Gateway Overview

Purpose

The Camera Agent Web Server is a gateway application that runs on a device between your cameras and the cloud. It provides:

A Django web application with a browser UI for managing cameras.
A REST API (token-authenticated) for automation and integration.
Coordination with vxg-proxy-client processes that establish HTTP/RTSP (and SSH) tunnels from the gateway to cameras and from the gateway to cloud services.

The short repository description is: Python web server for Camera Agent proxy client.

Component	Role
Django app (`app` + `gateway`)	HTTP API, HTML UI, SQLite database (`db.sqlite3`), user and token auth.
Nginx (`nginx` service)	Serves static files from a shared volume and reverse-proxies all other requests to Django.
vxg-proxy-client	Binary shipped inside the gateway image; started by `initialize_cameras.sh` and by Django when cameras are added or updated.
SQLite	Persists cameras, gateway UUID, and related data.

External access to the UI and API is normally on port 80 (nginx). The Django process listens on 8000 only inside the Docker network unless you publish that port separately for debugging.
Each active camera can have tunnels for HTTP and RTSP (or RTSP-only if configured). The main gateway tunnel exposes the gateway’s own HTTP and SSH endpoints to the cloud using the device UUID.

server/ — Django project (app/) and gateway app (views, models, templates, API).
docker/ — docker-compose.yml, Dockerfiles for the app and nginx images.
nginx/ — Nginx image template config and entrypoint.
package/ — Version file, scripts used for packaged releases (image load, env_setup, start/stop).
initialize_cameras.sh / restart_gateway.sh — Shell scripts used inside the app container to start or restart vxg-proxy-client.

For deployment specifics, see Gateway Deployment.