Intelligent 1 video monitoring technology is an integration of image processing, pattern recognition and computer vision technology, which has developed rapidly in recent years. Due to the special environment of the substation, the video processing capacity of the traditional substation monitoring system to the complex environment is weak. In this paper, an embedded image processing board based on gaussian model hybrid foreground detection algorithm is applied to video monitoring system of substation. This monitoring system can realize different real-time monitoring tasks, such as intrusion detection, smoke detection and legacy object detection. The experimental results show that the designed system has good anti-shadow performance, and the false alarm rate is significantly improved compared with the traditional video monitoring system, which has practical promotion value in the video monitoring system of substation.