Synologyカメラの互換性：Surveillance Stationと互換性のあるカメラはどれですか？

Synology camera compatibility is the question that decides whether a camera you already own can join your system, or whether the cheap model in your basket is about to become an expensive mistake. The short answer is that Surveillance Station works with far more cameras than the official list shows, but not all of them equally. This guide explains the three tiers of Synology camera compatibility, how to read the official list without being misled, how to add a camera that is not on it, and exactly what you give up when you do.

SynoPower Club Point: Almost everyone asks the wrong question. “Is this camera compatible?” usually gets a yes, because most cameras will stream into Surveillance Station somehow. The question worth asking is “which features survive?” A camera can be compatible and still arrive without pan-tilt-zoom, without audio, and without the on-camera detection you paid for.

The three tiers of Synology camera compatibility

Camera compatibility is not a yes or no answer. Surveillance Station can talk to a camera in three different ways, and they give you progressively less.

1. Certified, on the official list. Synology has tested the model and written a driver for it. You pick the brand and model from a menu, and everything the camera can do is exposed: multiple streams, audio, pan-tilt-zoom, camera-side event detection, and the model-specific settings. This is the only tier where you get the whole camera.
2. ONVIF. An industry standard that lets Surveillance Station discover and control cameras it has never met. Most network cameras sold in the last decade support ONVIF Profile S, which covers video streaming and basic control. You usually get video, often audio and pan-tilt-zoom, and rarely anything vendor-specific.
3. User defined, over RTSP. You type the stream address yourself. Surveillance Station records what arrives and nothing more. No discovery, no camera settings, no events from the camera. This is the fallback that makes almost anything work, at the cost of everything except the picture.

Work down these camera compatibility tiers in order. If a camera is certified, use the driver. If it is not, try ONVIF before reaching for a manual RTSP address, because ONVIF usually keeps features that the manual path throws away.

Reading the official camera compatibility list without being misled

Synology publishes an IP camera compatibility list covering a large number of models from most major brands. Two things about it trip people up.

Absence is not incompatibility. The camera compatibility list records what Synology has tested, and testing every camera on the market is not possible. A model that is missing is usually a model nobody submitted, not a model that fails. It will very often work over ONVIF.

Presence is not a promise about the firmware you have. Entries are tested against particular firmware, and manufacturers change behaviour in updates. A camera can be on the list and still misbehave after a firmware update, which is worth remembering before you blame Surveillance Station.

Treat the camera compatibility list as a strong signal rather than a rule. If your camera is on it, buy with confidence. If it is not, the camera is probably still usable, and the rest of this guide is about deciding whether the compromises are acceptable.

ONVIF: the camera compatibility path most people should use

ONVIF is a vendor-neutral standard for network video, and it is what makes camera compatibility possible beyond the certified list. Profile S is the one that matters here: it defines streaming, and in practice it is what lets a Surveillance Station installation control a camera from a brand it has never heard of.

Adding an ONVIF camera follows the same flow as any other. In Surveillance Station open IPカメラ, choose to add a camera, and where you would normally select a brand and model, select ONVIF instead. You will need the camera’s IP address and a set of credentials, and on many cameras those credentials are not the ones you use to log into the vendor’s phone app.

What you typically keep with ONVIF is the video stream, usually the audio, and often pan-tilt-zoom. What you typically lose is everything the manufacturer built on top of the standard, which increasingly means the on-camera AI. A camera that detects people by itself may report that as a vendor-specific event which ONVIF has no way to express, so Surveillance Station never hears about it.

That last point is the real cost of leaving the top camera compatibility tier. If you are relying on the camera to distinguish a person from a branch, check that the detection actually arrives before you build your recording plan around it. You can fall back on Surveillance Station’s own motion detection, but that analyses pixels rather than objects and it is a noticeably blunter instrument.

RTSP and user-defined cameras: the last resort

When ONVIF fails or the camera does not offer it, Surveillance Station can take a raw RTSP address. You supply the path yourself, in the format the manufacturer documents, which normally looks something like rtsp://username:[email protected]:554/stream1. Port 554 is the RTSP default.

Three camera compatibility details are worth knowing before you go down this route:

• Give the camera a fixed address. An RTSP entry points at an IP address. If DHCP moves the camera, the recording stops. Reserve the address on your router before you add the camera, not after the first gap in your footage.
• Most cameras publish two streams. A high quality main stream and a lower quality sub stream. Recording the main stream and using the sub stream for live view keeps both the footage and the NAS load sensible.
• RTSP is unencrypted. The credentials sit in the address in plain text. Keep this on a trusted local network, and never expose an RTSP port to the internet.

Camera compatibility in practice: adding a camera in 4 steps

The camera compatibility tiers above explain why each step exists. This is the order to work through when you have a specific camera in front of you.

Worked example: adding a TP-Link Tapo camera

Tapo cameras come up constantly, because they are inexpensive and people already own them. TP-Link’s own documentation lists Synology Surveillance Station as a supported platform and the cameras speak ONVIF Profile S, so this is a camera compatibility case that genuinely works. It just has a setup step nobody expects.

Create a camera account first. In the Tapo app, open the camera and create a dedicated camera account with its own username and password. This is not your Tapo account login. Until it exists, no third-party system can connect at all, and this single step is behind most reports that a Tapo camera is incompatible.

After that, add the camera in Surveillance Station over ONVIF using those credentials, or use the RTSP address directly. TP-Link documents the format as rtsp://username:password@IP/stream1 for the high quality stream and /stream2 for the standard quality one, on the default port 554.

Three limitations come from TP-Link rather than from Synology, and they are the ones that actually decide whether a Tapo camera suits your system:

• Battery and solar models generally cannot stream. TP-Link states that models such as the C425, C460, C660, C645D and D230 do not support RTSP, because always-on streaming defeats the power design. Selected doorbells including the D235, D225 and TD25 can stream, but only when hardwired and set to always-on mode.
• Tapo Care and a microSD card compete with your NAS. The cameras support a limited number of streams. With cloud storage and card recording both active, NVR recording is disabled. If your Tapo camera appears in Surveillance Station but never records, removing the microSD card is the documented fix.
• Dual-lens models give you one lens. Over ONVIF only the wide-angle stream is available, so a camera you bought for two views will contribute one.

None of this makes Tapo a bad choice for a spare corner. It does mean that a battery Tapo bought specifically to feed a NAS is money wasted, which is the kind of camera compatibility detail worth knowing before checkout rather than after.

What a non-certified camera costs you

Collecting the camera compatibility compromises in one place, because they rarely appear on a product page:

• On-camera AI detection is the one most likely to disappear, and on an outdoor camera it is the one that matters most.
• Pan-tilt-zoom often survives ONVIF and never survives a manual RTSP entry.
• Audio and two-way talk are inconsistent, and two-way audio in particular is frequently vendor-specific.
• Camera settings inside Surveillance Station may be reduced to a stream address, leaving you configuring image settings in the vendor’s own app instead.
• Firmware updates can break it. A vendor who never tested against Surveillance Station has no reason to preserve the behaviour you depend on.

If you want none of these compromises, Synology’s own cameras are certified by definition and run people and vehicle detection on the camera itself. Our reviews of the BC510, TC510, BC800Z そして CC410W cover what each one is for. Note that from 2026 these each consume a device license, where the earlier BC500 and TC500 shipped with one included.

Camera compatibility is not the only limit: capacity and licenses

A camera can pass every camera compatibility test and still be one your NAS cannot take. Two separate ceilings apply.

Hardware capacity. Every NAS model has a maximum number of cameras and a maximum total bitrate it can record, and the second limit is the one people hit first. Four 4K cameras ask far more of a NAS than four 1080p ones. Synology’s NVRセレクター estimates this for a given model and camera mix, and is worth running before you buy either the cameras or the NAS.

Licenses. Every Synology NAS includes two camera licenses, and every camera beyond the second needs one. This is independent of camera compatibility: an ONVIF camera from an unknown brand consumes exactly the same license as a certified one, because a Surveillance Stationライセンス pays for a recording channel rather than for a brand. Our guide to what Surveillance Station includes for free covers where the free tier ends.

A camera compatibility checklist to run before you buy

1. Search the model on the official compatibility list. If it is there, stop worrying.
2. If it is not, confirm the camera advertises ONVIF Profile S. This is the single most useful line on a spec sheet.
3. Confirm it is mains powered. Battery cameras frequently cannot stream continuously, whatever else they support.
4. Check whether the detection you are paying for is on the camera or in the vendor’s cloud. Cloud detection will not reach your NAS.
5. Add up the bitrate of every camera you plan to run and compare it with what your NAS can record.
6. Count your licenses. Two are free, the rest are not.

Frequently asked questions about camera compatibility

Where can I see cameras being added on video?

Three independent walkthroughs covering Surveillance Station setup and camera compatibility in practice. They are third-party tutorials rather than Synology productions, so menus may differ slightly between versions.

参考文献

• Synology IP camera compatibility list, the official camera compatibility record of tested models.
• Synology NVR Selector, for checking how many cameras a given NAS can actually record.
• Surveillance Station Help: configure camera settings.
• TP-Link: viewing a Tapo camera on a PC, NAS or NVR using RTSP and ONVIF, the source for the Tapo details above.
• Synology Surveillance Station knowledge base.

Once your cameras are connected, the full Surveillance Station overview covers what to do with them, and DSカム puts the result on your phone.