Video surveillance that actually works — and never sells your footage
VSTW is self-hosted NVR software with a resident AI: it recognizes your family on your own hardware, searches footage in plain English, filters false alarms, and repairs camera problems before you notice them. Your video never leaves your home.
A security system with a resident brain
Most NVRs record everything and understand nothing. VSTW ships with three tiers of intelligence — a deterministic assistant, compact on-device AI models, and an optional cloud reasoner — working as one.
Face recognition, 100% on-device
Teach it your family, vehicles, and pets. Detection and matching run on your own hardware with modern face-recognition models — reference photos become mathematical signatures locally and are discarded. Alerts say who, like “Recognized: Sarah,” and “unknowns only” mode means your own people never wake you up.
Search footage in plain English
“Delivery truck at night.” “Person carrying a box.” “Dog in the yard.” Semantic search runs entirely on your NVR and ranks stored frames by meaning — your query never leaves the box.
The false-alarm killer
Every alert can pass an AI check first: is the thing you care about actually in frame? Add custom conditions in plain English — “vehicle in the driveway” won’t fire for cars on the street. Mark misses and it learns each camera’s traps.
Self-healing camera health
A resident assistant watches every camera’s event link, pings the network path, forecasts storage, restarts wedged connections, reboots stuck cameras, and keeps a full troubleshooting log. It even tells you whether a problem is the wire or the camera.
Rules that write themselves
Describe an automation — “email me a snapshot when an unknown vehicle shows up on the driveway at night” — and the AI drafts the rule for your approval. Multi-camera sequences, schedules, cooldowns, standing AI watches, and one-click suggested fixes included.
Alerts that matter, where you want them
Push notifications with AI descriptions and snapshots (per-device targeting), rich email alerts, and a daily digest that reads like a briefing from a guard who watched all night — because one did.
Apple HomeKit built in
Your cameras appear in Apple Home with HomeKit Secure Video, live view and motion notifications on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Apple Watch.
Remote viewing, zero port forwarding
A secure relay through vstw.io gives you the full app and sub-second WebRTC live view from anywhere — with an automatic relay fallback for hotel Wi-Fi and cellular networks that block direct connections.
Serious recording engine
24/7, scheduled, or motion-triggered recording with pre-roll, per-camera retention, storage forecasting, exports, backups, and support for multi-sensor cameras — on any ONVIF or RTSP hardware.
One-line installCOMING SOON
A single Docker command turns any Linux box, NAS or mini-PC into a full VSTW server — AI models included.
iOS appCOMING SOON
A native app for live view, rich notifications, and tagging captures on the go. The mobile web app works today.
Simple subscriptionsCOMING SOON
Self-serve checkout at launch. Early-access users keep preferred pricing.
Privacy isn’t a setting. It’s the architecture.
Cloud camera companies store your life on their servers and train on your footage. VSTW is built the other way around.
- ✓Video is recorded to your hardware — your drives, your retention policy, nobody else’s data center.
- ✓Biometrics never leave the box. Face signatures are computed and matched on your NVR. There is no cloud face database to breach.
- ✓Footage search is local. The AI that understands your video lives with your video.
- ✓Cloud AI is optional and minimal — single frames and text for scene descriptions, only for the checks you enable, always metered and visible.
- ✓Remote access is a relay, not an upload. Live view streams from your NVR to your phone — vstw.io never stores your video.
Your home is the data center
VSTW’s recognition models — face detection, face matching, and visual search — run as compact neural networks on your own CPU. No GPU required, no video uploaded, no subscription needed for them to keep working.
Up and running in an afternoon
If your cameras speak ONVIF or RTSP, you’re most of the way there.
Install the server
Run VSTW on a Linux box, NAS or mini-PC on your network. Auto-discovery finds your ONVIF cameras.
Claim it online
Create your vstw.io account and link your server with a one-time code. That's your secure remote access and license in one step.
Teach it your world
Add profiles for your people, vehicles and pets — tag faces the cameras have already captured, straight from the gallery.
Let it work
Draft rules in plain English, get alerts that matter, read the morning digest, and let the assistant keep the system healthy.
Plans for every install
Early access is free while we finish the last mile. Sign up now and keep preferred pricing at launch.
Starter
- 24/7, scheduled & motion recording
- ONVIF / RTSP cameras + auto-discovery
- Apple HomeKit Secure Video
- Rules, schedules & email alerts
- Secure remote viewing
- Cloud AI descriptions & digests
- Push notifications
Pro
- Everything in Starter
- Local face recognition & profiles
- Semantic footage search
- AI false-alarm filtering & custom conditions
- Push notifications with snapshots
- Daily AI digest & standing watches
- Self-healing assistant & health log
Business
- Everything in Pro
- Multiple servers, one dashboard
- Team accounts with per-user features
- Higher AI quotas
- Priority support
Questions, answered
Does my video ever leave my home?
Which cameras work?
What hardware do I need for the server?
How is this different from Ring or Nest?
Is there a mobile app?
Can family members have their own logins?
Own your surveillance again.
Free during early access. Your cameras, your hardware, your data.
Create your free account