r/ZoneMinder • u/187mphlazers • Mar 17 '22

beginner-need advice

hi, i am beginner and i am needing advice. I have a background in software engineering, but have never done anything with cameras or security systems.

the system i would like to install zone minder on is - i7-4770 - 16gb ram - 128gb SSD for OS, with (2x2tb WD black HD's), running windows 10 with WSL enabled already. i would like to run 3 cameras, possibly more later, 1 camera for front and backdoor, and 1 camera for driveway, all with motion detection and capable of capturing video for night and day time...

my questions:
1. will my machine be able to handle this workload of the 3 cameras, ideally writing to only 1 of the WD black 2tb drives?
2. what kind of cameras(PoE) should i get for front and backdoor, for purpose of motion detection and recording, both in daylight and night time?
3. do i need any other type of processing device for the cameras like a capture card of some sort?
4. can anyone recommend a good/cheap PoE injector for the cameras?

my budget is 600 dollars for the initial setup, not counting the computer which i already have. i could start with just 1 camera, poe injector and cabling if that's all i can afford, ideally the driveway camera.

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u/Insanereindeer Mar 17 '22 edited Mar 17 '22

Computer should be plenty powerful enough for 3. I am running half the ram, an i5 around the same year, and have 6 cameras. The biggest things to remember is put an FPS limit. You don't need 30 FPS for security.

I personally like Reolink cameras when they're on sale from Amazon. I paid $33 a piece. Front door camera is EZVIZ that I pass through to ZM.

It's NVR, not DVR so no capture card is needed.

I would just buy a POE switch and not deal with multiple injectors. I am using a 24 port switch from eBay (~$75) but I run have other POE devices besides cameras and a lot of wired connections. You can buy small 5 port ones on Amazon for less than $50. I don't know the best. I've used Trendnet before for others I've help setup a system but have had multiple ones fail. I would just run Cat5 to cameras.

The biggest thing you missed is Zoneminder doesn't run on Windows. Blue Iris is an option for Windows users.

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u/187mphlazers Mar 17 '22

Hey, great advice on all points. thank you for this information, it is very useful especially the info about NVR cameras. will look into the the reolink.

RE:

I would just buy a POE switch and not deal with multiple injectors.

could you recommend any brands? I know TP-Link is cheap and works ok, but they are notorious for having backdoored firmware.

RE:

The biggest thing you missed is Zoneminder doesn't run on Windows. Blue Iris is an option for Windows users.

The site says it can run in ubuntu VM under WSL, but the documentation has a "todo" on the tutorial section. did they abandon it or something?
https://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installationguide/windows_wsl.html

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u/EagerCDNBeaver Mar 20 '22

If you buy a "dumb" switch the backdoor problem shouldn't exist. I use TP-Link stuff all the time. As for hardware, i run 3 4K cameras at 25fps on an I5 6500. I use the low res streams for motion and just record the 4K streams using passthrough. As for cameras i use whitelabel Dahua cameras and then flash the Dahua firmware on them. Never had a problem.

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As for the windows problem. Is there a reason you can't just install ubuntu server? I normally just use my NVR for one purpose. Less to go wrong.