by cancam » Sat Jul 17, 2021 5:44 pm
Yes, you're missing something.
You can buy Xeoma lite for $40. It will handle 4 cameras and you can use 20 modules over those 4 cameras, however, zoom is not a module. I believe it is intrinsic to the software. Anyways, It's not for a year, it's a one time purchase and you can only UPDATE it for a year. I have version 19.4.22 that I bought a long time ago, haven't updated in years and it has been well worth the money. If you're only watching nature, you won't need many if any of the modules. ....probably just PREVIEW and ARCHIVE to record, and maybe MOTION DETECTION. On 4 cameras with 2 modules on each camera, that's only 8 total. I tried all the others incl;uding Blue Iris, and honestly, all of them were a confusing nighttmare compared to Xeoma. There is a learning curve while you learn all the ins and outs but it is by far the best NVR for the price. I'm ruinning 4 5MP cameras 24x7x365 on a raspberry Pi with only 2GB of ram! It records almost a months worth of archives to an attached 1.5TB drive.
If you only have a couple of cameras you could get the starter for just 5.95. I would imagine that would work just fine for what you're wanting to do providing you have only 2 cameras.
I've captured a bear in my back yard, ...I see a family of dear go by ALL THE TIME, I've caught numerous vehicles crashing into the ditch beside my house and a few fist fights. Fun Stuff.