First sign-in and quick start

Create the administrator account

Open OpticWatch in your browser (http://localhost:38080 on the same computer). A new installation asks you to create its administrator account:

• Choose a username.
• Choose a password of at least 12 characters.

This happens only once. As soon as the account exists, the setup screen is gone for good and every page needs a sign-in. There is no default password, and OpticWatch has a single administrator account, so store the password somewhere safe, such as a password manager.

Sign in

Sign in with the account you just created. A sign-in lasts 24 hours. After five failed attempts within 15 minutes from the same address, OpticWatch refuses further attempts from that address for a while, to slow down password guessing.

Find your way around

The menu has six sections:

• Dashboard: the health of every camera and the open incidents at a glance.
• Sites: the locations your cameras are grouped by.
• Cameras: every camera, its health and its latest check.
• Incidents: outages, opened and resolved automatically.
• Alerts: where notifications go (Pro and Integrator).
• Settings: your license, email delivery and monitoring behavior.

Quick start: your first monitored camera

1. Create a site

   Open Sites and choose Add site. Give it a name, such as the building or the customer, and optionally a description. Cameras always belong to a site. More about sites.

2. Add a camera

   Open Cameras and choose Add camera. Pick Enter an RTSP URL if you know the camera's stream address, or Set up with ONVIF to let OpticWatch find it. Give the camera a name, choose its site, and save. Adding a camera walks through each field.

3. Watch the first check

   OpticWatch starts checking the camera as soon as it is saved. The camera's page shows its health; a working camera becomes Healthy after its first successful check, and its stream details (codec, resolution and frame rate) appear. To run a check immediately, choose Check now. If the check fails, the page shows why; see RTSP addresses.

4. Activate your license (Pro and Integrator)

   Open Settings, find License, paste the license key from your purchase email and choose Activate. Free needs no license. Activating a license.

5. Set up alerts (Pro and Integrator)

   Add an email or webhook destination under Alerts so someone hears about an incident when it opens. Email and webhook alerts.

6. Make your first backup

   Once things are set up, run docker compose run --rm backup in the OpticWatch folder and keep the file somewhere safe. Back up and restore.