AXIS VAPIX

What you can build

• Catch a door held open

  Door control events report DoorPhysicalState and DoorMode. When a door stays Open past its schedule, the operator proposes a notice to the site lead and, on your approval, a LockDoor or BlockDoor command.

  With Door Held Open

• Flag repeated access denials

  AccessControl/Denied/Credential events arrive per controller. The operator groups repeated denials by credential and door, and proposes pacsaxis:DisableCredential for your approval.

  With Access Anomaly

• Keep every camera reporting

  A tns1:VideoSource/tnsaxis:Tampering event or a failed snapshot from /axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi marks a camera as suspect. The operator proposes a ticket with the last good frame.

  With Camera Health

• Expire contractor credentials on time

  Credentials carry ValidFrom and ValidTo. The operator lists credentials past their end date that remain Enabled and proposes disabling each one.

  With Contractor Credentials, Badge Hygiene

Requirements

• Network reach from the connector to each camera or door controller, since VAPIX is served by the device itself
• AXIS OS 5.50 or later for the Event and Action services at /vapix/services
• An Administrator account for MQTT client configuration; Viewer privilege is enough for snapshots and video
• An Axis network door controller (A1001, A1210, A1601, or A1610) for the physical access control services

Authentication

A user account on each device at Administrator, Operator, or Viewer privilege, using Digest access authentication over HTTP and RTSP or Basic access authentication over HTTPS, as the vendor recommends.

Limits

• The vendor states most products do not support every VAPIX API; the API Discovery service tells you what a given device offers
• Basic access authentication encodes credentials rather than encrypting them, so it belongs on HTTPS only; Digest is the vendor's choice for plain HTTP
• Event subscriptions are per device. A fleet needs one subscription per camera or controller; VAPIX has no site-wide event feed
• The bitmap snapshot endpoint is deprecated from AXIS OS 11.0. This listing reads JPEG from /axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi

Questions and answers

Do you need a VMS to read Axis events?

No. Each device serves its own Event service at /vapix/services and a WebSocket at /vapix/ws-data-stream?sources=events with events:configure and events:notify methods. A device can also publish events to an MQTT broker through the MQTT client API. This listing talks to the device, not to a VMS.

Which door controllers do the access control services cover?

The vendor lists the A1001, A1210, A1601, and A1610 network door controllers. They expose the Access control service at /vapix/pacs, the Door control service at /vapix/doorcontrol, and services for schedules, ID points, event logging, and third-party credentials, in JSON or SOAP.

What authentication does VAPIX use?

Device user accounts with Basic or Digest access authentication, set through Network.HTTP.AuthenticationPolicy. The vendor recommends Digest over HTTP and RTSP and Basic over HTTPS. Accounts hold Administrator, Operator, or Viewer privilege; snapshots need Viewer, MQTT configuration needs Administrator.