Installing Obseron as a service on Windows

Requirements

Windows 7 or newer
Windows Server 2012 R2 or newer
Latest Obseron installer

Link to Obseron download page

Windows partitions

Obseron can be set to reserve recording space from any drive visible to the operating system. It is recommended to leave the operating system on a different drive than the one reserved for Obseron.

Installing Obseron

To begin the installation of Obseron, run the setup.

1. Select a language.
   
2. Click Next to continue.
   
3. Read through the license terms and click I Agree.
   
4. Select only Install as service. The service always starts automatically unless manually disabled from Windows services.
   
5. Choose the installation folder and click Install.
   
6. Finish the setup by clicking Finish.
   

Accessing and configuring the Obseron service

After the installation is completed, the service starts automatically and listens on port 80. To access the service, please open your preferred browser and enter URL: http://localhost

1. Enter URL http://localhost
   
2. Click Enter product key from the upper right corner of the page.
3. Enter the product key and click Activate.
4. If this recorder has Internet access, select Activate online — this option will automatically activate the key. If Internet access is not available, skip this step and follow the manual activation instructions.
5. If this recorder does not have Internet access, select Manual activation.
6. Copy the Activation ID from the field and visit https://a.obseron.com to get to the activation page. Alternatively, scan the QR code. This will automatically enter the Activation ID to the activation page and reply with a response.
7. Enter the Activation ID from the last step to this activation page and click Activate.
8. If the activation is successful, the activation response can be seen and copied from the page.
9. Enter this response to the Enter activation response field and press Activate.
10. Activation is now complete and the license has been activated.
11. Add storage for the recordings. See Set storage for recordings.
    
12. Select the drive, capture folder is created automatically. It is recommended to leave the C:\ drive for the operating system and to have a completely separate drive for Obseron storage.
    
13. Once the storage has been added, reservation for the database and recordings must be set. By default, all available space will be used.
    
14. After selecting the reservation settings, click on the  icon next to the Storage selection to apply the settings.
15. Confirm the changes by clicking Yes.
    

Optional tasks

These are some optional settings to set or change. These can be done before or after adding the cameras.

1. Rename the recorder.
   
2. Enable all the performance settings from System > Performance. NOTE! On a 32-bit system, Direct video decoding cannot be used.
3. Enable the local server for remote access and select the server port (by default port 9191 is used).
   
4. Change web server settings.
   
5. Add users. See Add users and give permissions.
   
6. The first user added will be the main admin account. This admin account has all the permissions and does not belong to any group. The next users will be regular users that require a permission group.
   
7. After adding a user, add a permission group.
   
8. Name the permission group.
   
9. Set permissions for the permission group.
   
10. Add members to the permission group.
    
11. Add cameras. See Add a camera.

Connecting to the service via Obseron GUI

See Connect to an Obseron server.

Additional information about the service

• The settings folder for the service can be found from C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Roaming\Obseron
• The Obseron service can be manually restarted or stopped from the Windows Services tool. To open this tool, open Start menu, and type services.msc. The Obseron VMS service can be stopped or restarted from the toolbar on the left of the service management console.
• To change automatic startup and other service settings, right click on the service to access the context menu and select Properties.