Very good review! I've been looking for something to replace the crappy Arlo system I currently have. I had a Ubiquity at my last home, but I haven't wired up the new house. This is just the thing to motivate me to get the cables run.

Fantastic and informative video. Appreciate your knowledge.

Can you please help me - which synology to buy to run this? I want something for home purposes, so the cheapest option. Thanks for advice!

Would love some more about this and using triggers to start recording. Triggers by hardware. Door opens or motion detectors.

@n1npo

3 жыл бұрын

Same!

Can you have multiple sources connecting to a IP camera with full control? eg like a synology nas and a blue iris setup and a standalone nvr all at the same time?

are lorex a good cameras ? i have the 4k 8mp from lorex but the 8 ch nvr only support 8tb .. how to add some 80+tb for more months recording ? or which nvr should i buy that is expandable to 80+ tb with the same poe camera ? thanks

Can you connect to a tv through a network connection (DLNA)?

Is this station good for 16 cams? I will partition the storage for cameras and server backup. I seen a video where you said not to use the synology in the background for 10 or more cans. (Yesterday vlog). Thw background synology was ds918+ I believe. The site lists it is perfect for 16 cams

Can i add ipcamera from a diff location?

I have a relatively powerful computer which I can leave on all the time (core i7, 64 GB RAM, 1GB GPU). I wish to have 8 security cameras. Can I just install Blue iris on my computer and use it as a server as well? Or I need to buy a dedicated server for the cameras? Thanks for great content

Are you supporting any clients with more enterprise CCTV solutions such as Genetec or Milestone?

The nvr1218 having four licenses makes it worth it over a normal synology unless you want the plus bitrot protection. Iirc they're going to change the name to dva or something similar next year. Amcrest is on my short list. Combining it with a ring doorbell pro to monitor my house/pet.

the NVR 1218 also comes with 4 licenses out of the box

I like setting up All time record + Event record. Synology's Timeline seems to work the best to accomplish this. You get a full timeline of 24/7 recordings and still have the highlights of motion events on the timeline. And it's done efficiently with a single video file. Most other camera software writes two files, and uses twice the resources. You can jump to the time something happened, and if in-doubt you can prove the software didn't fail. A lot of clients don't trust the system and think something happened when it didn't and you can show them, no in-fact absolutely nothing happened here, see for yourself. Instead of saying just trust the software, it's blank because nothing happened. Should I only capture events and have no answer for customers that need proof? Or should I sit here all day reviewing 24/7 footage because the customer doesn't know when the thing happened, and doesn't trust the system? The way Synology captures both at the same time, gives you the best of both worlds with no drawbacks; 0 compromise. This also helps you tweak your motion trigger settings to ensure you have the proper values to capture things. Synology Surveillance Station has great export function, great live view, great timeline, great app. Can't ask for nothing more, really like it. My guess (not proven) is that Synology focuses on putting the footage on the disk first as #1 priority. Then manipulates the footage afterwards. It's actually really simple just take the stream direct from the camera and dump it to the disk as any video format you want. As a secondary function, monitor events, alarms, alerts, etc... Anything special gets logged in a journal and/or database, and perform those tasks after you ensure you've captured the footage. That's how I would approach designing a camera system software. Don't waste time or CPU deciding what to do with the footage, you only have 1 chance to capture it. Capture it and decide what to do with it later. Especially with multi-core machines of today, it's nothing to perform tasks after the fact, while still capturing new footage. The way Synology puts the footage on the disk, it's logically organized and in a viewable format. That way if an extreme failure happens and all you got is the files, that's all you need. You can easily view the footage. An extreme case example: Say someone burned your building down by arson. And you were barely able to get the files off the drive because it was partially readable. You have an idea general time frame of when the fire got started. You can look at the files without any special computer/software, and you can review it to submit to the police. Without wasting time rebuilding a server to convert, import data/footage, etc... that might not even work. If the footage is still intact on the disk, it's usable. Very disappointing on other systems to look at a file, knowing what you need is inside it, but you can't do anything with that file because it's reliant on the entire system to be intact. I used to run Milestone many years ago, and it would constantly lock up the machine, miss event recordings, and have all kinds of problems. Took forever to export footage, because it was stored in proprietary format which had to be converted. If the Milestone install/database was lost/damaged, and footage files were intact, you couldn't view it. Not even import it to a new install. It clearly maxed out the machine's resources, but throw more performance at it and it didn't make a difference. Now Synology on less than half the machine can do the job way better than Milestone ever did.

@colt1596

4 жыл бұрын

Thank you for the info

Tom, love the channel. We seem to be stuck needing a mid sized NVR solution. We love UniFi Protect for the small office not needing a lot of features. We have a high end finally expandable solution but it has the $$$ to go with it. For my midsize customers needing 12+ to 24 cameras I'd love to consider Synology. Do you have any suggestions on a "best bang for your buck" IP camera? Something 2-3MP, outdoor IR. No need for zoom or pan/tilt. Thanks in advance.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

4 жыл бұрын

Reolink kit.com/lawrencesystems/nvr-surveillance-systems

Unifi cams have rtsp (not enabled by default) and I pull them into blue iris with no issues. Imagine this can do it also.

How do you find the Reolink night vision? I find, most likely due to them having a really low iFrame rate that is not adjustable, that night vision is virtually useless due to a lot of ghosting making it virtually impossible to ID a person. Have you ever worked out if Surveillance Station can be linked to an AI detection system?

I have a DS918+; if I add a reolink IP camera (that has built-in person detection), can I use person detection as a notification option? Or is that just available on dedicated Synology NVRs? Thanks for this review.

@carlosw1742

3 жыл бұрын

@@isaackvasager9957 Oh I see. That's a shame! I was hoping to utilise that function.

To make sure I understand correctly. The synology if enough space is given. Let's say 12tb I can split 6tb for my backups And 6 for my nvr? Is this correct?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

5 жыл бұрын

yes, you can partition is out however you want

Just curious if you have tried or could do a review on QNAP for an NVR?

@springbok4015

4 жыл бұрын

QNAP is crap in comparison, I was really surprised it was so poor. Synology seems much better.

Hi, I have a question. Can I use one Synology NAS (with Synology Surveillance running) to record footage from cameras at two remote locations? My case is that I am using Synology Surveillace for cameras at home and I own coffe shop where I want to add some cameras but don't want to buy separate Synology NAS just for those 3 cameras. Can I add remote location cameras to Synology at my house? Using VPN maybe? Thanks for the answer!

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 жыл бұрын

Not likely to work

Check out DW Spectrum VMS, its amazing!

Does anyone know if you can hook in a wi-fi camera to the system or does it have to be wired? I noticed some of the listed compatible cameras have wi-fi as an option.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 жыл бұрын

As long as they are compatible and are on the same network, they should work.

I currently have a Nest setup that I hate. Would gladly get any other setup. Only thing holding me back, is the Nest app's ability to scrub video (rapidly scan through hours of video in secs, fastfwd / reverse) I can't find this feature anywhere, does anyone know if DSM or blue iris have this feature, or anyone else? I really hate Nest.

Hi there :) Is it possible to schedule motion detection only to some hours? Obviously I would not like to be notified about my own moves around the house :) I did not catch this info in your video. Thank you!

@krystiansek7801

4 жыл бұрын

Is home mode somehow possible to set in motion detection? Like for camera 1, "if there is home mode enabled now, do not check for motion detection".

@steven871

3 жыл бұрын

Yes

I run the same 918+ NAS & surveillance station @ home, whilst its good its not amazing for me the missing bit is any type of AI The alerts on outdoor cameras from surveillance station are often false (birds or shadows) I'd love to see Synology add some AI even if it means newer hardware or extra ram etc I spotted an advertisement for 'Camect' (indiegogo) and they appear to be working on some AI NVR solutions time will tell if they are successful

If Unifi cams support RTSP, then maybe it's supported.

Hi There.....nice video. How much users can i login on app?

when i worked in the security sector we used Avigilon that we really liked ... especially for the user this system was really good .. i mean scrubbing trough footage was just instant on normal hard drives that where quite cheap ... it also had good features and intigrations ... It also supported normal coax cameras ( with an adapter via Ethernet ) or ethernet cameras ... all on good and normal computers that where quite cheap .. the only negative thing was that you had to pay for license for 3rd party cameras or you could buy there own cameras where the license was included. Now i suspect price might be allot more expensive .. but i have to say ... there are good solutions in general out there

@MainelyElectrons

5 жыл бұрын

noblackthunder I work with avigilon every day and I find blue iris to be a much better solution in most cases unless the enterprise licenses are purchased which are big bucks. I ran into an issue where the cameras weren’t sending motion detection alerts to the avigilon CC software due buggy firmware. Our only solution was to go to the camera vender for an unreleased firmware to patch the problem. If it was a blue iris installation we could have used the built in motion detection system to hold over until the new firmware was released. We got lucky...

@noblackthunder

5 жыл бұрын

@@MainelyElectrons i can only speak from my experiance i had :P and avigilon was the best software we had ... I mean we also had mirasys ? or what it was called ... horrible software ... then we had also a really old version og geovision we phased out many years ago ( that software was really bad ) and a few ohter softwares we used .... I liked Avigilon because it was really snappy , fast and reliable also on the motion detection side .. though we mostly used avigilons own cameras that made licensing really easy and they where really good quality ... And thinking tabout quality .. old analog cameras are so bad compared to good IP cameras ... man ... the extra detailed helped allot out. We also intigrated it into our alarm center so they could see when an alarm whent of and help customers remotely =) ... So we never had issues like you describe but i am sure depending on 3rd party cameras that there are allot of issues in some way or another .. we where just lucky and never had them ^^

@MainelyElectrons

5 жыл бұрын

noblackthunder Like you said, Avigilon does an excellent job running on lower power hardware, because it only grabs the HD stream when motion is detected. That’s how its able to efficiently display all of those cameras on screen in realtime, theyre all coming in natively at 640x480 until an alert/motion or if you full screen the camera. And speaking of, I get to finish working on a geovision system later this week. The client wants remote access and it’s posing to be an issue. Their software is total garbage and the support matches in quality

@noblackthunder

5 жыл бұрын

@@MainelyElectrons yea geovision is garbage at this stage .. it was good back in the days when PC video survialance did come and the all in 1 recorders where a bad choice .. because then it was at least pc based and servicable and had early IP camera support ... lol reminds me of when a HD failed on a geovision machine..... the machine would lag for so long .. it would take me like 2 hours to get into the device manager to check what drive actually failed ... LOL

lol 13:28 "Pan toot zoom"

@teamrampageservices7981

5 жыл бұрын

Now I thought I was just hearing things wrong! Lol.

WOW those are high license fees! Dedicated SVR's are almost cheaper. I was looking forward to doing this but I think I will stick with dedicated video recorders.

@johnbecich9540

4 жыл бұрын

Buy a bonifide NVR. This software add-on to an NVR comes up short. All the designers had to do was listen to a surveillance expert, for guidance. Obviously, they didn't. But they want high license fees, from fools with no discretion.

I've never used Synology for CCTV before but damn, it looks bare basic compared to the software I use now (Blue iris). And also the licensing costs seem to be a lot higher.

@accesser

5 жыл бұрын

How smart are the alerts on BI ? I run the same setup as this for me the missing feature is any kinds of AI, birds or wind can cause lots of alerts

@forid200

5 жыл бұрын

@@accesser You're right, that's one issue I had. But you have to tweak the settings to get as least false positives as possible. In terms of AI all that should be changing as V5 of Blue iris will be integrating a lot of AI services and features. So hold tight, things are looking better.

@forid200

5 жыл бұрын

@@accesser Sentry Alerts already exist if you want to get rid of false positives completely. But I couldn't find the time yet to get it working perfectly. I've honestly found it not to be as turn key as the Sentry AI company advertises it to be.

@accesser

5 жыл бұрын

@@forid200 Thanks for the info, I really hope we see some stiff competition with AI NVR's soon its needed :P

Please Make Ring Cameras Compatible with Synology NAS

For the 8 cameras license (even the 4 cameras license) you get a really good dedicated NVR. I find these licenses unreasonable priced.

@jimmychen2402

4 жыл бұрын

The licensing model is terrible. The software seems to be well written, but you need to pay high premium to get an underpowered NAS and on top of that you need to pay crazy prices for license pack when you go over the default 2 limit.

@CosminRotaru

4 жыл бұрын

@@jimmychen2402 I do use the 2 free licenses and I quite like the Surveillance Station. One of the connected cameras is a cheap one and Surveillance Station does the motion detection for the feed. The other camera is on the supported list (quite a long list, I must say) and Surveillance Station can receive the motion detected trigger from the camera, which is also nice. What I also noticed is that this 2nd camera can be set to record the video on an external HDD/NAS. I did not tried that yet but it might be a solution to avoid using Surveillance Station altogether (although the application is quite well made otherwise).

Amcrest has some excellent NVR options which have all of these features (minus built-in raid) at about the same price and no extra license fees per camera.

The real advantage of synology over BI is the power usage. BI is very power hungry. Though BI also has more capable motion detection and other options, while the synology relies more on the cams to do the motion detection work.

Let's say you have a poe switch. The poe switch is set up as 4 different vlans. A regular network ssid, a guest network ssid, a media server vlan, and a security poe vlan running 8 ip poe cameras. Now we have a Nas with surveillance capability. Does the Nas stay on the general vlan, the media server vlan or the poe vlan for the cameras? Can the Nas still be used for all vlans or does it have to stay on the poe camera vlan. Would I have to buy separate Nas in order to run a media server, a back up server, a file server and a ip camera system.. Can I use the one Nas accross all the vlans and be able to perform all the functions of the Nas?

@wallacebrf

4 жыл бұрын

depending on the NAS you get, you can do the following (this is what i do with my DVA3219) Ethernet port 1: connects to my switch who's port is assigned to VLAN 100. this VLAN is where all my security cameras live. only the cameras and the NVR can access this VLAN. it is not controlled by my router so no level 3 networking possible. all devices are static IP configured. Ethernet port 2: connects to my switch port which is assigned to my regular network (VLAN 1) so i can access the DSM and SS portals and so the NVR can access the net Ethernet port 3 connects to a port on my switch which is assigned to my "Plex NAS-NAS VLAN 101" this VLAN allows me to use the synology remote share mount option. I have another synology NAS, a DS916+ which runs plex etc. that NAS is basically full. however the DVA3219 can support 2x expansion units so i can have 10 additional drives. i mapped the shared folders from the DVA3219 to my DS916. they use static IPs and this connection is only used when plex needs to access media on the DVA3219. in a nut shell because the DVA3219 has 4x Ethernet ports you can have each one operate on a different VLAN and do what you need without issue. if you do not have enough ethernet ports there are ways of assigning more than one VLAN and more than one IP to a single physical ethernet port.

Cloud for IOT is not a good idea when the internet is down.

The software looks okay, but the cost is insane. Blue Iris has virtually every feature you can imagine, and it's around $50 for a lifetime license with 64 cameras.

Cool :-)

Screw paying Synology license fees for your own cameras, recording to YOUR own system, such bullshit! I have multiple cameras recording on my nvr for years, NO FEES!

If I buy this system its mainly to protect this system.

just as easy with blue iris - license i despise companies that go the way of the license

@mrfrenzy.

5 жыл бұрын

If you have 1-4 cameras the Synology license is actually cheaper than Blueiris since the first 2 cameras are free.

@UnkyjoesPlayhouse

5 жыл бұрын

@@mrfrenzy. Blue Iris is $70 for up to 64 cameras included...so not cheaper...I like the Synology software, but not the license cost, this is why I use Blue Iris and I love it, rock solid and lots of features :)

@w00master

4 жыл бұрын

Yep, I can't see a reason why you'd use this over Blue Iris unless you already deeply embedded with Synology. Everyone else should just use Blue Iris.

I disagree that you let Synology do the motion detection. Unless you have a beefed up system, the camera itself should do the job.

Hmmmmm, surveillance station for FreeNAS???

Synology has proven to be rather unreliable in the fact that they strive to support all cameras and fail at all of them. I would choose branded nvr and use it together with same brand cameras, be it Hikvision, Uniview ProvisionISR or Ubiquiti. The latter has its own software that works in linux. Price for synology nas + camera licences makes up a hefty sum that is waaaay too much for nvr.

They messed up a very important feature with this (support has acknowledged it with me) the app that runs on the phone that’s acting as a IP camera has a switch to turn on the led to help see in dark environments but there’s no access to the led from DS cam?... I guess Synology either wants you to leave the LED on 24/7 or run home to turn it on when something is happening that you want to see and record? I think this was a major oversight by Synology! I’m happy with most of my Synology NAS and was prepared to replace my Pc based Surveillance DVRs with a NaS but with the cost of the license to add cameras they should not overlook things like this! The DSCam app has PTZ control so access to the phone’s led should be a non issue! It doesn’t work with Android or IOS I tried 4 Android phones a IPad and a iPhone but this feature was forgotten! I thought it was a limitation of certain devices Synology support told me they will submit it as a future feature! So if you want to turn your old mobile device into a ip camera treat it as a beta it’s rough around the edges definitely not ready for any serious security! Even if I had dedicated IP cams I would still like to turn on the phone led to scare people off remotely.

@KRich408

4 жыл бұрын

Also it caused my Nexus 5x drain it's battery in 12 hours! It was plugged into a 3ah Google USB C charger! Basically I tested it overnight before I was going on a trip and found the phone RED HOT with a dead battery! This was dangerous and could have caused the phone to catch fire!!! Synology needs to test this stuff throughly before releasing it to the public!!! If my house burned down because of this app my insurance company would have gone after them!!!

7 thousand 1 hundred was correct

Seems awful to me compared to milestone x protect or Blue Iris

You don't need any fancy PTZ cameras. I've seen enough TV to know all you have to do is keep shouting "enhance" at the screen.

@tomsimonis

4 жыл бұрын

Soo.... Bladerunner then?

Software as a license is horrible . You can do this without licenses.

@colt1596

4 жыл бұрын

Then how does company make money on the surveillance project to keep developing? You pay for a nas, that money goes to nas development and related. Pay for licenses that goes to development for surveillance station. This company has a good business model when it comes to the market. They arent here to get everybody. They are here to get quality customers.