Possible to share IP Cam with Synology NAS & Alarm panel?

[kirbybaker]

Hello,
 
First post here, so be gentle please!   Searched and didn't find an answer to my question, so here goes:
 
I'm building a new home right now, and trying to figure out if I can share an IP Cam between the alarm panel (i.e. a DSC touch screen or Honeywell Tuxedo) to view when the doorbell goes off as well as let my Synology NAS' Surveillance Station record the video stream uninterrupted?
 
As I don't currently have the cameras or the alarm panel, I cant test on my own.  I just am not sure if the IP Cams send out the video stream and anyone with the IP can view it, or if the NAS grabs exclusive control somehow. 
 
Appreciate any feedback on this!

 

[TheHeadFL]

I have 6 Hikvision IP cameras running on Synology Surveillance Station and I can log into the camera interfaces directly and watch the live feed while the NAS is active.  As far as I know the live stream is just a URL that any device can connect to, so I would say what you're describing is probably easily possible.

 

[kirbybaker]

Thanks for the reply.  You happy with the Hikvision IP cams?  I was looking at some of their models on amazon and they looked like good cameras.  Nice to know they work with Synology too.

 

[TheHeadFL]

The Hikvision cameras are working great, I'm very happy with the image quality and the on-camera configuration is pretty powerful.  I have 4 3MP bullet cameras (DS-2CD2032-I) and 2 3MP varifocal (not motorized) dome cameras (DS-2CD2732F-I).  They didn't work on the prior version of the Synology software, but with 5.0+ they work out of box.  (Had to use ONVIF mode previously which prevents use of on-camera motion detection)
 
The one knock on them I have is that the motion detection is not as useful as I'd hoped, mostly because I think outdoor cameras are just going to have false positives.  I forgot just how much motion is going on at all times outdoors... cars passing constantly, my huge tree blowing all over the place in the wind casting shadows all over the ground, rain, lightning, bugs buzzing around the camera all night, etc.  You can configure motion detection for certain zones only (drawing boxes in the software) but that doesn't really help all that much.  I have them on the lowest sensitivity but I have decided I'd rather have them record continuously anyway.  So all the motion detection is doing for me is tagging certain sections of video in the timeline.

 

[BaduFamily]

We have 8 Axis cameras which are 'feeding'

• a QNAP NAS
• an HP Slate 21 hung as a kiosk
• a Mac Mini Server running Security Spy and a mess of custom code

as well as doing their Axis Camera Companion thing.
 
for basic connections I think you just have to be sure the cameras can serve multiple streams of video ( and that your network can hande it )
 
For triggering an event in your panel (?) you'll have to see if the panel has an API / trigger the camera motion detection can 'reach' via tcp/ip or whatever crazy protocol your panel vendor has decided to implement. In my case the front door bell/intercom (On-Q) has a trigger out I wired to the Elk keypad on the interior. That gets into the M1 and off we go.
 
For front door monitoring the HP Slate 21 is running Tiny Cam Pro (IIRC,) and just sits there with the front door camera displayed. Tiny Cam Pro has some motion detection capabiltiy, and will flash the scene's frame with red when it detects motion. Once I finish the endless minor construction projects I plan on writing an Android app which listens to my Node stuff and wakes the 21 on front door activity. That's how I've addressed your use case.
 
The points TheHeadFL makes WRT motion detection should be taken into consideration. I wrote a layer to integrate the Axis cameras with my Elk M1 and the Vantage system I installed and I do get too many false 'lighting events' for WAF. A good number are spiders blowing in the wind. The 3am raccoon parade is popular. People's housecats follow the raccon path around 6am.