This paper presents a novel distributed intelligent video surveillance architecture based on Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs). This architecture is part of a video surveillance project and has been built using the Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS allows to develop and connect (through wireless TCP-IP) several modules to process and manage multimedia data in an easy way. The real-time intelligent surveillance system has been trained for detecting, tracking and monitoring people and vehicles in an indoor-outdoor real environment. The test process shows the reliability of the developed system as a tool for the identification of security incidents. Besides, using wireless connections and a distributed architecture together, we have achieved a really flexible, easy to install and lower-maintenance system that supports many different devices. Thus, the proposed architecture can be applied in distributed locations such as smart cities.