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Welcome to Sentinel OS

A guided tour of Sentinel OS: what each area does, how the app is organised, and where to go for common tasks.

5 minutes readUpdated September 15, 2026

Sentinel OS is PhotoSentinel's platform for managing your timelapse cameras, monitoring your sites, and sharing the images your cameras capture. Whether a camera is watching a multi-year construction project or a short site works package, Sentinel OS is where you check on it, browse its images, respond to alerts, and share what matters with your team and stakeholders.

This tour explains how the app is organised and where to go for each task, so the rest of the Help Centre makes sense. It applies to both the web app and the mobile app; where they differ, we say so.

How Sentinel OS is organised

Everything in Sentinel OS hangs off two ideas: projects (your sites) and feeds (your cameras). A project groups the cameras on one site along with their images, a site map, and reports. Open a project and you are working "inside" that site until you leave it.

You reach everything else from a persistent navigation frame that stays in place as you move around.

The main areas

On the web app, the primary navigation is the sidebar on the left. Depending on your role you will see:

  • Projects — all your sites. This is the default landing page and where most work begins. Open a project to see its cameras, images, site map, and reports.
  • Feeds — a single list of every camera in your organisation, for administrators who manage cameras across many projects. Visible to Org Admins.
  • Studio — timelapse and video creation tools. Visible to Org Admins.
  • Admin — users, organisation settings, your subscription, and equipment. Visible to Org Admins.
  • Profile — your own account settings, shown as your avatar at the bottom of the sidebar.

The top-right of every page has two persistent tools: a notifications bell (with an unread count) and a help button (?) that opens the articles for whatever screen you are on.

Working inside a project

When you open a project, the navigation frame stays put and the project adds its own tabs and tools:

  • Media — a card for each camera on the site. This is the default tab and the way in to a camera's images.
  • Sitemap — a map of the site with each camera pinned in place.
  • Reports — timelapse videos and reporting for the project.
  • Site History and Ops Mode — tools for looking back over the site and for putting the site on a display.
  • Settings — the project's settings (Project Admins only).

Key concepts

Projects

A project is a site you are monitoring. It is the main container: cameras, images, the site map, and reports all belong to a project. Most people spend their time inside one project at a time.

Feeds and cameras

A feed is a camera's presence in Sentinel OS. Each physical camera on your site appears as one feed, so throughout the Help Centre "feed" and "camera" refer to the same thing. You will see both words in the app.

The gallery is where you browse the images a camera has captured, on a timeline or as a grid. You reach it by opening a project, then opening a camera from the Media tab.

Roles

What you can see and do depends on your role. Org Admins manage the whole organisation (cameras, users, billing). Project Admins manage the projects they are responsible for. Stakeholders can view projects they have been added to. If a button described in the Help Centre isn't visible to you, your role probably doesn't include it.

Good to know

  • Sentinel OS is single-organisation per account today. Everything you see belongs to your organisation.
  • The web app and mobile app share the same data. A camera you view on the web shows the same images on mobile.
  • The help button (?) is context-aware: it shows the articles most relevant to the screen you are on, so open it wherever you get stuck.

Common questions

What's the difference between a feed and a camera? None, in practice. A feed is how a camera appears in Sentinel OS. One physical camera on site equals one feed.

Why can't I see Feeds, Studio, or Admin? Those areas are for Org Admins. If you need something in them, ask your organisation's administrator.

Where do I start? If you are an administrator, create a project and then view its cameras. If you were added to an existing project, open Projects and go straight to the images.

Next steps

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