Public access to cameras¶

You can provide unregistered users with public access to Watcher web UI and selected cameras in it. This feature can be useful, for example, if you have some publicly available cameras on crossroads and private cameras in housing estates. In this case you can allow unregistered users to view public cameras for free and then convert those users to subscribers when they wish to get access to cameras in their housing estate. Thus, public cameras will help attract new clients to your service.

Just check the Demo access box in the Watcher settings. Right after you save this setting, the Continue with access to Public cameras link becomes available on the Watcher login page.

When anyone clicks this link, a session for the Demo user is initiated. The Demo user is a designated user that is created in Watcher for demo access when you check the box.

However, the Demo user has no permissions by default and is not added to any Organization, so they will see empty camera list at login. You should go to Users (or Organizations) page to assign the Demo user with some permissions.

We recommend that you create a special Organization with public cameras added to it and just add the Demo user to this Organization with permissions to manage cameras only. Please refer to User and permission management for details on permissions that you can assign. Please note that the Demo user has read-only permissions by default, and you cannot change Demo user's password: even if you set one, it will not be applied.