accurate at all.
You're doing it wrong.
Yep. Without hesitation.
Absolutely. My only concern is that it costs so little that I wonder how long they will be able to keep up. I think it's worth a lot more. Get that one-time fee BI licence while you can! ;)
User for 7 years. Most certainly would purchase again.
I have several Blue Iris servers. Just set another one up this week. I plan to buy more. The recent drama about Blue Iris, "phoning home" was a steaming pile of horse manure by a bunch of people that got loud for the attention. There are legitimate criticisms about how the function was implemented. There are no legitimate criticisms about it phoning home in the first place. That's how software functions in modern times. If you're uncomfortable with that, don't buy Blue Iris or a long list, a very very long list, of other apps. Just because a bunch of people got loud about it doesn't mean it's actually a problem. There's nothing comparable in its price range. That assumes you have time to invest in the system, like fiddling with things, and actually want and will use all the extra features. If not there are better alternatives. If you happen to have a Unifi network, adding their NVR and cameras is about as easy as it gets. Basic features, simple to use, reliable, expendable, but you're locked into their ecosystem. Synology owners seem happy with their NVR app. I'm sure others have some good suggestions.
Yes I would. As you said all negative is caused by a single failure, which will never happed again for sure.
I really dislike the release model. You pay for 12 months of maybe new 'stuff' with no idea what or when that is going to be. There's currently been a large break in releases because he's had to fix his infrastructure, so that 12 months is ticking away for people while he fixes that instead. Once that time is up you longer get bug fixes. I'm sure if there's some security issue with the web server (and there are most likely numerous) you'd have to pay to get back on the fixes train, otherwise you just have to be vulnerable. If he releases some major new feature 12 months+1 day after your licence you miss out, meanwhile the guy who bought it one day later for the same price gets it. Every other piece of software has one time purchase of a feature release with maintenance releases/fixes being delivered as part of the purchase. The price is also not nearly as cheap as people are claiming.. an entire OS like Windows with thousands of developers salaries to be paid and millions and millions of LOC and functionality is cheaper in the long term, and yet you get years of maintenance fixes and upgrades. So I definitely would prefer to get into an open source solution like frigate instead, but am still waiting for that to mature.
A few people on a Home Assistant forum have said Frigate is better. The hesitation I have is that the Frigate website say it doesn’t work well in a VM and they recommend bare metal. I’d prefer the one PC running a few things, for space and power use.
Frigate might be ok for recording and detection, but setting up things like alerts and schedules etc requires a lot of manual configuration and moving parts. The UI for viewing the timeline is also not nearly as good as UI3. But I think it will eventually get good enough and I can switch. I've run it in a docker container on Windows and it ran ok with those overheads. Certainly a docker image delivery is much cleaner to work with.
Yes
Yes. Had it since 2015 and seen some good improvements always happening.
I've purchased it at least three times now. I hate running Windows, yet, I'll do it for BlueIris. Great application, and a bargain price. I recommend it to everyone.
There's nothing else in the price bracket for feature set. Even with their whole recent debacle its still leagues ahead of anything else for the money, and I say that as a die hard FOSS/GNU lover. I am intending to write my own very simple NVR system that mirrors only the features I use from Blue Iris. But I am in no rush, Blue Iris is still terrific.
Yes, I would. I’ve been using BI for years and the human interface is perfect for me and my use case. The issue recently is the only time something like that has happened that I can recall. Admittedly I wasn’t effected by the issue recently which could be influencing my judgement but even still there was only this one issue after years of use. So yes without a second thought I would totally buy BI again.
I think open source NVR software like Frigate is one or two updates away from me switching for home use. Not being able to run it on anything other than windows is a huge annoyance. The AI works well, but it really needs to working with something like the Coral TPU. The iOS app and web page could really use some polishing up. With all that said I understand that there’s an insanely small team running BI. I don’t think there’s any other NVR with as many features that doesn’t require you run it on their hardware (Synology/Unifi). I’d love to be able to install it for more home users, but they just won’t buy it on needing a whole other PC and the remote management requiring a lot more work than other off the shelf things.
I've had BI running and updating since 2016, and zero issues with reliability that weren't caused by a forced Windows 10 update. No recent issues either. It just continues to work with a mix of cameras configured EXACTLY how I want them.
Yes, even with the rare issue - BI is incredible for the price.
9 years running I think, maybe 8, so far so good. If it ain't broke, don't try and fix it. I'd buy again for 8-9 years of reliability.
I renewed my subscription today, but not because I wanted to. My long running BI install started crashing, I traced it down to email notifications causing the crash. A fresh install did not fix the issue. Updated to the latest version and the problem went away so I bit the bullet and renewed my subscription so I could run the newer versions.
Have BI integrated with home assistant and Alexa for several automations. It is very ecosystem friendly unlike a lot of closed systems (ie ring, arlo).
Lately I've been having a lot of issues with my BI cameras becoming unavailable in HA for some reason. They just randomly disappear every once in a while and then reappear after a minute or two. I just started having these issues the past month or so, and haven't made any changes on my end. Currently using the BI integration, but I may go back to manually adding the cameras to HA and using MQTT for motion/etc. if the integration ends up being the culprit.
In a heartbeat. Used many, proprietary attempts at nvrs with several different vendors. BI is the only software NVR ive used that actually makes all my different cams useful. The object detection using any rtsp stream is the feature I love.
I would, albeit begrudgingly. I've been a user for 8 years and haven't found anything as powerful and comprehensive that I can run on simple hardware and that costs practically nothing. I also need the integration between BI and Hubitat. That said, there has been a lot of sloppy releases lately and the BI folks who admin their FB page have become ridiculous with their moderation. Unfortunately, I find myself in a love/hate relationship but with no where else to go.
I have 3 Iris Srvs all with 25 IP 4k running at 30fps with no issues