Please help me understand the appeal

[gvl]

A newbie here. I'm in need of a home security system with 4 IP POE cameras max at this time as I'm trying to replace a fairly crapstatic Vuezone cloud solution I used for many years that Netgear, or whoever owned it in the end, pulled the plug on finally. Motion detection and mobile or email notifications is a requirement. I'm reasonably savvy around Linux/networking and do software in my day job so technically I don't think ZM will be rocket science for me, but there is surely some learning curve. Debating between a shrink-wrapped off the shelf solution and a ZM setup. The natural question is cost and while ZM is free I don't see it being all that cheaper as I will likely need to invest in a beefier PC than what I have available at my disposal (a 10-12 y/o dual core AMD HTPC with 4Gb RAM) and 4x IP cameras at about $70 a pop plus some wires and a POE switch. A home-grade 4-camera commercial system can be had for around $500 give or take. Then there is the babysitting concern, the times when I had a lot of free time on my hands to tinker with home-grown solutions are long gone, and I expect NM to not be exactly a set it and forget it setup. Would like to hear thoughts from experienced ZM users about this. Thanks!

[bbunge]

I have been running Zoneminder on 2nd hand equipment for years. I must admit that my working with a couple of not-for-profits gives me access to a variety of donated hardware. Have a 19 camera system with a mixed bag of old and new IP cams. I run Zoneminder 1.30.4 because of the way the customer, another not-for-profit, likes to view the montage. Had the system on a Dell OP 770, i5 quad core, 1 TB drive, 16 GB RAM. Switched to a Dell Precision workstation with a Xeon quad core processor, 16GB RAM, 2 TB drive. Yes, sometimes I spend a bunch of time figuring out issues. Most of the time it just runs well! Our township government uses Zoneminder that my neighbor set up (after I taught him what I know). Their one Zoneminder server is like Timex while they have had two commercial security systems fail after less than 2 years(both being replaced with Zoneminder). There are plenty of cheap IP cams out there but use a brand that will stand behind their product. Your dual core AMD with 4 GB RAM should do 4 cams well but you might have to use a lower resolution as 4 GB RAM will give you 2 GB of tmpfs (/dev/shm) which Zoneminder uses for mapped memory.
Set up a test machine and try it out! If you have an old USB cam that will work to test. Most of all, have fun!

[gvl]

Thanks. I pulled the trigger on a refurb Foscam system that comes with 4 FI9800XE POE 720p outdoor bullet cameras for $130 from Amazon, it comes with a 1Tb NVR box which will give me a short-term solution while I'm trying to get ZM going on that old PC, it has a large HDD (4TB maybe larger I forgot) so it would be nice to put it to good use.

[CountyLine]

FWIW, I am currently running 6 1920x1080 ip cameras on an older Shuttle DS-81 system much like the one linked here with no strain whatsoever. I usually run them at 5 fps but have had them at 10 fps without issues. It's dark out at the moment, so that helps keep the requirements down, but the system is currently only reporting a load of 0.4 - 0.7 out of 4.0.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Shuttle-XPC-Sl ... SwELpdgBJW

My system has a mid range I-5 and is running Debian 10 with a full xfce4 desktop environment installed. I do have a 1 gig HD for the /var partition in addition to the SSD.