The new M4 Mac Mini looks like a solid SecuritySpy host.
The base model is $599 includes 16GB RAM, 10 Core CPU, 10 Core GPU, and a 16 core Neural Engine.
Any thoughts on how may cameras with AI enabled the base config should be able to handle?
The base model is $599 includes 16GB RAM, 10 Core CPU, 10 Core GPU, and a 16 core Neural Engine.
Any thoughts on how may cameras with AI enabled the base config should be able to handle?
Comments
Not answering your question directly, but I'm running 8 cameras on an Intel i7 Mac mini and it copes fine. I also have an M2 Mac mini. The M series Mac minis are beasts.
The new M4 mini looks fantastic, and it's going to be perfect for SecuritySpy. Good to see that Apple has bumped up the base model RAM to 16 GB too - 8 GB was always rather meagre. We don't have any performance benchmarks yet but as soon as we do we'll add this new Mac to our System Requirements Calculator.
I'm running SecuritySpy with eight cameras (looking to add 2 to 4 more in the future) and Indigo home automation software on a 2019 3.2 GHz, 16GB RAM, Intel I7 Mac Mini. Power consumption is around 30 watts, and runs 24/7. I'm hoping an M4 Mini will knock that down some.
@citysnaps We use the same spec Mac mini. Mine also runs my multimedia (via Emby) and Apple media sharing off a NAS, as well as SecuritySpy. All 24/7.
I also think it only fair to add that, in my experience, SecuritySpy is a very well crafted, not at all resource-heavy piece of software.
@Robbie For sure on that! SecuritySpy is outstanding.
My comment about power consumption is solely about my Intel-based Mini. And hoping that gets knocked down when I move to an M4 Mini.
The power consumption on my M2 is around a quarter of what the Intel i7 uses....
As a tangential aside, my employer provided me with a couple of Intel Mac Pros (desktops, not laptops) over the years. When I sent the last one to silicon heaven around four or five years ago, my home electricity bill dropped by 10%. 😂
We now have some performance metrics and have added the new M4 Mac minis to our calculator. In terms of hardware-accelerated video processing abilities (which is the metric that is most relevant to SecuritySpy), the base-level M4 performs similarly to the previous-generation M2 Pro, while the new M4 Pro model boasts significantly higher performance - similar to a Mac Studio M2 Max. These new minis are superb.
A note to users who have these new Macs or indeed any other Mac model: please run our Video Codec Test app on your machine to provide us with further benchmarks that will make our calculator more reliable. Select the "H.264 and H.265" test suite, and click the "Run All Tests In Suite Button". It takes 10 minutes to run all encoding/decoding tests, and the results will be uploaded to us automatically. Thanks!