Surveillance Station

The surveillance capabilities of modern NAS servers are becoming increasingly more important, which is why we chose to dedicate a separate page to Synology's Surveillance Station. Not all Synology NAS servers support the same number of IP cameras because of differences in hardware. The DS916+ supports up to 40 cameras and comes with two free licenses. If you need to use more than two IP cameras, you will have to purchase additional licenses. Each license will set you back by around $50.

Synology's Surveillance Station supports over 4700 IP cameras from 90 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 an 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 Surveillance Station is that it can, as it utilizes 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 permissions control.

Surveillance Station allows you to look at its live feed and recordings on multiple Synology NAS servers (NVRs in this case) through a single portal, the Central Management System (CMS). Logs from all recording servers and the camera licenses on your clients are centralized on the CMS host. This page has more on the capabilities and specifications of Synology's Surveillance Station.


Surveillance Station's interface shares some similarities with that of DSM, offering so many features that it can easily be described as a dedicated surveillance OS. You will find a taskbar similar to the one in DSM; it includes the notifications, administrator's, search, and widget icons.


There is a start menu that will give you access to many interesting options.


You can set up various notifications, including via email and SMS. These notifications can be sent to pre-selected recipients when there is a change to the system's and cameras' status.


You will first have to set up your IP camera(s). We used a couple Foscam cameras, and setting them up was fast and easy.


We have three IP cameras, but the DS916+ only comes with two free camera licenses, so we had to leave a camera out.


Chrome doesn't support the NPAPI plug-in anymore, which is essential for the Live View function. We had to use Firefox instead.


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.


You can add various alerts through Live View's alert management.


Use the recording menu to search, watch, export, delete, lock, and unlock recordings. You can also set the storage location and enable the rotation of recordings for unrecognized cameras here.


You are able to playback recordings concurrently or non-concurrently through the Surveillance Station's Timeline application. You can also manage archived recordings easily with Smart Search.


The Camera Licenses menu lists all available licenses. You are able to add new licenses here.


There is an application similar to Synology's Package Center, which allows for the installation of various Surveillance Station add-ons. This is a very useful feature because it enhances Surveillance Station's usability by adding to its feature set.