【Surveillance Station】All-in-One security system inside each Synology NAS

Any Synology NAS comes with a Surveillance Station feature that can be upgraded to a professional network video recorder (NVR) for free, suitable for home or business surveillance systems.

This is a getting-started guide with some tips from a ex-support experience. it is also a note for DIY my own security system.

Synology Surveillance Station – What is it? #

Synology Surveillance Station is a free software in Synology NAS Package Center. It can turn any Synology NAS into a private network security surveillance system-also called NVR-with the ability to store a large number of IP camera videos, live monitoring, anomaly notifications, and video search.

Synology Surveillance Station – Why is using Synology NAS as an NVR a good idea? #

If we just google for NVR or home, DIY, business security cam system on the Internet,
we may find Synology Surveillance Station is one of the top recommendations.

Obviously a NAS can store camera videos for very long period.
However, there are also main 3 special points from Synology Surveillance Station:  

1. This package is with one-time cost license, without subscription fee.
2. Compatible with almost all standard IP cameras
3. Any Synology NAS can install it. Low hardware requirement  

Synology Surveillance Station – 5 mins to install this standalone NVR package.  #

Surveillance Station first version was released since 2008. The main version 9 is the current latest version.

To install it, just log in to the Synology NAS operating system , also called DSM, on a browser > Package Center > search Surveillance Center, and it will be done in about 5 minutes.

Surveillance Station 9 needs Synology DSM OS version is at least DSM6.2. Most NAS released after 2013 support this version. The latest DSM is 7.2 while writing this post.

Click on Surveillance Station icon to enter its NVR operating system. The first login will prompt us to view the applications on its desktop:

This article will use the following apps in Surveillance Station first:

1. IP-Camera
2. Monitor Center
3. License
4. CMS

If the Synology NAS is on a closed network, we can download Surveillance Station package from the Synology Download Center and install it manually. 

If we have not a Synology NAS yet, we can also visit Surveillance Station Online Demo and try out the latest version.

Synology Surveillance Station – Choose IP Cameras #

To choose a compatible IP camera, we can get started after understanding the following 2 points:

１. How many IP cameras does my Synology NAS support at most? #

A single Synology supports at least 5, up to 650 IP cameras. Here is a way to find how many IP cameras one Synology NAS supports:

• Go to Synology website > Download Center > Documents > Product Specifications or Data Sheet

Take my old DS1517+ for example. Its limitation in Data Sheet is 40 :

Since the Surveillance Station 9.1.3-10869 version, the camera amount limitation is removed.

Version: 9.1.3-10869 #

(2023-10-25)

Important Note #

1. Removed the limitation on the number of IP cams. Check the suggested maximum number of IP cams in your product specification first for better performance.

Before this version, Surveillance Station can’t add IP cameras over the specific limitation. The app【License】will also address the limitation:

Since 9.1.3-10869 version, we can set the camera resolution or frame rate according to actual needs. It is all fine if NAS performance is not affected. Resource Monitor in DSM could help observe if Surveillance Station consumes too much resource.

2. What IP Camera is compatible or incompatible? #

■ Supported Cameras: #

For the first reference, we could search IP camera Support List. Basically the list has 3 types:

1. The 3rd-party IP cameras: It includes over 8,400 cameras from around 150 different brands. Even more cameras are not on the official list but supported. Most standard IP cameras work if they support ONVIF or RTSP streaming.
2. Synology cameras, BC500, TC5500: These are Synology own PoE cameras, released in mid-2023. They cost about 200-250USD more than cameras with similar hardware. Those models have built-in licenses and special software ability like AI detection.
3. Synology LiveCam: This is an iOS/Android app could turns our mobile into an IP camera. Then mobile could work with Surveillance Station. It is useful for temporary monitoring or testing needs.
   

■ Unsupported Cameras: #

1. Brand-locked security system: This kind of IP cameras may close ONVIF or RTSP( Xiaomi, Ring, Ubiquiti, Arlo, Google Nest…etc ). May need to tweak for get streaming path. This is often inconvenient.
2. Battery-powered cameras: These cameras usually disable ONVIF or RTSP streaming for power saving.  

In short, we could use a wide range of 3rd-party cameras. It is best to search the Synology IP camera support list as a guide, and remember that cameras supporting ONVIF or RTSP have a good chance of working, even if they are not officially listed.

Surveillance Station – Set Up IP Cameras #

Here are general 4 steps about how to set up our IP camera with Surveillance Station:

1. Connect IP camera to the local network. The general steps will like:  #

• Follow the camera instruction to connect it to the wired or wireless network
• Most cameras will get an random IP address. We can either set a static IP address for the camera app, or reserve its IP in our DHCP server (usually this is the router)
• Set the camera streaming username, password, and management port number according to its instructions. This information will be used later
• Other settings we might want to adjust: the highest image quality, updating to the latest firmware, and synchronize its time zone by NTP time synchronization.

2. Add the camera to Surveillance Station: #

• Open the IP Camera application in Surveillance Station and click Add. It will start searching for cameras on our network.
• ONVIF cameras and Synology cameras BC500/TC500 should be detected quickly. 
• If the camera is NOT displayed, we can manually add it using the IP address and port number we set earlier.

3. Configure the camera settings from Surveillance Station: #

Once the camera is connected, we can use the same IP Camera to adjust various settings:

• Streaming quality – Setup different streaming quality for different devices. For example, high resolution for recording and low resolution for mobile liveview.
• Recording storage duration – Plan our own recording details. How long for video duration and motion detection recording plan.
• Motion detection – Detect motion and trigger recording or notification. In no words we could use cam its own detection setting or use detection from Surveillance Station
• Live view resolution for different devices
  

The Synology camera has a lot of settings that we can use. We can start with the default settings, and then explore the other settings later. For example, we can try the human and vehicle detection.

4. Reserve storage for video recordings: #

Here are several ways to estimate the required storage for IP cam recording files: 

■ NVR Selector tool #

For example, if I choose 3 cameras with H.264 codec, 30 FPS and 5MP resolution, and want to store recordings for one year, I will need about 169TB of space on Synology NAS.

■ WD Surveillance Storage Capacity Estimator Tool #

I still select 3 cameras, one year recording, 5MP resolution, 30FPS. But I choose two formats: H.264, H.265. We could see H.265 could save a lot of space.

■ Use IP Camera → Edit → Video #

Please notice the estimation ways above give rough storage value. We need to observe 1-3 days to see if any adjustment required.

By following these steps, we should smoothly connect the IP camera to Surveillance Station and start using its various features.

Synology Surveillance Station – How to monitor Surveillance Station remotely or locally  #

We can do monitoring by many ways. Synology offers mobile, computer, or physical clients as below:

• Surveillance Station Client for Mac or Windows.
• Google Chrome browser
• Use the DS cam app on iOS or Android mobile

The Monitor Center is a key feature in all of these clients. It lets us monitor live camera views, playback video history, search clips, or move IP lens ( if support PTZ move ) or its sound.

For monitoring IP cam streaming, Chrome and DS cam are my go-to apps. DS cam is mobile app available in iOS and Android. I also recommend this monitoring way. My Android is like this:

When we use Surveillance Station to watch multiple cameras view,  we could see Synology NAS utilizes few CPU and memory only.

For example, when I use my Chrome browser to watch 4 camera feeds on my DS1517+, the CPU usage is about 5.3% and the memory usage is about 150MB:

Most loading is on monitoring clients, like my computer. Thus if we need to monitor lots of IP cameras on Surveillance Station client of one computer, here is a FAQ about how to choose the computer suitable for the specs:

How do I choose a PC or VisualStation to monitor with Surveillance Station?

If I need to search for an object that is either missing or has just shown up, I switch to the Surveillance Station client on my Mac. This is because the smart search feature requires a significant amount of computing power, which is only available on desktop clients.

Here is also a good Synology FAQ to tell the difference of clients: 

• What client device or browser should I choose for Surveillance Station?

If Synology NAS is not in an isolated network, I will choose to set up QuickConnect for my Synology NAS. By this, I could access Surveillance Station via QuickConnect ID ( easier to remember) remotely or locally. QuickConnect automatically detects, then determines clients to access local IP or remote address via secure connection.  That is convenient and safe.

Synology Surveillance Station-Camera License #

Any Synology NAS could easily manage over 5 cameras. (The high-end model could manage up to 650 cameras.) However, managing over 2 cameras or related surveillance devices requires licenses. Synology NAS comes with 2 default licenses ( Synology DVA series have 8 ) for free. 

If the Surveillance Station needs to manage devices over 2, we can purchase extra licenses. Synology offers three license packs with a key. Input the key to License app then activate 1,4,8 devices: 

Each license price is about 50-60 USD. 

Although the extra licenses needs cost. However, this purchased license is lifetime valid. This means no need to pay subscription fee. It is one-time cost.

A good thing is this license supports migration. Suppose we buy one Synology camera license 10 years ago, we could migrate it to another Synology NAS or another Synology account, or sell to other Synology user needs license.   

By this license policy, the license price seems high at the beginning. But under a long usage, for example 3 years, the monthly charge is equal to about 1.7USD monthly.

This fee is lower than IP-Cam subscription cloud fee. This 3-day-recording plan usually started since 3 USD per month for each camera.

This is why we choose selling this Synology license. The cost, policy and update rule will become more attractive after using this security system for years.

Bitter821 offers various camera license packs too by instant automatic email key delivery. Once the payment is done, the key will be sent automatically to our customers instantly. 

Synology Surveillance Station–Combine all NAS NVR together-CMS #

CMS (Centralized Management System) is one business tool of Surveillance Station. Its main purpose is to control multiple NASs and cameras together. The size is up to 1,000 NAS and 10,0000 cameras, depending on the NAS host server power.  

We could utilize CMS to save camera license fee too. As every Synology NAS owns two default licenses, suppose we own more Synology, we could use CMS to share default or purchased licenses. 

Here is my example. I have four Synology NAS. I use CMS in one NAS and merge the other three NAS in Surveillance Station. By this way I have 8 default free camera license:

Conclusion. #

Surveillance Station has been developed since 2008 and is now a stable and easy-to-use security camera system. Even so, it is not a perfect system yet. For example, if we want to do some advanced recognition, such as license plate or face recognition, Surveillance Station needs to be paired with Synology DVA products, because they have a GPU that can do this kind of calculation. But Synology NAS does not currently. 

Setting up a Synology NAS and configuring IP cameras also requires some knowledge of networking. In terms of plug-and-play, there is still room for improvement.

When deploying a large number of cameras, we will need to prepare for extra cost for camera license. 

However, because the licenses are perpetual and transferable, they are the cheapest in the long run. This is also why we choose to sell those licenses. According to my personal working experience in Synology, this mechanism seems to be proven to be a win-win strategy.

If you are considering a security system, please try out Surveillance Station. I believe you will not regret it like most users.  If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a message for further discussion.