I've installed Frigate on my previously under utilized backup server and slowly have it configured that it is running well.  Currently have 3 cameras, and have 3 more to physically install.  I really like what Frigate does, and my next step is to integrate it into my Home Assistant VM (which runs on my main server).

 

The one additional thing I would like to add is recording the entire main stream from each camera.  The backup server has the storage, bandwidth and CPU reserves for the task.  I am just looking for suggestions to what might be the best way to go about this.  Frigate is great for storing video of events, but it would also be good to have full video on hand.

 

Ideally I would be able to leverage the rtsp streams from Frigate's go2rtc.  Use this to feed another application (via docker?) using this as input, and for a GUI to navigate and display the video.  Frigate can handle all of motion/object detection and the HA integration can handle notification and viewing real time and events.  So I really don't need much from what I'm looking for, except reliability.

 

Open to suggestions and ideas.  What are you running, and will it fill my needs?

Edited September 29, 20241 yr by ConnerVT

First, I would think why don't use Frigate to perform both fulltime recording and event recording, as you family with Frigate.

 

May be I know the reason, it hard to only sent event to HA and if Frigate mix fulltime and event recording, it may cause some missing in fulltime recording when event happen.

 

I use an obselate UVC docker to record fulltime and event video, not perfect but it need little resources and storage, for example, for 1024x768 stream ( something like that ) it only need 4GB per day per CAM.

 

But UVC record video in 1sec per file, so fulltime recording for one CAM per day will generate 80k+ file. And you need housekeep those file, if you don't housekeep and store too much days then it will respond in very slow. I housekeep in month bias.

 

9 hours ago, ConnerVT said:

So I really don't need much from what I'm looking for, except reliability.

This are the only reason why I feedback this post. You not care about the video quality and functionality and I never have hang in recording.

Edited September 29, 20241 yr by Vr2Io

Frigate can be configured to save/record based either on motion or the full stream.  However, the files it generates are only about 10 seconds (a few MB) each.

 

Frigate is still a beta application.  Its initial focus is development of combining motion detection and AI, and that works very well.  It is the other things that make a NVR/surveillance camera application good to use that have been slowly added, as each next major beta version is released.

 

So I believe what I'm looking for is an application that creates reasonable video files (10 seconds isn't him) and an interface which is basic and reasonable to find/scrub/review video feeds from the cameras knowing a specific date/time of interest.

 

 

17 hours ago, ConnerVT said:

So I believe what I'm looking for is an application that creates reasonable video files (10 seconds isn't him) and an interface which is basic and reasonable to find/scrub/review video feeds from the cameras knowing a specific date/time of interest.

 

 

the lasted frigate UI hits this squarely on the head in my opinion. the scrubbing / review interface is really helpful. bars in the timeline to show if there's movement in those frames, more movemen, bigger bars type of thing. you can see all the cameras in sync while you scrub so if you're tracking something cam to cam you can see all of those feeds at the same time.

 

Curious why you care about the filesize though, that's all managed by the system. Depending on the camera settings and what is going on in the images the file size can vary. I have 8 cams of the same model and each one produces vastly different file sizes, some have very active images some are predominantly static 90%+ of the time. but again, except for managing my storage i don't really care too much about the individual files. 

 

you can also configure some pretty simple or pretty complex storage rules depending on your needs. my doorbell cam generates the most storage per day so i keep fewer days of that in long term storage. the rest of my cams i have a longer storage period for. 

 

there's a lot to love in the latest frigate even if you're not using or not interested in the various AI type stuff they're investing a lot of work in.

The new Frigate (beta?) is a full NVR. The old Frigate was a motion event processing app.

 

If you're recording from cameras without any transcoding (the direct camera stream) then you need very little CPU, only modest HDD speed (one spinner can easily handle 10+ 4K streams) and only moderate network (1GbE can handle as many streams as the HDD easily). So you can pipe through Frigate onto a HDD directly attached or sitting on another computer on the LAN.

 

For integration into Home Assistant it sounds like you already have the optimal solution with goRTC using an RTSP rebroadcast from Frigate (or can be from something else - just don't do it from the cameras).

Edited September 30, 20241 yr by Espressomatic

there are quite a few nvr pieces of software. I preferred the unifi video software before unifi went to protect...

other examples:
blue iris, Shinobi, frigate, openeye... some pieces of software are subs now and alot of the free open source ones died out and were bought out and now incoperated within the ones mentioned before...

Its more dependent on the cameras you are using and their streaming capabilities... For the longest time foscom ip cameras were a cheap and effective solutions.

Review:

https://www.dvrcms.com/best-20-free-open-source-cctv-nvr-and-dvr-solutions/

Some exist as unraid dockers...
 

Network video recorders (NVRs) can send two types of video streams: mainstream and substream:

 

Mainstream

The highest quality video stream, recorded at the same quality as the NVR's settings. This stream uses a high bitrate and is suitable for viewing on a computer, but may be difficult to play on some computers and may not be supported by all internet connections.

 

Substream

A secondary, lower quality stream that's customizable and uses a lower bitrate. This stream is suitable for viewing on most computers and internet connections. Even when viewing substream, the NVR will still record in the higher quality of the main stream.

 

Then there is the actual camera connection types. As example the new unifi protect cameras have the capabilities, but they aren't enabled by default... Everything these days have an app api or uses weird connection tcp...

You want cameras with RTSP protocols...

outside of the premade software there are many side code projects that include python.
https://github.com/JFF-Bohdan/pynvr

for home assistant integrations look on their forum:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/rtsp-video-playback-player-functionality-for-nvrs/725103/2
There are a few videos on this as well.

I'm currently working on a similar projects for multiple solar sites. 

Edited October 1, 20241 yr by bmartino1
spelling/data

Final setup here will be 6 cameras: four Amcrest 4K, one Amcrest 2K and a Reolink Doorbell.  Still need to physically install 2 of the 4K cameras.  All are running both main and sub channels through go2rtc (rtsp from Amcrest cameras, ffmpeg from Reolink), which frigate then uses the go2rtc rtsp restream feeds for record (main stream) and detect (sub stream).  Coral USB for detection, and AMD iGPU for hardware acceleration.

 

CPU is AMD Ryzen 5 5600GT (6 core) and video is stored on a 6TB pool drive dedicated to NVR.  All seems to be running well at the moment.  Started with only 2 cameras and a bare bones config, and have slowly been adding/changing things, so to learn on the way.  I use projects like this to learn stuff.

 

I had the global "record" setting with mode: motion.  Yesterday I changed it to mode: all so I could characterize its behavior:

 

record:
  enabled: true
  retain:
    days: 7
    mode: all
  events:
    retain:
      default: 30
      mode: motion

 

My location is a bit of a challenge.  House is in a suburban development built in the middle of a former managed forest.  So close neighbors, passing cars and *lots* of moving leaves.  So I've needed many motion and object masks to filter out needless false positives.  The flip side of that is - What if I want to go back and review to see if I potentially recorded something which I may have filtered out?  I generally don't need to track my neighbors walking their dog or cars driving by the house.  But what if there was something that happened that I may wish to see after the fact?

 

Since I changed to "mode: all" I see that I am recording all of the video streams.  Frigate now has at least a rudimentary way of scrubbing/reviewing the video (I hadn't played much with this before, if at all).  Hopefully the GUI for this will be improved in time, as it certainly isn't a great interface.  But it likely will meet my needs for now.

 

 

 

I can't help with the filter settings in Frigate, but otherwise I'd have set things up a bit differently.

 

Intel CPU with iGPU - skip the coral, the iGPU will handle Frigate inferencing on multiple cameras

Record directly from cameras to Frigate, all streams - no decoding, no processing on record

14TB or larger HDD for 6 or more cameras
Every camera with 128GB sd card as backup

go2RTC after frigate to support Home Assistant, etc.

But if what you have works for you, then no need to change.

Frigate's new NVR capabilities are still in pretty early beta, so expect the whole thing to be fleshed out and expanded greatly. Just don't expect it that quickly as it's just the one guy doing most of it.

Edited October 1, 20241 yr by Espressomatic

I usually pull from other sources, depending on cameras types. Its been a while since I used frigate in the past with a variety of cameras and left it due to many weird issues... I'd have you review there documentations. https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/cameras/
I believe frigate will be your better choice due to leaf detection.

Example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/12yxf84/anyone_using_amcrest_cameras_with_frigate/
https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate/discussions/5366

Quote:

This is what I have for 2 Amcrest IP8M-T2499EB 4K UltraHD, they are using Dahua Firmware, but I didn't change anything when changing from Amcrest firmware.
 

go2rtc: streams: #Front1 front1-sub: rtsp://{FRIGATE_USER}:{FRIGATE_PASSWORD}@192.168.xx.xx/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=1

ffmpeg: inputs: - path: rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/front1-sub?video=copy input_args: preset-rtsp-restream roles: - detect

Roelink:
https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate/discussions/7791
https://www.mos-eisley.dk/display/it/Frigate+with+Reolink

?Are you looking for general cofig or specific configurations with frigate?
I guess, what I'm trying to ask is how do you want to implement it and how do you want to interact with them?

I use Frigate on Home Assistant to detect 'objects' instead of motion.  Setting up zones will filter out street traffic for my event notifications and tv screen pip popup.  I still use detections in the other low priority areas like the street traffic, etc, but I don't have those detections alert me (they are still shown in Frigate).  Running on a n100 NUC with a dual Google Coral M.2 TPU.  CPU runs at about 25%-30% with two 4k cameras and three 2k cameras and uses about 25 watts.  I've considered moving this to Unraid, but it's working on Home Assistant almost flawlessly, so I probably won't move it over.

 

For 24/7 recording I use BlueIris (retreams from Frigate).  I had been using BlueIris for years before finding Frigate.  BI works good for direct to disk full time recordings.