FWIIW: we are running on an old Optiplex, with I7-3770. 11 cameras, recording full time, direct to disk, with motion sensing on all cameras for alerts. All cameras set to 1080, 15 FPS. While viewing via the Web Server (2 to 3 people logged in), the CPU runs between 25-30%. Rarely connect to the BI G...

I would be very careful as well. Several years ago, I bought a cheap camera from Amazon and within a couple of minutes (according to the log in the firewall), it contacted an IP in Elbonia. By IP address, not through DNS. I trashed it. Not to say this one would do it, but I would consider it guilty ...

I have connected a remote camera to BI (5.0) via VPN. It connects but is not suitable for real time recording. There will periods of "no signal", at least that was my experience. I used a router with openvpn server and static public IP's on both ends. If you don't have static IP's, you wou...

If you go into settings, there is an option to deactivate. So, if necessary, you can do so in your son's machine.

If your firewall/router supports it, check the logs. I had a cheap camera and, even though I disabled the Bonjour stuff, it connected to some weird place (Tanzania?). Logs are your friend. Most of the cameras I have seen contact a server on AWS (if you want to access it from the Internet), but who k...

Part of the ONVIF protocols/specs. See list of operations (including getcapabilities) here: https://www.onvif.org/onvif/ver20/util/operationIndex.html Click on item to see details. There are Python (as well as C# I think) libraries that you can use to get/set stuff in the cameras. Not all cameras se...

Glad you got it resolved.

Lou

Anything in the Windows System/Application logs?
Not sure what might happen if one of the storage folders (New, etc) has a corrupt file. You might try renaming them temporarily. I would back all that stuff up before making any changes.

Lou