Frigate NVR in Home Assistant for Automation and Notifications based on Object Detection.

[@maxwitzker7722]

Great video! As I'm totally new with this stuff also KZbin, I want to ask where I can copy your code to get my cameras to work as you showed?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Let me see if I can find my own documentation on this one. I may have archived it since it's a bit older now, but it might still be a good starting place.

[@maxwitzker7722]

Great 👍 THX for taking care

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Still haven't found it, but looking. Have stuff literally everywhere.

[@maxwitzker7722]

THX for taking care I don't know if you are still using frigate Recently a new version 0.14.1-f4f3cfa was issued with new features and a lot of improvements to your video from 3 Years ago! What if you make a new video explaining as one of the first of the new features ? As the Tapo C 200 is a popular budget cam, I think you would find wide interest if you could provide the setup also with the use of PTZ in the new Frigate. What do you think?

[@marcusjansson3913]

Brilliant tutorial! One of the best I think since you start by showing that this is what we will get, and then you explain how to to it. Thanks!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Glad you enjoyed it. Yes sometimes I do things "out of order".

[@Iinustechtips]

Thank you so much for going over the MQTT no one else did this and I was stuck on the step forever!!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Glad I was able to help.

[@WINGNUT307]

Thanks for the video. It got me going with Frigate which I think is awesome. People just need to be aware that some things have changed a bit since this was recorded.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Indeed, the author has modified the yaml config info a bit as he has added to and improved its

[@mandeepmails]

Question - why would the ip cam working all ok inside Frigate, not show up under Triggers section (when creating a Notification) All i see is Frigate NVR no area listed there No the cam specified.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Hmmmm, it's been a while, but do you need to select Frigate NVR as the device, then the camera as an entity with motion specifically?

[@jeucedahn]

Hi Brian! Another great tutorial!! Just out of curiosity, I've seen a lot of your videos and it seems you really like docker, why you did not use docker in this case? Regards.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

There is a docker option for this one, but as I was integrating it with Home Assistant, I wanted to install it with the Home Assistant plugin. I used to to generate notifications when person or vehicles were detected, and those were sent as push to my phone with a screenshot, and a tap would open it to view. So pretty great integration.

[@Mickenaslund]

Hello! I have a camera running in the frigate. But I can't get the other one to start. A Reolink trackmix poe. What does a frigate.yml file look like with two cameras?

[@ceandraka]

Wow, this is just great. I have HA on HAOS on a WYSE device. I have 6 cameras on a LAView NVR, but have NEVER been happy with the poor detection. I was thinking that I would need another machine for NVR, but this looks like it uses the HA machine. I will want a Coral stick for sure. Can I use a feed from my NVR to get at the camera feeds? This would be essentially using my NVR as a hub/switch for the 6 cameras. Or should I get a 6-port switch, and a separate ethernet port on my HA machine (separating the cameras from the regular home network)? I think a video on hardware setups would be an awesome addition, though perhaps its fairly straightforward, and would vary too much machine to machine. If I can tap into the stream from the LAView, then I am excited to try this ASAP, probably on one camera until I can get a Coral stick. Again, thanks. This thorough video takes any ramp-up fear out of it. I am already using HA for a water system monitoring, home alarm system, and a few lights, plus integration with Alexa. Getting my cameras in as well will be awesome!

[@ceandraka]

PS: Would you recommend the USB Coral or the mPCIe card for the WYSE 5020? It should have an open bay for mPCIe, but I will check before ordering. mPCIe much cheaper.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

If you can get it, I'd recommend the Coral as it's what it's made for, adn it allows you to expand to more cameras.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

As for your questions on feeding the NVR streams to the Frigate add-on, I think it wants RTSP strictly, and I believe from another NVR it would send an RTMP stream. Just not sure Frigate would pick up on it. You can always try it and see how it does though. If possible, I'd go with the switch. Of course, it's open source, so Mr. Blackshear might be open to requests for other ways to run if needed.

[@ceandraka]

Thanks. I ordered a mPCIe Coral, on backorder of course. Will that talk to HAOS installation, or will I need drivers? Am I better off with USB Coral? Thanks again

[@ceandraka]

@@AwesomeOpenSource I was able to get HAOS to recognize a second ethernet port (USB gigabit port), and then connected that to a spare channel on my NVR, using the NVR as a switch. This gave me access to the camera feeds (RTSP). I had to snoop around a bit in the NVR to get the URL format, but found it eventually. I was able to follow your video step-by step (thanks!). A few minor changes were revealed in the log, and by looking at documentation I resolved them, and boom, I have one camera being monitored in HA using CPU. Coral card on order! Thanks again, this tutorial was awesome!

[@allach1772]

Yes it’s all good, but how do you input custom models into Frigate? What is the method of input for doing so? Existing person detection is not exactly what I want. I would like to build my own model to recognize face patterns or body gestures all that fun stuff…. Also I have 30 cameras and can’t exactly fiddle around with some some computer and software that may or may not work with 30 cameras. Any ideas what specs I would need to recognize objects across 30 4k cameras? Just trying to figure this out. Also I have 4 NVR existing systems. Their AI capabilities are not exactly present, making them in my opinion somewhat useless. Yet at the same time somewhat needed for all the typical viewing activities.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I'm afraid I have no idea how to create custom objects for the object detection. I think you'll need to modify the underlying library, I believe it's by Google, so you'd need to modify their tensor flow code for new (custom) objects.

[@milicsantiago]

Great video. If you want notifications, you can configure camera as a sensor in Alarmo HACS project. Really cool!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Thanks for the idea!

[@soubhikkhan6239]

Very clear instruction and easy to follow! But I stumbled upon the camera setup on the other pi. Is there another video where we can see how to setup the rtsp feed and get the camera address?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Yes I have a video where I show the camera build I did with the hardware, as well as the MontionEyeOS software I use for the Pi Zero W and Cameras. The rtsp option, once turned on, shows the URL.

[@Luxmaps]

​@@AwesomeOpenSource Hi! Thanks for this excellent explanation. Could you share that other video you mention?

[@EsotericArctos]

Where does Frigate store the clips? Is it possible to have it store clips to a NAS or external storage device? Just one more question, would it be better to use Users instead of People to create the new user? Just wanted to ask as I don't want my MQTT user to show up as a person for tracking.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

In my home assistant it's in the media folder. I think you can change where the media folder is, but I don't know how. That's definitely something to look at the Home Assistant docs on. Also, be aware that Frigate configuration has changed a bit recently, so you'll want to check the docs on how to set the yaml properly now.

[@bluegizmo1983]

Got mine all set up and working now! Works great. I was sad to find out though that it only detects objects when there is motion. If someone walks into the camera view it detects them, but if they stand still for a few seconds it stops detecting them. Really limits what you can do with automation in Home Assistant. For example, if it detected stationary people, it could be used indoors to keep lights on in a room as long as a person is present and turn them off when no person is present.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

So many cool things you can do with a bit of good object detection. Let me warn you though, on my 4 GB system for Home ASsistant, if I add any more than a few cameras it really bogs down if trying to use the CPU, so a Google Coral stick might be a good investment.

[@bluegizmo1983]

@@AwesomeOpenSource yup agreed! I just got a Coral set up and working a few days ago 🙂

[@ksignorini]

I thought I saw a setting for how many frames to use as a counter (no movement) before it decides to stop recording. I think the default was 25. Maybe I understood it wrong, but I think that was the case.

[@kitussan]

Hi there! thanks for this cool tutorial. As somebody said already, there are a few differences with the current syntax, but this video still helps you get started really quick. I see that the retain option is rather basic, right? Wouldn't it be just awesome if one could define a certain quota per camera, and have frigate manage storage by purging old material when it is actually needed?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Yes it would. I haven't check the docs in a while, and this may be an option now for the retain by quota instead of days, but it could also be a request to the dev over on his github.

[@ceandraka]

I am using LaView cameras, and using the NVR as a switch with POE. This is proving to be an issue, as I cannot perform settings on the cameras (the NVR takes over). The camera main feed is 4k, while the secondary is less than 480 lines. I have only set up one camera in my Frigate, awaiting a coral card. It works fine when working form a PC browser. However, on Android, with either notifications or browsing through the events in either the HA App or a browser, I cannot play the videos. I changed to the secondary stream and it all works, but the resolution is rather low. In the long run, the right solution will be to dump the NVR and buy a switch. But, under these circumstances, is there any way to play clips from the main stream recordings on my Android devices? Note: I can download the clip and then play it with VLC on Android. But not in Opera, Chrome, Samsung Internet, or HA App. It would be nice, I suppose, if the Frigate NVR recorded both streams. Then one coudl select at playback time which clips to look at depending on device and bandwidth. But it only allows one stream to be designated for recording.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I believe the issue lies with the browsers themselves. I don't think they handle 4k streams well from the rtsp side. what I've seen most people do, is what it sounds like you may be trying to do. they use the sub-stream for live monitoring and the main (4k) stream for recording / playback. Not sure there's any way around it unless you use software specifically intended for 4k playback.

[@ceandraka]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Thanks for your input. In Frigate, the live view is actually re-encoded to 720p, and that is viewable. It is the notification clips I am having issue with, as the recording stream is the 4MP (4k?) stream. It is originally from the rtsp stream. Frigate copies the actual stream, but repackages it for the clips. No re-encoding. So if you want to review a clip upon notification, it is at the recorded resolution. It will not play on any mobile browser that I have tried, but does play in mobile players (VLC, MXPlayer). Frigate can only record one stream. Ideally, Frigate would record two streams in parallel. Then upon notification, you could review the substream, but still have the 4MP stream saved for archival needs (police report). The short term solution will either be setting the main stream to 1080p at the camera reducing record quality, or just recording the substream and going to the NVR to get archival clips. Alternatively, I can resolve to copy/paste clip URL to VLC to view, but that is a many-clip operation. Unfortunately, I have not figured out how to get Android to offer up MXPlayer or VLC as an option for a URL, so have to open the app, navigate to the stream definition page, and paste in the URL. Thanks again

[@Mavi222]

I have a USB camera that's connected to my Raspberry Pi, it's running MotionEyeOS. I am trying to implement that camera into my frigate, but all I get is a green feed (camera doesn't work) .. any tips for MJPEG?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

At the time I made the video there was no MJPEG support. I thought I saw something about it in the documentation not long ago though. If you can get motioneye to give you an RTSP stream it’s more ideal for sure.

[@Mavi222]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Thanks for a quick reply. I've read something about RTSP support on MOtioneyeos update but I can't find anything in the settings about it :/ bummer

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

@@Mavi222 I don't know about on webcams, but on my pi cams that used mjpeg by default, I was able to scroll to the bottom of the settings in MotionEyeOS and ther eselect to change it to rtsp stream. Looks like garbage inside MotionEye viewer after doing it, but looks right in other systems like frigate, Home Assistant, Shinobi etc.

[@synlt]

Thanks for this, it got me started. It seems they tweaked the configuration since this video.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Yes, he has tweaked it a bit, but his documentation has everything including some good examples.

[@NIVEDM-j6y]

Can we use Frigate without integrating it with Home Assistant......?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Absolutely. It's open source, and can be run standalone.

[@Spasmomen]

2:44, so it missed the person walking by and only triggered on the person standing there for a minute? Not so great imho. On the other hand, he didn't enter of course, but still.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Seemed to work fine to me. Considering it’s an odd angle on a small opening, it did pretty well. But I see your point. I’ve had these running for a few months now, and they don’t miss much, but it can mis-identify things too.

[@deftdawg]

Very cool stuff, I noticed in your example your test server is x86_64. Trying to figure out if my little RPi4 could handle a hand full of cameras... Wondering if a Coral USB Accelerator would help (or if that would only help with a single instance)... Anyway cheers!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I think you'd definitely be pushing the Pi with more than 2 cameras and doing motion / object detection on the cpu.

[@richardbanyai6207]

Will this also let you use a camera for motion detection to turn on a light? this is a great video Thanks

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Yes, though, the motion detection may be a bit delayed with this setup... not sure it would be quick enough to turn on a light dependably.

[@nehajain2974]

Hello I am new to homeassistant. Thanks a lot for your detailed videos.i have learned a lot from your videos. Please suggest an indoor security camera that integrates well with homeassistant. So that I can automate stuff with homeassistant. Thanks in advance.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I can't really suggest one for home assistant, only because I don't like cameras in my home. I'd say go checkout Paul Hibbert kzbin.info , and Everything Smart Home kzbin.info - both extremely great Smart Home Content, though Paul HIbbert isn't always a HomeAssistant fan, he always says what gadgets will work with it.

[@nehajain2974]

@@AwesomeOpenSource thanks for your reply..

[@benoitd94]

hi i enjoy your videos, how to record on an external drive ? (i use a pi4)?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

In home assistant, you need to setup the /media path to point to your external drive. Definitely search for a video on that if you need it. But once, you've done that you can just have Frigate store the stuff normally, and that drive will be used.

[@klee495]

Hi there, thank you for the awesome video! I am very new to home assistant and will be building my first server soon. Do you recommend Windows 10 / Linux to run Home Assistant, Frigate, and Plex server? and how many storage capacity do you think will be needed (8x 5MP cams)? I am trying to avoid Synology products since they are too pricey for me, and instead, I will use my old gaming PC as the server.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I personally would run it on a linux server using Proxmox with Home Assistant as a VM. The one thing you want to make sure of for that many cameras and Frigate, is you want to use a Coral stick to handle the main part of the detection. That many cameras will max your CPU(s) and make the system nearly unusable. As for storage, assuming you only record when events occur, and depending on what events you expect, how long you intend to keep the video, etc will change how much storage you need. If you can do 500 GB to start, then expand as needed.

[@cboyda]

Any way to get Frigate to "follow" a human using PTZ cameras?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I'm not sure about that. I think you'd need a direction of detected motion to tell the camera in an automation which way to turn, but not sure that the detection gives you a direction in the data. You can check the frigate documentation to find out, I'm sure.

[@davecl35]

Can I use a ring doorbell and/or stickup cam with Frigate?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I know frigate will access RTSP streams, but I'm not sure the Ring provides access to the stream. Maybe if it's wired up to be always on, vs. using the battery... but not sure. the stickup cams, will also depend on if you can access the RTSP streams. the issue with battery powered cameras and NVRs is that they NVR wants the camera to be on constantly.

[@davecl35]

@@AwesomeOpenSource ok mate, thanks

[@rhyshughes1317]

Hello, are you following on this with the notifications with clips, buttons, etc. be great if you could

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I have a video on actionable notifications, but I think it's pretty outdated.

[@rhyshughes1317]

Thank you fir replying. Be really useful if you could do an update using the blueprints and your own automation. I have tried all but failing as the automation side is my weakness

[@mehedihassan4611]

Hi Friend, thanks for your nice tutorial. I have one question, is there any automation possible that When I reached my front door then motion will triggered and Frigate will recognized my face and finally Door will be auto unlock ? If yes then how ? can you please make this types of nice tutorial plz

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

The only flaw with what you want to do is the facial recognition portion. I don't believe Frigate has Facial recognition. It uses Tensor Flow, which I believe is only for object recognition right now (including person, but not faces).

[@TheRealAnthony_real]

For face recognition you want deepstack which can be done in parallel with frigate obviously .. buy again you need the hardware

[@irtibatkisileri222]

thanks for tutorial. would expect to see actionable notification though

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I have a follow up video that shows how to create actionable notifications. Check it out kzbin.info/www/bejne/p32QmIJ-gqibraM

[@ArathornPT]

on minute 34:33 i think you missed a step. You need to change the frigate server name for the one that appears on the config. (at least i had to!:P). Awesome through guide. Thank you very much.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I certainly may have. Thanks for pointing it out.

[@maro1977pl]

Hi, what are you using for the location on the iphone

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I can get it through Home Assistant, just the built in stuff in the Home Assistant app.

[@maro1977pl]

@@AwesomeOpenSource The My Home Assistant application does not refresh in the background, but when it is running;)

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

@@maro1977pl on my iPhone, I had to allow location updates when the app isn’t active

[@natwick7214]

I have home assistant installed as a VM with a VMDK on my unraid server (followed IbraCorps tutorial) however if i attempt to passthrough the coral USB it says the USB device cannot be found and even if i untick it and attempt to restart the VM it stills says the same. So i am left with rebuilding the VM as the only option to get HA back up and running. Now the other solution is install Frigate as a docker on unraid - however i cannot seem to get this to work as it is unclear by any tutorials i have seen where the config.yml is suppose to be located for the docker container. Anyone have any thoughts?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Looking at his docker-compose file, you can map any volume path you want to the path /config/config.yml so you essentially choose where to map the configuration path on your host side. @IBRACORP may be able to better tell you how to do this in Unraid, as I'm not familiar enough with unraid to know how that's done, but I'm guessing you have a volume / hsare you create to use with the docker containers, and then you can create different directories in that volume that you can map for various containers to use.

[@ksignorini]

Any update? Some of the entries don't work now... like clips: ...

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I don’t have one planned yet, but one of the recent versions did change the config layout. The site documentation has some good examples too start with though.

[@ksignorini]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Managed to find and adjust for the examples. The biggest was changing the "clips: " stuff "record: " stuff.

[@DfknG85]

Thanks for this video. very easy to follow. I'm pretty new to this but I have the ReoLink 4k cameras that use the H265 codec that RTSP doesn't support. What are my options here?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Maybe RTSP will support it in the future.

[@DfknG85]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Ah OK thanks. I was hoping you should use Onvif as the source rather than relying on RTSP webstreams and that would get around it.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

@@DfknG85 It's not my project, but you could always make a request for ONVIF support on the Frigate github page.

[@HengyiGu]

I also have reolink 4k cameras, you need to use substream, good enough for motion detection and saves clip and snapshot. Name_of_Cam: ffmpeg: input_args: - -rtsp_transport - tcp inputs: - path: rtsp://username:password@ipaddressofcam:554//h264Preview_01_sub roles: - detect - clips width: 640 height: 360 fps: 10

[@rgsletourneur]

Nice! very very good video! great work thank you!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Glad you like it.

[@mlmhakan]

Super great video

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Thank you very much!

[@hillebrandstreet1882]

Great Video simple to understand great work thank you so much

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

You are very welcome.

[@osdmontu]

Good evening, in the clips you can also record the audio?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Great question. I don’t have a camera that does audio, so I don’t actually know.

[@flyingRich]

Big thanks!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

my pleasure

[@flyingRich]

@@AwesomeOpenSource I have it sending a thumbnail url by pushbullet, would like to send an image as an attachment. Also, it can be quite verbose. I need to get it to one msg every 30 secs or so. And one more, the cameras notify me in the morning of the cars that have been there all night, I'm guessing when switching from night vision, to day light. I need a solution for that. Thanks for the help!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

@@flyingRich That's awesome that it sends you the thumbnail. As for the motion, I have the same issue. I have vehicle setup on my alley camera (as it's the entry way to my driveway), and when a vehicle is in nview, but been parked, and the wind blows the tree around, it seems to think it's the car moving. Not sure how to fix that. May have to see if Blake Blackshear can help somehow.

[@lewis-to7yl]

how do we add second com tried adding path and making new file

[@lewis-to7yl]

camera

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I added a second camera to the camera section. I have an example of my frigate.yml on the show notes at shownotes.opensourceisawesome.con

[@lewis-to7yl]

Sorry too bother you on that a really dont know how to ise the chat site you sent me to have you got any idea on how to get my bluestacks ip runing on windows 10 😁

[@kubectlgetpo]

Friget?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Haha, no, the project is spelled as I have it. Here's the project GitHub link if you'd like to check it out. github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate

[@kubectlgetpo]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Aah! Thanks.

[@strtfghter02]

What kind of cameras did you use?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

These are just 5 MO cameras running MotionEyeOS on a Raspberry Pi Zero.

[@jamegrabham9992]

Great video...Thank you, thank you...I just found your channel...I love the step-by-step... this has been so helpful... new subscriber here...:) How do store the feed to another hard drive (nas)...I would rather not store it on my HA (not a big HD, but SSD)...please keep up the info...:)

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

It stores to the media area in HA, so I think you just need to map that to the other drive.

[@lewis-to7yl]

done just watched the video from scratch i had the port az well az the ip

[@_ytuser]

👍

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Thank you.

[@lewis-to7yl]

hi av watched so many videos and getting error * Starting nginx nginx ...done. Error parsing config: expected str for dictionary value @ data['mqtt']['password'] could you plz help i have checked password

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Have you setup Matt and tested it?

[@lewis-to7yl]

@@AwesomeOpenSource yeah thats working

[@lewis-to7yl]

@@AwesomeOpenSource and the password is what i set it az checked double checked it

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

@@lewis-to7yl can you join my Rocket.Chat server and DM me and share your frigate config? Maybe it will help to see it. Discuss.opensourceisawesome.com

[@lewis-to7yl]

@@AwesomeOpenSource hi what is your link

[@ngoctaiquach3144]

Great video...I followed your instructions. But when entering the frigate in the sidebar, the camera screen is just green. Log information: "[2022-12-01 09:18:40] ffmpeg.camera_1.detect ERROR : rtsp://192.168.2.16:554/ch0_0.h264: Connection timed out [2022-12-01 09:18:45] frigate.video ERROR : camera_1: Unable to read frames from ffmpeg process. [2022-12-01 09:18:45] frigate.video ERROR : camera_1: ffmpeg process is not running. exiting capture thread... [2022-12-01 09:18:50] watchdog.camera_1 ERROR : Ffmpeg process crashed unexpectedly for camera_1. [2022-12-01 09:18:50] watchdog.camera_1 ERROR : The following ffmpeg logs include the last 100 lines prior to exit. Don't know where is wrong. Help me. Thank!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I'm not sure why you would be having these issues, but looks like you need to install ffmpeg and potentially start it. Are you running this in home assistant? Since I've made this video, the project has changed quite a lot, so you may need to go through his docs and make any needed changes / updates. I intend to do an update video in the future on this.