Surveillance Station 6.1

The surveillance capabilities of modern NAS servers are becoming increasingly more important and interesting, which is why we decided to dedicate a separate page to Synology's Surveillance Center. Not all Synology NAS servers support the same number of IP cameras because of differences in hardware. The DS214play supports up to eight cameras and comes with one free license. If you need to use more than one IP cameras through the Surveillance Station application, you will have to purchase additional licenses. Each license will set you back around $50.

The Surveillance Station supports over 1700 IP cameras from 63 brands. You can find the compatibility list here. Its Live View mode supports up to 49 channels @ 1080p on a single Live View display and also features Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) and digital zoom support. There is even the option to add an e-map of the area where the IP cameras are installed, and you can take snapshots of any of them. Other features include invisible watermarking, which can be validated through the Synology Evidence Integrity Authenticator, iOS and Android support, time slicing, and smart search. Another interesting characteristic of the Surveillance Station is that it can, as it utilizes the Synology Web Object, operate in most popular Windows browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer) without Java and with Windows Active Directory and LLDAP for improved control of permissions.


The first thing you have to do is to set up your IP camera(s). We used a Foscam FI8910W, a fully supported camera, which made setting it up fast and easy.


The IP Camera menu lists all active IP cameras, with their IP addresses and editing options.


Click on the Recording tab to manually start or stop the recording or play previously recorded sessions.


The Management tab also allows you to set various notification events and alert types, add e-maps of the areas the cameras cover, enable the Central Management System (CMS), through which you can monitor and manage surveillance deployments of all scales, add additional camera licenses, and access the log.


As we already mentioned, the DS214play comes with one free camera license and supports up to eight cameras.


Live View allows you to monitor and control all IP cameras in real time. The Live View Analytics feature even allows you to set up real-time event tracking, which includes the following: motion detection, missing object, foreign object, camera occlusion, focus lost, and no-idle zone.


The Surveillance Station's options.


The above screenshots cover some Live View Analytics settings,, along with various camera optimization and patrol settings.