Home / VMS without per-camera licensing
The licence belongs to the vendor. The renewal belongs to the vendor. Over time, so does the customer.
Our video management platform is UK-owned and carries no per-camera licence. ONVIF Profile S/T and RTSP ingest, recording and AI on an appliance on your own network, sub-second WebRTC live view, and pan/tilt/zoom driven over both VAPIX and ONVIF. Camera-agnostic by architecture, not by aspiration.
UK-owned · ONVIF member · Cyber Essentials certified · White-label for installers
The commercial problem
Per-device licensing turns your estate into someone else’s annuity
| Estate size | Per-device licence at ~£85/camera | Our platform |
|---|---|---|
| 24 cameras | ~£2,040 | Per site · no per-camera fee |
| 120 cameras | ~£10,200 | Per site · no per-camera fee |
| 280 cameras | ~£23,800 | Per site · no per-camera fee |
Indicative, based on commonly published Milestone XProtect device-licence pricing and excluding support, care packages and hardware. Your own renewal quotation is the number that matters — bring it and we will work through it with you.
How it is built
Edge-first, because that is where the constraints actually are
01
Ingest — ONVIF Profile S/T and RTSP
Device discovery over ONVIF, media negotiated via RTSP over TCP. H.264 (Baseline/Main/High), H.265 Main and AV1 have been ingested and decoded at full sensor resolution against live firmware — 2592×1944 @30, 3840×2160 @25 — not read off a specification sheet.
02
Record and analyse at the edge
Recording and inference run on an appliance on the customer LAN. Footage and camera credentials never traverse the cloud boundary. The cloud layer holds stream identifiers and a public endpoint — it is architecturally incapable of reaching a camera directly.
03
Transport — WebRTC, sub-second
Live view is delivered over WebRTC rather than HLS or MSE, which buffer. Where a camera publishes AAC, audio is transcoded to OPUS on demand because WebRTC carries no AAC payload type — a detail most platforms discover in front of a customer.
04
PTZ — VAPIX and ONVIF
Pan, tilt and zoom driven end to end with the camera’s own telemetry read back as confirmation. Relative moves land within 0.02° of the commanded angle on VAPIX, and within 0.001 of the commanded translation over ONVIF RelativeMove.
05
Thermal and multi-sensor
Bispectral devices exposing multiple ImageSources are ingested as independent streams, because a thermal sensor and a visual sensor have different resolutions and an operator wants either one on the wall on its own.
06
Outbound-only connectivity
The edge dials out through an authenticated tunnel. No inbound port forwarding, no NAT traversal on the customer firewall, no camera exposed to the internet — which is how most CCTV estates end up on Shodan.
Interoperability
Built against the differences between vendors, not around them
Every manufacturer reads the specification differently, and the differences are specific: service endpoints at non-standard addresses, WS-Security tokens one stack accepts and another rejects outright, PTZ translations normalised where the next vendor expects degrees, audio payload types with no WebRTC equivalent at all.
We handle those. Device discovery and media configuration across Profile S and Profile T. Pan, tilt and zoom through the ONVIF PTZ service using WS-Security UsernameToken and RelativeMove, with GetStatus read back to confirm the movement.
DevSpark Ltd is an ONVIF member. The client software is not yet listed in the ONVIF conformant products database — when it is, you will be able to check it there.
A practical note for rollout: on Axis devices, VAPIX administrator credentials do not grant ONVIF access. ONVIF users are held separately, so an estate handed over with the admin password will refuse ONVIF PTZ until an ONVIF user exists.
Evidence, not assertion
A written compatibility matrix, including the parts that fail
We keep a tested compatibility matrix. Every row records a device actually exercised against real firmware, with the measurements that prove it, and an explicit statement of what has not been proven on that device. Hardware we cannot responsibly propose is still listed, with the reason — a consumer Reolink unit appears on it and is marked as unsuitable for tender work.
It covers cameras from multiple manufacturers across every class that matters on a real estate: fixed domes, mini domes, bullets, mechanical PTZ, and bispectral thermal where the thermal and visual sensors are ingested as separate streams. Measurements include codec negotiation at full sensor resolution, sustained byte and packet counters, PTZ actuation verified against the camera’s own position telemetry over both VAPIX and ONVIF, and audio levels measured in dB rather than inferred from the presence of a track.
A document containing only good news is not evidence. Ask for it and we will send it as it stands.
For installers and integrators
It does not have to carry our name
01
White-labelled to you
Your logo, your colours, your domain, your company on the login screen and in front of the client. To the end customer it is your software, supported by you. We sit behind you and keep it running.
02
The recurring revenue stays with you
When you install someone else’s platform, the licence belongs to that vendor, the renewal belongs to that vendor, and over time so does the customer relationship. Under a white-label arrangement the ongoing licence sits with your business instead.
03
You hold the approvals we cannot
We are a software company. We cannot hold NSI or SSAIB approval and we never will, because there is nothing for an inspectorate to inspect. The platform only reaches an estate through a firm that does — which is why the partner matters to us more than the product does.
Questions buyers ask
Straight answers before you renew anything
What does “no per-camera licence” actually mean?
There is no charge that scales with camera count. Mainstream platforms licence per device — Milestone XProtect device licences are commonly around £85 per camera, before support — so a 280-camera estate carries roughly £23,800 of licence cost before anyone has looked at a picture. Our commercial model is per site and per appliance. Adding a camera to a site you already run costs nothing.
Which ONVIF profiles does it work with?
Profile S and Profile T for device discovery and media configuration, plus the ONVIF PTZ service for pan, tilt and zoom. DevSpark Ltd is an ONVIF member. In practice the profile matters less than the vendor: the same profile is implemented differently by different manufacturers, and the interoperability work is in handling those differences rather than in the specification itself.
Do we have to replace our cameras?
No, and that is the point. The platform is camera-agnostic over ONVIF and RTSP, so it runs alongside an existing estate rather than displacing it. That also gives a route off restricted or end-of-life hardware over time rather than in one capital event.
Which cameras have you actually tested?
We maintain a written compatibility matrix covering cameras from multiple manufacturers — fixed domes, mini domes, bullets, mechanical PTZ and bispectral thermal — with the measurements taken against real firmware rather than datasheets. It also records what has not been proven on each device, and flags any hardware we would not put in front of a public-sector buyer, with the reason. Ask and we will send it. It is not a marketing document.
Can we sell it under our own name?
Yes. The platform white-labels: your logo, your colours, your domain, your company on the login screen and in front of the client. We sit behind you. Installers hold the NSI or SSAIB approval that we, as a software company, structurally cannot — so the platform only ever reaches an estate through a firm that does.
Where is the data, and who can reach it?
Recording stays on the appliance on the customer network. The cloud layer provides federation, identity and remote access only, and never receives camera credentials. DevSpark is UK-owned, designed, built and supported in Manchester, and the company is Cyber Essentials certified.
Bring us the challenge
The one that has been handed back, sits between two suppliers, or nobody can say is possible yet. A short call costs you nothing and you will speak to one of our consultants.
Engineer to engineer. No handoffs.