Setup guide

Your server is running. This guide covers everything from first login to processing your first images.

Register your admin account

A registration link was sent to your admin_email during deployment. Click it to create your account and set your password. The link expires after 7 days and can only be used once. Check your spam folder if you don't see it.

If you are running multiple AddaxAI servers, the link may open a cached version of the wrong server. If that happens, clear your browser cache and click the link again.

Configure server settings

When you first log in, you'll see some warnings about missing settings. That's expected. Click on any setting name in the warning to go straight to the right page.

Set the camera timezone to match your cameras. If you deployed with SpeciesNet, there are a few extra settings to configure. See speciesnet-setup.md for more info on the extra steps.

Create a project

Once those are set, you can create your first project.

1. Go to the home page and click Add project
2. Enter a project name and optionally a description and image
3. Click Create project

A project groups your cameras, images, and users together. You can create multiple projects for different study areas or camera networks. When opening the project, you can see the options and a data-hungry dashboard.

Add and connect cameras

Before adding cameras, check the camera requirements to make sure your camera type is supported.

1. Open your project and go to the Cameras tab
2. Click Add camera
3. Fill in the fields:
4. Camera ID (required): must exactly match the camera ID embedded in the images and reports, otherwise they won't be linked. See camera requirements for details on how this ID is extracted.
5. Friendly name (optional): a human-readable name like "North Ridge" or "Waterhole cam". If left empty, the camera ID is used as the display name.
6. Remarks (optional): notes about the camera placement, angle, or anything else you want to remember.
7. Custom fields (optional): click Add field to add any extra metadata you want to track, like "Heading: South" or "Tree: Oak".

You can also import multiple cameras at once by clicking Import CSV.

Then configure your cameras to upload via FTPS. See camera requirements for the connection settings and troubleshooting tips.

Once connected, images will be picked up and processed automatically. Results show up in the web interface after a few seconds. If not, check the troubleshooting section in the camera requirements doc.

Invite users

You can invite other people to your projects. There are two project roles:

• Project admin can manage a specific project (cameras, users, settings)
• Project viewer has read-only access to a specific project and can set their own notifications

To invite someone (project admins and server admins only):

1. Open the project, go to Admin tools in the sidebar, then Users
2. Enter their email address and select a role
3. They'll receive an invitation email with a registration link

Users can have different roles across different projects. For example, someone can be an admin of one project and a viewer of another.

To add a server admin (full access to all projects and system settings), go to Server admins in the hamburger menu on the projects page.

Set up notifications

Users can configure their notification preferences in the project settings.

Email reports

Email notifications (daily/weekly/monthly reports, battery alerts, system health, etc.) work out of the box using the SMTP settings from deployment.

Telegram alerts

There are two steps to get Telegram working:

Server admin: set up the bot

Go to Server settings, click Configure bot, and follow the instructions in the modal.

Each user: link their account

Go to the Notifications page in any project, click the Telegram link button, and follow the instructions in the modal.

Once linked, users can select which species they want to receive instant Telegram notifications about in their project notification settings.

You're all set

Once images start flowing in, your dashboards, maps, and galleries will fill up. Happy monitoring!

If you have any questions, let me know: peter@addaxdatascience.com