Mac Mini

[flynreelow]

Client wants to use his 2014 Mac Mini (Dual Core, i5 2.6ghz, 8 Gig Ram)

Will this run 4 1080p cams?

This will be a dedicated machine.

Thoughts?

[Kbond]

Hello,

This machine might have some trouble keeping up. If you would like, I can provide a free Trial license for you to test our software with this machine. If you would like to try that, please send an email to our support team at [email protected].

Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns besides that, thank you!

Regards,
-Kevin

[tcesario]

From an old post of mine in 2015:

Mac Mini (Late 2014 version), 2.6GHZ i5 (4278U Haswell), 8GB RAM
NETGEAR ProSAFE M4100-D10-POE 8 Port Fast Ethernet Managed Switch
7 Lorex LNB2153 POE 1080p cameras

Sighthound started choking this Mac Mini when I added the 4th 1080p camera. I had to make the following adjustments:

2 cameras @1080p/30 FPS/VBR
2 cameras @720p/30 FPS/VBR
3 cameras @720p/15 FPS/VBR

With this setup I average about 22% system processor idle during the day, and 1% - 0% idle at night (very noisy IR images with insects, busy scenes). I don’t know the impacts of 0% idle on Sighthound. I’m assuming some processing just isn’t occurring, though the continuous stream recordings appear intact and the rules/notifications appear functional. I know Sighthound notifies the user with the feed exclamation points for issues like this, however just running Sighthound in the foreground can eat up 10% of my idle margin (even worse when I’m on the camera page and a feed is playing). So this makes it really hard to tell. To maximize performance, don’t leave any other user apps running at all when you aren’t actively using the Mini. Close your browser, activity monitor and Sighthound (it still runs when the application is quit). Also, for accurate CPU loading you need to consider benchmarking under worst case conditions at night.

[flynreelow]

Thank you both. I will def reach out for free trial to see if this can be done with 4 cameras.
@tcesario -- u could have also tried lowering the FPS. 30 frames is pretty high, we arent shooting a music video here.

I am wondering if you could of ran 4 of these at 1080 with an FPS between 12-15 (industry standard). Wondering what this does to the cpu load making these basic changes.

Is this a dedicated machine for you, or do you have it running anything else?

Thanks to both

[tcesario]

30 FPS is just personal preference, I guess. More frames means a better chance to capture a clean still image of a face. My guess is that you could safely run 7 1080p cameras at 12-15FPS, but I'd still run a test to be sure.

I now have 8 4K cameras recorded at full spec to an NVR, while the MM/SH only receives 1 4K feed and 7 low res/low FPS feeds for notification purposes only (from the secondary camera stream). The MM is dedicated just for SH. The NVR is the source for the full resolution video if it is ever needed.

Waiting to see the new Mac Minis due to be announced tomorrow. I might start letting SH process more 4K resolution feeds since it is so much easier to pull video off the MM/SH compared to the NVR.

[flynreelow]

30 FPS is just personal preference, I guess. More frames means a better chance to capture a clean still image of a face. My guess is that you could safely run 7 1080p cameras at 12-15FPS, but I'd still run a test to be sure.

I now have 8 4K cameras recorded at full spec to an NVR, while the MM/SH only receives 1 4K feed and 7 low res/low FPS feeds for notification purposes only (from the secondary camera stream). The MM is dedicated just for SH. The NVR is the source for the full resolution video if it is ever needed.

Waiting to see the new Mac Minis due to be announced tomorrow. I might start letting SH process more 4K resolution feeds since it is so much easier to pull video off the MM/SH compared to the NVR.

Good info.. thanks.

I may just try the mac mini first and see how it does with 4 cameras, 1080p, at about 15fps. Do you think this will still struggle? Once again, this will be a dedicated box.

If not, I may just have him go with an off lease dell, was looking at an Intel Xeon. I know this will do a better job, but just another added expense.

[tcesario]

I think you'd be okay with 4 x 1080P at 15FPS, but please try it with the trial first to make sure.

New Mac Minis announced today as well. Can't wait to upgrade!