CPU hardware requirements for medium system

[dalepres]

I currently have six 5MP cameras recording at 3MP in my home video surveillance system but will have between 24 and 32 cameras when completed. Probably about 10 to 12 of the cameras will be recorded at 3MP as they cover access and choke points. The others are just covering "space", so to speak, and I could set the cameras to 1080p or even 720p. I've tried another program designed for use with a variety of brands of ONVIF cameras but the CPU utilization was so high I couldn't use more than two cameras with it. Using the camera specific software that came with the cameras only used under 10 percent CPU utilization for 6 cameras.

What kind of performance can I expect with Sighthound? Is it possible to have up to 32 cameras recording full time on a single server or will I need multiple servers? What kind of server hardware do you recommend for a system like this?

I'm trying to download the trial but can't get past the passwords; I've created an account and it won't take my password, I tried to reset the password and it says the token doesn't match... so far, no joy in using the trial.

[jbrannen]

I currently have a similar thread going regarding CPU usage, and so far it's looking to me that to run six, 3MP cameras, you're going to need some serious hardware. My current setup for testing has four 1080p feeds, and that looks to be the max with this hardware, which is no slouch. CPU is an 8 core AMD FX-8350 at 4.0 GHz.

-Jason

[dalepres]

That's really too bad. I had high hopes for this software when I stumbled on its name in an Amazon review of a camera. I have been looking for a reliable surveillance app for a long time that would allow me to mix multiple brands of cameras.

The software that comes with my cameras can record 6 cameras at 3MP with max 24% utilization but mostly stays down around 15%.

I can't say what app requires yet because it doesn't discover my cameras and I don't have the H.264 stream path, even though Blue Iris and Synology all can find the cameras with just the IP address. None of them were able to find the cameras blind using the discovery methods in ONVIF even though the software that came with my cameras uses ONVIF discovery to successfully find the cameras. The problem there generally lies with the fact that there have been changes and updates in the ONVIF standards and some cameras don't recognize the latest versions and some newer cameras don't recognize the older versions. Software doing discovery with ONVIF should try all known discovery message versions and perhaps all combinations.

[mackintire]

The FX-8350 is close in performance to an 3.2Ghz base clocked Intel i5 processor. Depending on the bitrate you'll hit a certain number of cameras. How many of those cameras are being viewed at one time also matters. You may need RAID or SSDs to record 32 cameras at high res at the same time, that is also assuming that the CPU can keep up. When it comes to encoding performance your FX-8350 is going to track closer to a genuine 4 core processor than an 8 core one. Figure out what specifically is being taxed and see if what you have is scaling properly before spending additional money.

[jmac]

I'm currently running three 1.3MP 720p IP cameras off of a mac mini (late 2014, 2.6Ghz, 8gb ram) and it uses about 26% of the CPU, I will be adding one more 1.3MP and two 3.0MP cameras in the future, I will update and let you know of the CPU usage.

[Johannes_L]

I'm currently running three 1.3MP 720p IP cameras off of a mac mini (late 2014, 2.6Ghz, 8gb ram) and it uses about 26% of the CPU, I will be adding one more 1.3MP and two 3.0MP cameras in the future, I will update and let you know of the CPU usage.

Hi,

I'm also using Mac Mini. What I noticed that when I started to use USB2 drives to store the videos instead to Mac internal HD or SSD, Mac processor load was dropping to half. Getting down from 20% to less than 10%. For sure it's not about SH but more about how Mac has been internally designed.

Regards
Johannes

[flynreelow]

I'm currently running three 1.3MP 720p IP cameras off of a mac mini (late 2014, 2.6Ghz, 8gb ram) and it uses about 26% of the CPU, I will be adding one more 1.3MP and two 3.0MP cameras in the future, I will update and let you know of the CPU usage.

Hi,

I'm also using Mac Mini. What I noticed that when I started to use USB2 drives to store the videos instead to Mac internal HD or SSD, Mac processor load was dropping to half. Getting down from 20% to less than 10%. For sure it's not about SH but more about how Mac has been internally designed.

Regards
Johannes

I find this hard to believe, that writing to an external USB 2 or 3 drive actually helps cut down on processing power. What kind of hard drive are you writing to, and is it a powered, or non powered drive. Thanks for the info, and I may look into writing to an external usb to see if I can replicate these savings.

[Johannes_L]

I'm currently running three 1.3MP 720p IP cameras off of a mac mini (late 2014, 2.6Ghz, 8gb ram) and it uses about 26% of the CPU, I will be adding one more 1.3MP and two 3.0MP cameras in the future, I will update and let you know of the CPU usage.

Hi,

I'm also using Mac Mini. What I noticed that when I started to use USB2 drives to store the videos instead to Mac internal HD or SSD, Mac processor load was dropping to half. Getting down from 20% to less than 10%. For sure it's not about SH but more about how Mac has been internally designed.

Regards
Johannes

I find this hard to believe, that writing to an external USB 2 or 3 drive actually helps cut down on processing power. What kind of hard drive are you writing to, and is it a powered, or non powered drive. Thanks for the info, and I may look into writing to an external usb to see if I can replicate these savings.

It is strange, I agree. However, Mac filesystem is not the best in the world. For some reason, if in SH the temporary file storage is 48h or even more, it starts to reflect to processor load. I don't know why.

Any news from your tests?
I don't think it makes a difference if the USB drive is powered or not. But what I think makes a difference is if the USB drive is having a write memory buffer included. I think, the drives what I use have such inside.

Regards
J

[rprobst]

I have a i7 4930K (~13100 benchmark) with 32gb and raid 5 storage and ssd system drive. I run 9 cameras with most running at 720p and I think three running at 1080p and the system runs at about 60 to 70% cpu all the time with 50% memory used. About 40Mbs is used on the ethernet card. Hard drive usage doesn't seem to be a problem. there are 14 sighthound process running + 2 web. it appears that each camera gets its own process as 9 of them uses about 5 to 6% of the cpu, 500Mb of ram, 1 to 2Mb of hard drive activity, and about 5 to 6 Mbs of network each. hope this helps

[Matt2015]

Hi,

Just for the record, I thought I would post my findings with a recent Sighthound installation.

Setup was eight Hikvision DS-2CD2332-I 3MP cameras recording at 720p. Average CPU consumption is between 20-25%

Computer specs:
Intel Core i7-4790 Haswell 3.6GHz
8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
Gigabyte GA-Z97N Mini ITX Intel Motherboard
2x WD Purple WD30PURX HDD 3000GB, 7200rpm
Kingston SSDNow V300 Series SV300S37A/120G 2.5" 120GB

Will also be adding 2-3 6MP Mobotix cameras to the mix shortly. If anyone's interested I can post the CPU usage once they're in place.