For installers

This section is for technicians who install, pair, and maintain NovaVMS hardware on site. It assumes you know PoE, ONVIF, Cat6, T568B, and basic network subnetting. If you are setting up your org from the office, start with Set up your first site.

Pages are grouped by the order of a real install: you plan, you stage gear, you mount, you cable, you pair, you hand off. Troubleshooting pages live under /troubleshooting/ and are linked from each install guide.

Start with this flow

1. Read network requirements
2. Complete the pre-install site survey
3. Install a gateway
4. Install wall and ceiling cameras
5. Pair your first gateway end-to-end
6. Add a camera to an existing site
7. Apply firmware updates
8. Swap a failed camera

Plan the install

• Supported hardware — cameras and gateway platforms we certify.
• Pre-install site survey — what to confirm before you arrive.
• Network requirements — bandwidth, PoE, DHCP, NTP, DNS.

Install on site

• Install a gateway — mount, cable, pair.
• Install a wall-mount camera — anchors, Cat6, seal, aim.
• Install a ceiling-mount camera — drop-ceiling and solid-ceiling variants.
• Docker Compose deploy — self-hosted gateway + cloud stack on a Linux server.

Your first time

• First gateway install (tutorial) — a full Pi 5 + PoE HAT + one camera walk-through, 30 minutes.

Day two

• Add a camera to an existing site
• Apply a firmware update
• Swap a failed camera
• Relocate a camera
• Bulk-deploy 20+ cameras
• Zero-touch provisioning

Decommission

• Decommission a site
• Wipe a gateway
• RMA procedure

If something is broken

• Camera will not be discovered
• Gateway will not pair
• No link light on a camera
• PoE brownout
• Firmware flash failed
• Camera shows a different IP
• Camera offline after reboot
• Water ingress
• ONVIF VLAN problem
• ONVIF clock sync problem

Reference

• Supported hardware
• Ports and protocols — firewall and NAT requirements.
• Gateway heartbeat — what “online” actually means.