Managed security infrastructure
Snowdaddy Security
Private camera monitoring whose recognition runs on hardware at the site. One machine under your roof records every camera, runs detection on every picture and serves your console. A picture leaves the site only when someone in your household opens the console from outside, through an encrypted tunnel.
- Every camera recorded continuously in one-minute segments
- Detection, tracking and recognition on a GPU at the site
- Phone alerts through Snowdaddy's notification server or your own
- Every part in the catalogue is free of vendor clouds
At the site
One machine, three processes, nothing outsourced
A supervisor keeps three processes alive: the recorder, the GPU lane and the web server. They share a local database and shared memory; the web server is the only one that listens.
- Recorder
- One process per camera writes one-minute segments as a stream copy, with no re-encode. A stall guard restarts a camera whose newest segment stops growing for 150 seconds.
- GPU lane
- One shared detection model at five frames a second per camera, one worker thread and one tracker per camera, and the recognition modules the service includes.
- Streams
- Detection runs on the camera's small stream; recording, plates, faces and packages use the high-resolution stream. Live viewers open no extra session on your recorder.
- Web server
- Your console and the operator console on one port. Python standard library, no web framework.
- Uplink
- A site on another network gets a small uplink appliance: it pulls the camera streams at the site and opens an outbound encrypted tunnel. Nothing listens inbound at the site.
Site planner
Lay out your site, build the package
The planner runs the rules the platform itself uses at a site survey. The parts list follows its own generator, and every note under it comes from what the recognition code needs to work. It runs in your browser and sends nothing.
The site
Cameras one kind per site
How many cameras
Recorder
Average cable run
PoE switch
Uplink appliance for a site on its own network
Battery backup
Receiver kits optional hardware for aerial match-up
The cameras
Views at the site choose every one you have
Camera streams
The package
Always included
- Continuous recording
- Detection and tracking
- Event clips
- Phone alerts
- Home, Away and Night
- Tamper and health watch
- Zones
- Mobile console
- Animals
Recognition add what the site needs
Recordings kept
Extra 30-day steps
Your site
Parts list
What the recognition code needs
As text
Quantities follow the platform's generator: recorders per eight channels, one power supply or PoE switch per eight cameras, one mount per camera. Retention is bounded by the disk, always: the recorder removes the oldest unprotected footage first when free space runs low.
Recognition
What the lane recognises, and what each module needs
An object must hold for several frames before it becomes an event with a clip and a snapshot. Every module below runs only where the service includes it; heuristics are called heuristics.
Vehicle intelligence
Type, colour, direction and dwell. Parked vehicles are remembered as state, so a car raises an event when it moves; on an infrared night picture it gets a dark or light tone, never a colour.
Plate reading
A specialist plate detector and OCR on the high-resolution crop, voted across the track, with a plate format per customer. It needs a driveway or gate camera with about 100 px of plate width.
Plate watchlist
Allow, watch and alert lists. A plate on the alert list sends an urgent push in every arm mode.
Faces and visitors
Enrolled household members recognised, unknown visitors kept for naming later. It needs a door camera at face height; each enrolment stores its consent statement.
Person-vehicle match-up
A person is linked to the vehicle that arrived on the same site from 45 seconds before to 5 seconds after they first appear.
Emergency vehicles heuristic
Police, ambulance and fire vehicles by a specialist model and light-bar strobe detection; an urgent push only when the two corroborate.
Aerial watch heuristic
Aircraft, helicopters, drones and birds on a sky-facing camera, by flight signature and a specialist model. Only a drone the specialist confirms sends a push.
Aircraft and drone match-up receiver kit
An aircraft is matched to the nearest ADS-B flight within the site radius; a drone to the freshest Remote ID broadcast of the last 90 seconds.
Package detection beta
After a person leaves, the camera checks for packages: a new one is a delivery, a vanished one a pick-up.
Tamper and health
A camera that stops sending for 25 seconds, loses its signal or freezes for 60 seconds raises an alert; several cameras of one site going down together send one push.
Zones and arming
Include and exclude zones per camera. Away alerts on every camera, Home and Night on the cameras you choose; recording never stops.
Visitor counts
Daily people and vehicles, unique and repeat visitors, the busiest hour; passing traffic and parked cars are counted apart.
Recording
Recording that does not fail quietly
Footage that silently stops is the failure that matters most, so the recorder is built around noticing it.
Segments
One-minute files per camera, a stream copy with timestamps in their names. A graceful stop finalises the segment being written.
Stall guard
A camera whose newest segment stops growing for 150 seconds is restarted. Signal dropouts are counted per camera and shown as a degraded state.
Retention and disk guard
Retention applies to files and to rows. When free space runs low the oldest unprotected footage goes first, and the operator sees how many days the disk has left.
Protected events
A protected event keeps its clip, snapshot, crops and every segment that overlaps it. Enrolled face samples are never pruned.
Your console
Live, events, plates, people, vehicles, aerial, analytics, recordings
One sign-in for the household. It works in the browser and installs on the phone as an app over HTTPS.
Live wall
Every camera live, with an HD view on demand; viewers never open a second session on the recorder.
Events and alerts
Every event with its snapshot and clip, and every alert logged in the console whether or not a phone received it.
Plates, people, vehicles, aerial
A tab each: name a sighting, enrol a face, keep a watchlist.
Analytics
Visitors, vehicles and events by camera and by hour.
Recordings
Browse and play the continuous recording by camera and time.
Access and arming
Household sign-ins by invitation, each limited to chosen cameras; two-factor codes; Home, Away and Night from the phone.
Security model
Isolation is the first property
A cross-customer read is treated as the worst possible bug. Every request resolves its customer once, every camera route intersects that customer's cameras with the user's visible set, and a camera list that fails to parse fails closed. A dedicated two-customer isolation test tries the other customer's cameras, events, media, recordings, plates, faces, users and settings, and it gates every release.
The recorder's vendor firmware is the least trusted device on the site: it sits on its own network, and the console is blocked from its subnet. Nothing advertises a version.
- Passwords
- PBKDF2-SHA256 with 150 000 rounds. The first password must be changed before the console opens.
- Sessions
- Stored as hashes; HttpOnly, SameSite=Strict cookies; two-factor sign-in with time-based codes.
- Requests
- A CSRF header on every change, body limits, open redirects closed, static files served from inside their folder only.
- Logs
- Camera credentials redacted from every line. Customers never see paths, process ids or recorder errors.
- Processes
- Every child dies with its parent, and the recorder sweeps orphaned writers at start, so no two processes ever write the same footage.
- Demo links
- Read-only and time-limited, without plates, faces, vehicles, recordings or names.
- Telemetry
- The detection model's telemetry, hub and update checks are switched off. Nothing calls home.
From enquiry to live
How a site comes online
Every site moves through the same seven stages in the operator console, each with its own checklist. Detection and recording are already verified before the household is told the site is live.
Enquiry
The first contact, recorded with the service it concerns.
Site survey
A walk-through: camera positions and coverage, power and cable routes, the measured uplink, any existing recorder.
Parts list
Generated from the survey with the platform's rules, then agreed with the customer.
Ordering equipment
Cameras, recorder or switch, cables and power ordered; every part received and bench-tested.
Installation
Cameras mounted and aimed, cabling labelled, the recorder set up with cloud and P2P off, the uplink's encrypted tunnel up.
Commissioning
Live view, recording and detection verified per camera, zones drawn, a test alert delivered to the customer's phone.
Live
The household signs in from the invitation and installs the console on the phone.
Snowdaddy Security
Your cameras, your machine, your console
Sign in to the console from the browser or from the app on your phone.