Vigil Platform

Vigil Platform is a self-hosted CCTV analytics system built for organizations that need more than a conventional NVR — intelligent alerting, multi-vendor camera consolidation, and full data ownership under a single dashboard.

The name comes from the English word vigil — a period of watchful wakefulness. That is what the platform does: monitor every camera around the clock, detect events, notify the right people, and record everything automatically, without requiring a human to watch at all times.

Current version: v1.5.3 — production-ready, deployed in live environments.

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Who It Is For

Vigil Platform is designed for organizations that already operate CCTV cameras and need analytics, intelligent alerting, and verifiable data governance on top:

Segment	Typical Scale	Core Need
Offices, Government, Banking, Healthcare	100–500 cameras	Unified dashboard, LINE alerts, PDPA compliance
Airports, Universities, Convention Centers	200–1,000 cameras	Multi-vendor consolidation, custom reports, visitor analytics
Factories, Warehouses, Industrial	50–2,000 cameras	Perimeter analytics, long retention, operational intelligence
Retail (Malls, Convenience, Outlet)	30–500 cameras	People counting, traffic analytics, multi-branch
Education	50–500 cameras	Student safety, strict PDPA, budget-constrained

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Core Capabilities

Multi-Vendor Event Ingestion

Vigil ingests security events from cameras of different manufacturers through a vendor-neutral pipeline. The alert engine, analytics, reporting, and dashboard contain no vendor-specific logic — adding a new camera type requires only a new ingester module.

Supported protocols:

• Bosch BVMS — MQTT over ONVIF Profile M; supports IVA Pro and IVA Basic event types (Crossing Line, Object In Field, Loitering, Counting, and more)
• Hikvision — ISAPI HTTP alert stream; Smart Events and Face Capture
• Dahua — CGI VCA events: Line Crossing, Intrusion, Smart Motion; ANPR/LPR plate recognition (ITC cameras); Face Capture via NVR-stored crops (RPC2); pre-alarm RTSP clips; multi-channel NVR support
• ONVIF generic — Monitor-only mode (live snapshot + reachability probe); full event ingestion on the roadmap

License Plate Recognition (LPR)

Vigil ingests ANPR/LPR events from supported cameras and indexes them in a searchable plate database. Each record includes the plate image crop, full scene image, vehicle type classification, plate registration type (derived from plate color), province, and speed (where available).

• Hikvision ANPR — ISAPI stream integration
• Dahua ITC — CGI event integration; vehicle categories include sedan, SUV, truck, pickup, motorcycle, and more

The LPR page provides forensic search by plate number, date range, camera, and vehicle type. A statistical dashboard shows plate activity by category, per-camera breakdowns, and timeline charts.

Safety enforcement features:

• No-helmet detection — motorcycles without helmets are flagged as a separate vehicle category with a dedicated KPI card and filter
• Overloaded motorcycle detection (3+ riders) — a KPI card surfaces events where rider count exceeds 2; click-through to the filtered event list
• Seatbelt detection — drivers without seatbelts are flagged separately; available on supported Dahua ITC cameras
• Plate mismatch detection — when the same plate is read with inconsistent vehicle characteristics across events, it is flagged as a potential stolen/cloned plate suspect; operators can review and dismiss false positives
• Local plate recognition — plates registered to the site's own vehicle fleet are tracked separately, enabling distinction between resident vehicles and external visitors
• LPR Watchlist — plates added to a watchlist trigger immediate alerts with an acknowledgement workflow when detected by any camera

Real-Time Monitoring

Every camera is probed on a heartbeat cycle. Status transitions from online to offline are detected within 60 seconds and trigger notifications.

The Security Morning Briefing dashboard gives operators an immediate operational picture:

• Status strip across all cameras
• Attention alerts from the past 4 hours
• 24-hour activity timeline
• Site map with live event overlay
• Top 5 hotspot cameras by event volume

Camera snapshots are delivered via a live proxy with automatic fallback. KPI counts (cameras online, events today, disk usage) are updated server-side with correct timezone handling.

Cameras can be organized into groups by floor, building, or zone. The dashboard supports per-group tab filtering. Every incoming event produces a toast notification visible across all pages, with burst throttling so high-frequency cameras do not flood the interface.

Event Management and Analytics

Events are stored with full metadata and are searchable, filterable, and paginatable server-side. Filters include camera, rule name, event class, vendor, and date range.

Stats v2 provides:

• KPI cards by event category
• Distribution breakdown (pie chart)
• Per-camera event timelines
• Activity Heatmap — hours of day versus day of week
• Top rules and quietest cameras
• CSV export
• Click-to-drill-down on any chart element into the raw event list
• Zone Dwell Time — stat card showing how long objects remained inside a defined zone (FieldDetector events); duration is also shown inline in event detail modals

Density Over Time tracks people-count aggregations (from compatible cameras) and displays trends with median smoothing pushed via WebSocket.

Event categories and their icons and colors are configurable by administrators.

Alerting and Reporting

LINE Notifications — Vigil's built-in LINE integration sends alert messages with snapshots directly to individual users or group chats in under 5 seconds from event detection.

Camera Offline Alerts — When a camera transitions to offline, a LINE notification is sent with the camera name and how long it has been unreachable. Repeat interval, escalation, and recovery notifications are configurable.

Recorder Wedge Detection — When the pre-alarm recording buffer stops advancing for more than 5 minutes, a LINE notification is sent automatically. This detects silent recorder failures — where the service is running but clips are no longer being written — before they are discovered during an incident review.

Analytics Reports — Four report types (daily, weekly, monthly, custom range) rendered as PDF or PNG. Reports are delivered automatically to LINE on a schedule and retained for 90 days in Report History.

Health Report — System-wide status report rendered as a PNG image with five configurable sections: camera uptime summary, event volume, disk usage, alert activity, and image quality assessment (bright/dark/blurry/scene-change per camera over 24 hours). The banner automatically flags when more than 50% of cameras are offline or disk usage exceeds 85%.

Face Capture

Vigil captures and stores face crops alongside the full background image for supported camera vendors. Each face record includes demographic attributes detected by the camera firmware: approximate age range, gender, emotion, and attributes such as mask, glasses, or hat. Images are stored locally on the server — no cloud storage. A filterable gallery and per-face detail modal are available in the dashboard.

• Hikvision — face crops via ISAPI stream
• Dahua — face crops and full scene images retrieved directly from NVR storage; includes similarity scores and blacklist match status from FaceComparision events

Snapshot Overlays

Event snapshots can display bounding-box and zone geometry overlays drawn directly on the image. The overlay is rendered client-side using coordinates captured by the camera at the time of the event:

• Dahua — face and FieldDetector events include person bounding boxes
• Hikvision — Smart Events include bounding boxes and zone polygons

Per-camera toggles in the camera settings allow operators to enable or disable overlay rendering independently for bounding boxes and zone outlines. Overlay controls are shown only for vendors that supply coordinate data.

Appearance Search (Bosch IVA)

For sites running Bosch cameras with IVA Pro firmware, Vigil captures and indexes clothing color data for every detected person. Each appearance record stores a full color-cluster breakdown — dominant and secondary colors — enabling two-tone clothing searches directly from the Events and Appearances pages.

Cameras running standard (non-Pro) IVA firmware are also supported at reduced fidelity: a single dominant color is captured per person, enabling broad color-based filtering even without the Pro license.

Pre-Alarm Video Clips

A rolling RTSP buffer records continuously from a configurable sub-stream. When an event triggers, the system dumps a clip with a configurable number of seconds before and after the event. Clips are accessible from the event detail view and can be played back in the mobile app. This feature is available for all three supported vendors.

Map View

Cameras are plotted on a real geographic map using OpenLayers 9. Features include:

• Multi-group color-coded overlay — each camera group has its own pin color and ring; groups can be hidden or shown individually
• Live Pulse — when an event arrives, a floating card with snapshot and event type appears above the camera's map pin in real time; debounced per camera to avoid clutter
• Heatmap — 24-hour event density rendered as a color overlay; click any zone to drill down to the event list
• Wall Mode — fullscreen map with sidebar and header hidden, suitable for SOC displays and TV walls
• Camera popup — tap any pin to see current status, last-seen time, top event rules in the past 24 hours, and the latest snapshot
• Offline tile cache — map tiles can be downloaded in advance for a user-defined bounding box and zoom range; the map functions without internet connectivity, suitable for isolated networks

Maintenance Mode

Any camera can be placed into Pause / Maintenance Mode while work is performed. While paused:

• The ingester stops processing events for that camera
• LINE offline alerts are suppressed
• The camera card shows a maintenance indicator instead of a live feed
• The pause period is excluded from uptime percentage calculations
• Every pause and resume is written to the audit log with timestamp and operator

System Health Dashboard

An admin-only page that auto-refreshes every 15 seconds reports: database latency, event rate, MQTT pipeline freshness, camera online/offline counts, snapshot file counts and sizes, disk free/total, process uptime and memory, WebSocket client count, system load average, and image quality per camera.

Service management controls allow administrators to restart individual services without SSH access. All service management actions are written to the audit log.

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Key Benefits

Full data ownership. All camera events, snapshots, face images, and reports are stored on the customer's own server. No data leaves the premises without explicit configuration.

No vendor lock-in. Cameras from multiple manufacturers coexist on a single dashboard. Changing or adding camera hardware does not require replacing the analytics platform.

One-time licensing model. Vigil is purchased as a perpetual license (G1 through G5 tiers by camera count) with annual maintenance. There is no per-camera monthly subscription.

Source code access. Customers receive the full source code under license. The platform can be customized, extended, or audited internally.

White-label ready. Logo, colors, and brand name are configurable per deployment. System integrators and resellers can deliver Vigil under their own brand name.

Bilingual interface. The dashboard and reports are fully bilingual (Thai and English) with instant switching.

Deployment flexibility. Vigil runs on Docker Compose on customer-owned Linux hardware. A Cloudflare Tunnel is used for remote access without opening inbound firewall ports.

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System Architecture

Vigil Platform is organized into four layers:

Ingestion Layer — Vendor-specific ingester processes connect to camera systems and translate proprietary event formats into a normalized internal schema. An EMQX 5.8 MQTT broker handles Bosch camera connections and automatically provisions per-camera credentials when a new Bosch camera is added.

Processing Layer — A Node.js API server handles authentication, authorization, business logic, alert rule evaluation, and report generation. WebSocket connections push snapshot streams and real-time event notifications to connected browsers and mobile clients.

Storage Layer — PostgreSQL 16 stores all events, camera metadata, user accounts, alert rules, LINE configuration, face images, audit logs, and reports.

Presentation Layer — A 15-page single-page application built for speed. Pages load in under 2 seconds with server-side pagination and caching.

Deployment profiles:

Profile	Includes
A	Event ingestion, statistics, LINE alerts
B	Profile A + live snapshots
C	Profile B + pre-alarm video clips

License tiers by camera count:

Tier	Cameras
G1 Starter	Up to 100
G2 Standard	Up to 500
G3 Pro	Up to 1,000
G4 Enterprise	Up to 2,000
G5 Datacenter	Up to 3,000

Measured performance (v1.5.0 production):

• Alert latency from event to LINE push: under 5 seconds
• Dashboard page load: under 2 seconds

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Security

Vigil Platform has undergone six rounds of security audit covering the full codebase: backend API, frontend, database, and infrastructure. The most recent round was conducted as a live low-impact probe against the running production system — not a static source review. Audits follow the OWASP Top 10 methodology and include PDPA compliance verification.

Six formal security audits have been conducted, including a live production pentest. Critical and high-severity findings have been resolved; remaining open items are intentionally deferred with documented rationale.

Authentication and Authorization

• Passwords are hashed with bcrypt. Sessions use HMAC-SHA256 signing with a 7-day token lifetime and a 15-minute idle timeout.
• Brute-force protection — five consecutive failed login attempts lock the account for 15 minutes.
• Triple-layer session handling — ensures correct behavior on browsers with aggressive third-party cookie restrictions, including Safari ITP.
• Role-based access control (RBAC) with three levels: admin (full access), viewer (read-only), auditor (read + export; all write requests are blocked at the server middleware level, not only in the UI).
• Server-side password-change enforcement — users flagged with a mandatory password change cannot call any API endpoint until they comply. This is enforced in server middleware.
• All WebSocket connections require JWT authentication on upgrade.

Data Protection

• Camera credentials are encrypted at rest using AES-256-GCM. The encryption key is stored separately from the configuration file.
• Camera passwords are masked in logs. They are only returned in plaintext to administrator sessions for pre-filling edit forms; viewer and auditor sessions receive redacted values.
• API error responses return generic messages to clients. Full stack traces are written only to server-side logs.
• File uploads are validated against magic bytes (actual file header bytes), not MIME type from the browser. SVG files disguised with an image extension are rejected.
• Map tile API tokens are never exposed to the browser. All tile requests are proxied server-side.

Network and Protocol Security

• CORS is locked to a whitelist of approved domains.
• MQTT access control — the EMQX broker requires per-camera credentials. Anonymous connections are disabled.
• PostgreSQL transport — TLS 1.3 is enabled on the database server.
• CSRF — SameSite cookie policy and token-based validation prevent cross-site request forgery.
• SQL injection — all database queries use parameterized statements throughout.
• XSS — all event and camera data rendered into HTML is HTML-escaped. Content Security Policy headers with nonce are applied.
• Path traversal — strict path validation prevents directory traversal on file-serving endpoints.

License Integrity

The license system uses Ed25519 asymmetric cryptography. A license key cannot be forged without access to the private signing key. Licenses are bound to the deployment machine and specify a camera-count ceiling enforced at runtime.

PDPA Compliance

Vigil Platform is designed for compliance with Thailand's Personal Data Protection Act:

• Data residency — all personal data is stored on the customer's own server. No cross-border data transfer occurs without explicit customer configuration.
• Automated data purge — three background jobs run nightly to delete events, snapshots, and video clips beyond the configured retention period.
• Consent for LINE notifications — a LINE user must actively follow the system's official account and be approved by an administrator before receiving any notifications.
• On-demand deletion of biometric data — face images can be deleted individually or in bulk through the admin interface.
• Audit trail — all user actions that create, modify, or delete data are written to a structured audit log with user ID, action type, resource reference, and timestamp. Active sessions can be reviewed and individually revoked by administrators.

OWASP Top 10 Coverage

Category	Status
A01 Broken Access Control	Resolved — RBAC middleware on all endpoints
A02 Cryptographic Failures	Resolved — Ed25519 license; TLS on all connections
A03 Injection	Resolved — parameterized queries throughout
A04 Insecure Design	Addressed — PDPA by design; data isolation
A05 Security Misconfiguration	Addressed — strict CORS; MQTT ACL
A06 Vulnerable Dependencies	Monitored — patched within 7 days of CVE release
A07 Authentication Failures	Resolved — 15-minute idle timeout; brute-force lockout
A08 Data Integrity Failures	Resolved — magic bytes file validation; Ed25519 license
A09 Logging Failures	Improved — structured audit log on all write actions
A10 SSRF/XXE	Safe — no user-controlled URLs; JSON-only API

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Integrations

LINE Notifications

LINE is integrated natively into Vigil Platform. Alerts are sent with snapshot images attached, directly to individual LINE users, group chats, or rooms.

Alert message content:

• Snapshot image from the camera at the time of the event
• Camera name and group/zone
• Event type and timestamp
• Name of the alert rule that triggered

Quiet hours — each alert rule can have a defined quiet window. The system suppresses LINE messages during that window but continues recording events in the dashboard.

60-second cooldown — repeated triggers from the same rule within 60 seconds are consolidated to prevent notification flood.

Self-service onboarding — administrators share a QR code. Staff scan it, follow the LINE official account, and request access. The administrator approves in the dashboard. Access is revoked by removing the user from the recipient list.

Camera offline alerts — sends a LINE notification when a camera goes offline; sends a recovery notification when it comes back online.

Scheduled reports — the Health Report and Analytics Report can be sent automatically to a LINE group on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule.

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Roadmap

The following capabilities are planned for future phases:

• ONVIF generic event ingestion — full event processing for cameras not covered by the current vendor-specific ingesters
• Event workflow — acknowledge, dismiss, and escalate events from the dashboard
• Face Recognition AI — vector-based person re-identification using face embeddings
• Anomaly detection — statistical detection of unusual crowd density or prolonged inactivity in a zone
• Email alerts — SMTP-based alert delivery as an alternative to LINE
• Webhook integrations — outbound webhook delivery to third-party systems