Getting started

1. Sign in, or try the demo

Try the demo opens a private sandbox society for a day, with the Plaza demo camera (OpenCV's sample clip), an example incident and the Telegram message it would send. You can add this laptop or a phone as a camera and type a watch of your own.

Signing in with Google creates your society on the Free plan, with you as its owner. A self hosted server can also print a single use sign in link (see Self hosting).

2. Add your cameras

In the control room, choose Add a camera, then how it connects:

A recorder

A Hikvision, CP Plus or Dahua NVR or DVR the server can reach. Pick the brand and the camera number.

A camera address

The RTSP address of an IP camera (rtsp or rtsps only).

Through the bridge

For a recorder on the society's own network: a small OpenCV program on a computer there reads it and sends pictures out. The app gives the line for its cameras file.

A phone, or this device

A spare phone (scan the QR code, press Start) or this laptop becomes a camera while its page is open. Faces are blurred on the device before any picture leaves it.

Upload a recording

A video file, scanned once on the server, so you can ask what happened in it.

Then say what the camera watches: pool, main gate, service gate, parking, lobby, perimeter or other. Each purpose suggests ready watches, such as "someone in the water after pool hours" or "log every vehicle in and out". Keep them, or remove them.

3. Draw zones and lines

On the camera's page, draw the areas your watches talk about, such as the pool water, the lifeguard chair or a fire lane, and a line across a gate with its inward direction. The gate log and "came in" or "went out" come only from crossing a line with a direction.

4. Write a watch in plain words

Type what to look for. Before you save, a card shows what it will watch and how reliably, what it cannot and the nearest thing it can, any setup it needs (such as a zone to draw), and how often it would have fired in the last 24 hours of this camera. Then choose what happens:

• Critical: sent to your Telegram group at once, and again if nobody acknowledges it.
• Warning: on the dashboard, and on Telegram if your society turns that on.
• Info, or write to the log: kept in the watch log and on the camera's history.

Some watches are refused on purpose. Nothing about anyone's age or about children is ever saved. A watch about a person (an unknown person, a known one or a staff member) works only on entry, gate and service door cameras.

5. Connect Telegram

1. An admin opens Settings, Telegram, Connect a group.
2. Add the server's bot to your security group on Telegram.
3. Send the message shown there, /connect and a code, in that group. The code works once, for 30 minutes.

Critical alerts then arrive in the group with a still picture, the reason and Acknowledge and False alarm buttons. Anyone in the group can press them, and the app shows who did. On your own server, the operator first gives it a bot (see Self hosting).

6. Invite your team

Settings, Team invites people by role. Each role may do what the ones before it may:

• Viewer: sees the cameras and incidents, and asks what happened.
• Supervisor: also acknowledges incidents, marks false alarms, and sees the logs and enrolled staff.
• Admin: also adds cameras and watches, enrols staff, connects Telegram and invites people.
• Owner: also changes roles and removes people.

7. Gate log and staff register

With the Society plan and above, Logs holds a gate log of vehicles in and out with the time, a picture, and the plate text and colour when they can be read, paired by plate; and a staff register of consenting adult staff, enrolled from 3 to 5 photos that are not kept. The register shows when each person was first seen and last seen each day; "came in" and "went out" are written only when they cross a line drawn with a direction. The watch log is on every plan.

Next: How it works