Building Your Own DIY Surveillance System With Synology DiskStation

After connecting the Synology DiskStation to your network and powering it on, you will need to open your web browser and visit “find.synology.com/#”. Doing so will scan your network, connect to the DiskStation, and preset you with some basic information, like its IP address and status. When you click connect on the page presented, the DiskStation Manager software will begin downloading and installing automatically. By default, the wizard included in DiskStation Manager configures RAID1 and other options for you, but everything is customizable for your particular setup as well.

Remember Take Security Precautions

Once you have connected to your DiskStation, you will be prompted to create an administrative account. Be sure to use a strong password, especially if your DiskStation will be Internet-facing. A poorly secured NAS can be roped into a botnet or otherwise exploited as easily as any other Internet-of-Things device. After creating your administrative account, you will be asked to choose how often your DiskStation will receive automatic updates or you can choose to manually update the device yourself. 


Your DiskStation will then ask you to make a “QuickConnect account”. This account will set up a tunnel and allow you to access your DiskStation remotely without configuring port forwarding in your router. After this step, you will be taken to the web interface for the DiskStation Manager. From the web interface you can view performance metrics, browse files, change settings, add application packages, and more.

Your next step will be to connect your chosen cameras to the network. We used the Amcrest 1080p Pan/Tilt Wireless IP cameras (Model Number: IP2M-841B).


The initial installation process for the cameras themselves was handled largely through the Amcrest app. The Synology DiskStation is compatible with multiple cameras and individual camera setup will vary accordingly. We will next walk you through how to import a camera into the DiskStation.