Mac Mini as a sighthound server?

[Walt Dockery]

I am currently running sighthound on my aging iMac (2009), which runs pretty slow. I've thought about replacing with a newer iMac for sighthound as well as some other duties (music etc), although ideally would want to wait until they refresh it which seems to be taking forever w/ the current 21" offering dating to Sep '13.

As an alternative, I'm considering a Mac Mini as a dedicated sighthound server. This has a few advantages, namely it's cheaper and it's form factor would allow me to hide it, and only plug in a display (one of our macbooks, or a newer iMac when I eventually replace mine) when I need to make changes to the settings. I primarily use sighthound for motion based email alerts. The cons include, similar to the iMac apple seems to be very slow in updating the Mini, w/ the '14 model slower than the older '12 model in some regards (2 core vs. 4).

I currently run 9 wirepath cameras and don't really plan on adding any more. Again, I use sighthound primarily for motion based email alerts, as my camera system has an NVR w/ 8tb harddrive that records 24/7. My cameras run 2 streams, a high quality stream at 1920x1080 and a lower resolution stream at 640x480 for remote access etc. Sighthound on my old iMac currently accesses the lower resolution stream for most of my cams, but on a newer computer I would like to use the higher resolution.

Will the mid-tier Mac Mini (2.6ghz dual core i5, 8mb ram, 1tb 5400rpm hd) be adequate to run this? Ideally I'd like apple to update their products, but I'm getting tired of waiting. There is also a faster version of the mini w/ a fusion drive, but that is more like $1000.

I'd also consider the older quad core '12 mini (found a 2.3ghz quad core i7 on craigslist), although I'm leery of buying a computer used, especially something so old.

[Devin]

Hi Walt Dockery,

Will the mid-tier Mac Mini (2.6ghz dual core i5, 8mb ram, 1tb 5400rpm hd) be adequate to run this?

It's hard to accurately estimate how this system will handle your 9 streams as there are many factors that can contribute to the impact they will have. Based on other Mac Mini Sighthound setups I'd guess you would be pushing the machine pretty hard by running all 9 cameras at that resolution, but you can likely get away with lower resolutions. Even lowering the resolution of a few streams can make a large impact. A user reported that an off the shelf 2013 mac mini with a dual core Intel Core i5-3210M 2.5GHz CPU and 4gb of memory can comfortably handle 10 1024x768 streams.

For more details on system resources and concrete examples of Sighthound setups, please see this article: https://www.sighthound.com/support/system-requirements

Regards,

-Devin

[Walt Dockery]

Yes, I've seen that article it is somewhat helpful. I understand that I may have to adjust resolution for certain cams, is it better to do that within sighthound or to adjust the stream to lower res from the camera itself?

Would one of the older quad core i7 mac minis be better suited than the newer dual core?

Would the fusion drive make a big difference?

[ryan]

Hi Walt,

It's best to set the desired resolution on the camera and set Sighthound Video to 'match source'. If the camera is at a higher resolution than SV is set to save SV must still decode the larger image which will use more CPU.

Fusion drive will likely not make a large difference. Once you are saving enough video that disk I/O becomes a bottleneck faster drives may help a touch, but ultimately a faster RAID solution may be necessary.

For comparing CPUs I'd look at their relative benchmark numbers on http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Hope that helps,
- ryan

[Walt Dockery]

Has anyone used an Intel NUC for similar purpose? Having a very hard time bringing myself around to the mac mini, just given the 2014 specs compared to the '12 model (just doesn't seem compelling for a new purchase, given the chip options, unupgradeable memory etc).

[nunuvyurbiz]

The CPU requirement is tied not only to resolution but also frame rate and compression. I'm sure the mini can handle your setup though. That said, while a headless Mac mini has a certain appeal, one advantage of a laptop is the built-in UPS (uninterruptible power supply). Power does go out on occasion, even if just a blip, and with a mini you're then faced with a dilemma. If you have Filevault turned on (which you should), then it won't boot past the login (no automatic login, and no running Sighthound as a service before login). If you have Filevault turned off, then you can have an automatic login, but then your system is left insecure. There is an app you can get to automatically switch to the login screen after logging in but it always seemed unreliable to me and in any case your system is not encrypted.

By the way, your setup should also assume it gets stolen. Meaning, you'll want to get the files stored offsite. Laptop+Filevault+cloud storage for motion captures.

[al2suarez]

Has anyone used an Intel NUC for similar purpose?

I have, check out my results https://www.sighthound.com/forums/topic12147

[wktyk]

I want to tell you that the older quad core '12 mini is better,believe it or not.
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