ChannelWatch: Monitoring Dashboard for Channels DVR
Hey everyone!
ChannelWatch v0.9.11 is available now.
ChannelWatch is a self-hosted monitoring dashboard for Channels DVR. It gives you one place to see what is being watched, what is recording soon, whether your DVRs are healthy, and whether notifications actually delivered.
The current website/wiki docs are here:
ChannelWatch Official Docs Site
Why I built it
Channels DVR is already great at recording and serving TV. ChannelWatch sits beside it and answers the operator questions that come up when you run the DVR yourself:
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Who is watching live TV right now?
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Which device started the stream?
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Did a recording start, finish, stop, cancel, or fail?
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Is disk space getting tight?
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Did a notification send, retry, fail, or get rate-limited?
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Are all DVRs in a multi-DVR setup still reachable?
The goal is simple: run one Docker container, open the web UI, add your DVR, and let ChannelWatch watch the boring-but-important stuff.
What is current in v0.9.11
This update fixes two noisy problems reported by the community:
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Quiet Channels DVR event streams now stay connected instead of timing out after five seconds and entering a repeated reconnect loop.
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Normal dashboard refreshes no longer rebuild core settings and repeat the
TZoverride message.
Real disconnects still use the existing DVR health checks, reconnect backoff, and Retry-After handling.
v0.9.11 also repairs the image entrypoint used during Update Center restarts. Because that change lives in the container image, this release requires a normal Docker, Unraid, Compose, or Helm image update. It does not require a settings or data migration.
The Update Center will identify v0.9.11 as container image update required instead of trying to apply it as an app-only bundle.
A quick visual tour
Dashboard overview
The dashboard gives you active streams, uptime, upcoming recordings, disk space, recent activity, and per-DVR status in one place.
Update Center
The Update Center lets ChannelWatch check for compatible app updates, verify signed update metadata, create a backup, apply the update, restart, and roll back if activation fails. Releases that change the container runtime are marked clearly as image updates.
Multi-DVR setup
ChannelWatch can monitor more than one Channels DVR server, with separate status, history, sessions, and notification routing.
Notification routing
Route alerts by DVR and alert type. For example, send live TV alerts to one destination, recording alerts somewhere else, and disk alerts to a quieter route.
Delivery history
The delivery log shows what sent, what retried, what failed, and which route handled the alert.
Diagnostics and support
Diagnostics gives you connection checks, API checks, alert tests, live logs, debug bundle download, and the Report a Problem support path.
What ChannelWatch monitors
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Live TV viewing with channel, program, device, IP, and source details
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VOD and recorded playback with metadata and progress
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Recording events, including scheduled, started, completed, cancelled, and stopped recordings
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Disk space with configurable warning and critical thresholds
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Multiple Channels DVR servers from one dashboard
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Active sessions across devices
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Notification delivery history, retries, failures, and circuit-breaker state
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Health, readiness, metrics, logs, diagnostics, backup, restore, and
/api/v1endpoints
Notification providers
ChannelWatch supports Pushover through Apprise, plus a broad set of Apprise-backed destinations including Discord, Slack, Telegram, email, Gotify, Matrix, and custom Apprise URLs.
It also supports signed outbound webhooks for custom automations.
Install
The website has the current install and migration instructions:
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Docker Compose install: Install (Docker Compose) | ChannelWatch
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First-run setup: First-Run Configuration | ChannelWatch
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Updating ChannelWatch: Updating ChannelWatch | ChannelWatch
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v0.7 migration guide: Migrating from v0.7 | ChannelWatch
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Multi-DVR setup: Multi-DVR Overview | ChannelWatch
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Notification setup: Provider Matrix | ChannelWatch
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Report a Problem: Report a Problem | ChannelWatch
Short version:
services:
channelwatch:
image: coderluii/channelwatch:latest
container_name: channelwatch
network_mode: host
volumes:
- /mnt/user/appdata/channelwatch:/config
environment:
TZ: America/New_York
CHANNELWATCH_SECRET_STORAGE_KEY: "change-this-to-a-unique-32-character-value"
PUID: "99"
PGID: "100"
restart: unless-stopped
Then open:
http://your-server-ip:8501
The first-run web setup handles auth mode, DVR discovery/manual entry, connection testing, and alert settings.
Images
Docker Hub:
coderluii/channelwatch:0.9.11
coderluii/channelwatch:latest
GHCR:
ghcr.io/coderluii/channelwatch:0.9.11
ghcr.io/coderluii/channelwatch:latest
Published platforms: linux/amd64 and linux/arm64
Requirements
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Docker and Docker Compose
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Channels DVR server
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At least one notification service if you want alerts outside the dashboard
Links
I would really like feedback from anyone who tries it, especially around multi-DVR setups, notifications, migration from v0.7, the new Update Center, the event-stream connection fix, and anything that still feels rough.
Cheers,
CoderLuii
v0.8 Development Starting Soon
Bugs: something broken? Share logs or screenshots and I'll dig in.
Features: what's missing? What would make ChannelWatch a must-have for your setup?
Enhancements: something works but could work better? I want to know.
Integrations: other tools or services you want ChannelWatch to play nice with?
