Using Shinobi to watch cameras from multiple DVR/NVRs simultaneously

Watching all cameras at your site, with minimal cost

Problem

You have a site where you have deployed a CCTV system for security purposes.

You have a big site, so you needed many cameras to cover your site. In our example, we have used 96 cameras.

All these CCTVs are connected back to different Network Video Recorders (NVRs) within the network.

Each NVR only has a maximum of 16 cameras

However, most NVRs have a limitation of the number of cameras which can be connected to them. In our deployments, we know that HIKVision NVRs support up to 16 cameras.

So, for 96 cameras, need to stack up 6 NVRs.

6 NVRs needed to cover 96 cameras

To view the cameras remotely, you will need to log into each NVR to view them. You then have some problems:

1. It’s very tedious to log into each NVR one by one, and maintain 6 browser windows to keep track of all cameras
2. You need to re-enter your passwords as they time-out periodically
3. You cannot choose selectively which cameras to focus on (unless you group them per-NVR from the start). Either you see everything or you don’t
4. You wouldn’t want to share your NVR logins to other people, because they can control and edit your configurations / settings. It’s a security risk to do so. Leaked passwords can lead to disaster
5. If you want to view your site from the outside Internet, you will have to port forward connections into each NVR. Also a security risk if your password is simple (e.g. passw0rd1234 — not my password :P ). If your passwords are complex and varied, it will use up valuable memory space (unless you write them down, another problem)

Solution

Many customers will use a Video Management System (VMS) to consolidate all camera streams into an easily viewable and manageable location

There are a lot of VMS solutions around, and a few good ones. Customers with a big budget can opt for a Milestone VMS solution (https://www.milestonesys.com/). Milestone is somewhat an industry-standard for law-enforcement and customers needing to manage a big number of cameras (in a city, for example)

For customers who are more cost-aware (e.g. myself), I find that the Shinobi VMS solution (https://shinobi.video) is good enough to solve the problems listed above.

It is a “freemium” product, i.e. they have a Community Edition which has all the features, but it will display a splashscreen upon login (mutable for a week at a time). Users can also pay USD 5 per month to make the splashscreen go away

Shinobi VMS takes streams from multiple NVRs

The solution thus solves the problems listed above and a few more benefits as well:

1. Just one login into the Shinobi VMS system to view all cameras
2. Multiple user accounts can be created, and different set of cameras can be added for different users
3. Users cannot control camera configuration. They can view the cameras only
4. Port forwarding can be done to the Shinobi host only. Even if the account is compromised, it is not possible to change any camera / NVR configuration as it is view-only
5. Additional recording, event triggering can also be done on the Shinobi VMS itself

Therefore, you can view all your cameras at a glance:

Left side for preview of all cameras available for the account, and right side to view in more details

Please go to https://shinobi.video for more details of this platform