Does the camera need a public IP?

No. Cameras behind NAT are checked by a private checker inside your network, which connects to PingZen itself over 443/TCP. A public IP is needed only to check the camera from the public checkers in Moscow, Novosibirsk or Minsk.

Which cameras are supported?

Any camera or recorder that serves a stream over RTSP (rtsp:// or rtsps://). For Hikvision, Dahua, Reolink and Tapo the stream path is filled in for you, main or sub stream as you choose. For other models, take the path from the camera's manual or its web interface.

How much does it cost?

The free plan has up to 55 monitors, and every camera and every recorder channel is a monitor of its own. Availability is checked as often as once a minute, with up to 10 private checkers and up to 3 alert channels.

Will monitoring lock out the camera or the recorder?

No. We log in at most once per check, and after a rejected password we do not log in to that device with that login for an hour. Checks of one device with a password run one at a time, and the session is closed with TEARDOWN.

Do you see what my cameras film?

We do not record or store video. A frame is taken only when someone in your workspace opens the camera's page or presses “Refresh frame”; their browser decodes it. Status pages and alerts never show it.

How do I add hundreds of cameras?

With CSV import: up to 500 rows per file, login and password right in the stream link. The checker is picked for each camera, and cameras on a local network go only to a private checker.

RTSP · cameras and recorders

IP camera and NVR monitoring

PingZen checks that a camera delivers video, not just that it answers ping: does RTSP respond, is the password accepted, how many frames per second, what bitrate. A real outage reaches you within a few minutes.

How we check cameras →

RTSP answer every 1–15 min
Video check every 5–60 min
Recorders with 2–64 channels

The PingZen monitors list in a “Video surveillance” workspace: 30 cameras sorted by the Bitrate column from 12.5 Mbit/s, each with its status, 24-hour uptime and response time — Thirty cameras in one workspace: status, uptime, response time and bitrate for each, sorted by bitrate. Demo data.

The Camera frame card on a PingZen monitor page: an elevator hall with two elevators, a Refresh the frame button and a note that the frame is not saved — A real camera's frame on its monitor page. For this page we blurred the date, the camera number, a QR code, a wall sign and a screen; PingZen shows the frame as it is and never stores it.

Why “it pings” is not “there is video”

The camera pings, the video is gone

The camera's RTSP service hangs: the network answers, but neither the recorder nor a player gets the stream. Ping and a port check do not see it.

The stream is up, the video stutters

The camera answers requests but the frame rate drops or packets get lost. Only the stream itself shows that.

A recorder reboots — 16 messages

Monitoring that watches every channel on its own sends one message per channel. Nobody reads past the eighth.

What PingZen checks

Three levels. The video is decoded only for an on-demand frame: frame rate and bitrate come from RTP headers.

Availability
every 1, 5 or 15 minutes
OPTIONS and DESCRIBE, no video is sent. Does the camera answer, is the password accepted, is there a stream at this path; codec and resolution. Basic and Digest login, rtsp:// and rtsps:// addresses.
Video check
every 5, 15 or 60 minutes
SETUP and PLAY, 3 to 10 seconds of the stream, then TEARDOWN. Frames per second, bitrate, keyframe interval, packet loss and stalls. A bad sample is confirmed by a second one before we report a problem.
Camera frame
when you open the camera's page
One keyframe, to see whether the camera was covered or turned away. Your browser decodes it and we do not store it. H.264 only for now.

What matters when there are dozens of cameras

A recorder is one device

A 2–64 channel Hikvision, Dahua or Reolink recorder is added in one go, with channel paths filled in for you. The whole recorder down is one alert, not one per channel; a broken channel gets its own.

A wrong password is not an outage

The status is Degraded, not Down. Logins to the device with that login pause for an hour on every channel, so the camera does not lock it out. Update the password and we check right away.

The Bitrate column

The monitors list shows the bitrate of every camera with the video check on and sorts by it. The camera's page has a “Video quality over time” chart.

Your own limits

Frame rate, bitrate, keyframe interval. A changed codec or resolution is Degraded: that is usually what a camera reset to factory settings looks like.

CSV import

Up to 500 cameras in one file. Login and password go right into the stream link, the checker is picked for you. Passwords stay out of CSV exports.

The usual alert channels

Email, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Mattermost, webhooks and web push — the same as for websites.

Where the checker runs

Cameras are checked only by checkers; the central server never connects to a camera. Both options work.

Public checker

Moscow, Novosibirsk, Minsk. For cameras with a public IP and port 554 forwarded on the router. Nothing to install: add the stream address and checks start.

Private checker

A Docker container in the cameras' network, for cameras behind NAT. It connects to PingZen itself over 443/TCP, nothing is forwarded on the router. Up to 10 per account on the free plan.

Give monitoring its own view-only account on the camera, with a long password.

How to install a private checker → What an RTSP check does → LAN monitoring →

What PingZen does not do

Record or store video: recording and viewing stay with your recorder.
Show live video — only a single frame on request, and only for H.264 so far.
Analyse the picture or detect motion.
Speak ONVIF or steer cameras (PTZ).

Frequently asked questions

Add your first camera

A free account, no card. Cameras with a public IP are checked right away, cameras behind NAT once a private checker is running.

Create a free account How we check cameras →