Question / Help Confused how to run multiple iSight Firewire cams into OBS instances

[oharamj]

Trying to configure & repurpose multiple Mac Minis into a home security system. Each satellite 2010 Mini wil run High Sierra, 8 GB RAM, plenty of disk. Each Mini will have a Firewire 800 to 400 cable run to a Belkin USB/Firewire hub. Each Belkin hub connects two external iSight Firewire 400 cams. Each satellite Mini will WiFi network to a central master Mac Mini Server (late 2009) equipped with dual internal SSD drives & 8GB RAM. This master Mini Server should be able to monitor & record all satellite video & audio feeds.

Here’s the question(s):

1. Can I do this using OBS? So far, my pilot test runs into trouble when I try to configure a satellite Mini with two video cam sources. It seems I can only display one cam feed in the satellite’s OBS studio at a time. In the drop down I can see iSight 1 and iSight 2 but can’t bring up both cams to simultaneously monitor side by side. How to do?

2. Am I correct to assume that - using OBS - the master OBS server should be able to connect to up to four satellite OBS Minis and monitor their up to eight downstream iSight cams? How might I best configure OBS to accomplish this?

3. Is there a decent user guide online for this software? What’s off the home page is pretty sketchy.

Any and all feedback would be much appreciated!

 

[Narcogen]

OBS really isn't intended for this.

There's no "master OBS server" that monitors other copies of OBS. There's no way, without 3rd party software, to have multiple copies of OBS send independent video feeds to a "central" instance of OBS for monitoring.

What you really want, if you need to do this with Macs, is SecuritySpy.

 

[oharamj]

OBS really isn't intended for this.

There's no "master OBS server" that monitors other copies of OBS. There's no way, without 3rd party software, to have multiple copies of OBS send independent video feeds to a "central" instance of OBS for monitoring.

What you really want, if you need to do this with Macs, is SecuritySpy.

Oh my. Not sure if everything is on track but it does seem the problem re multiple iSight cams on one Mini is fixed. I plugged the firewire line from the Mini into the wrong port on the Belkin. In my defense, the placement of the ports on the front and back of the Belkin is not, shall we say, intuitively obvious.

Sorry!