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Adding a camera

Outside the first-run wizard, cameras are added from the admin console's camera management screen, the same underlying steps the wizard walks you through once:

  1. Discover, scanning an IP range with one or more credential sets, or add a camera manually if you already know its RTSP URL.
  2. Validate the stream before adding it: the console shows a live thumbnail plus the detected resolution, codec, and frame rate, so you catch a wrong URL or bad credentials before committing.
  3. Add, choosing a name and, if you use them, a camera group. A new camera joins the Default recording policy (or its group's policy); it doesn't get a private copy. If you later change a setting just for that camera, Crumb splits it onto its own named policy at that point, see Policies and groups.

An ONVIF-discovered camera keeps its ONVIF identity attached, which is what lets you turn on PTZ control (off by default, see ONVIF PTZ) and re-detect credentials later without re-entering anything. A camera added purely by RTSP URL, without ONVIF, still records and plays back normally, it just won't have PTZ or focus/iris control available.

Re-running discovery is safe: any IP already present as a camera is skipped rather than duplicated.