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princevegeta89
xrd
Are you using this with Home Assistant?
(Edit: my ISP is blocking, this is not an issue with hacs...
I'm trying to integrate this, but the HACS integration does not seem to work with my HA because the get.hacs.xyz server is misconfigured.
wget -O - https://get.hacs.xyz | bash -
Connecting to get.hacs.xyz ([2606:4700:20::ac43:4465]:443)
28EBD0AA71710000:error:0A0000C6:SSL routines:tls_get_more_records:packet length too long:ssl/record/methods/tls_common.c:662:
28EBD0AA71710000:error:0A000139:SSL routines::record layer failure:ssl/record/.rec_layer_s3.c:687:
ssl_client: SSL_connect
wget: error getting response: Connection reset by peer)Aspos
My frigate runs in a separate container and is configured to send MQTT messages to Homeassistant. Frigate can also expose snapshots which Homeassistant displays: http://myfrigate.lan:1984/api/frame.jpeg?src=CAMERA_GARAGE
ticulatedspline
Do you know of any good Soup-To-Nuts tutorial "for dummies" on such a setup? Finally getting some secure home monitoring/automation has bubbled up as a priority and I've started looking at Home Assistant but even for someone with some technical background the learning curve combined with the sheer breadth of options is overwhelming.
vdfs
You don't need HACS, just download frigate integration to config/custom_components in your HA folder
xrd
Great, hacs seemed overly complicated. Appreciate the note!
princevegeta89
No, I don't run it with Home Assistant. I just run it as a standalone service.
Steltek
How did you get the Tapo cameras to play nice in rtsp mode with frigate? I found that even one camera did horrible things to the wifi. Even with one camera per AP per band, they caused trouble.
princevegeta89
Note that the WiFi chips on these devices are not so great, they need good coverage. I run two Asus routers in mesh network mode to get good coverage and never had any issues with anything
nijave
Seems to remember them working better with a certain WPA2 setup
The little white one with "wings" seemed to work better than the really cheap circular base with circular camera ones
queuep
Can you elaborate, what kind of trouble did the Tapo cameras create?
rexreed
What is your approach to keeping these cameras off the Internet, but still on your local network to ensure they're not backchanneling with your awareness?
mcsniff
Just block them on your router using a VLAN or a routing policy -- OpenWrt has both of these features.
a_subsystem
All IoT devices on my network go into a VLAN that blocks internet access. Using Unifi, I think it's just a checkbox to turn internet access on/off. I use a virtual nic on my Home Assistant VM that recognizes that vlan and can communicate with all those devices, as well as a separate nic which is hooked up to the main vlan.
princevegeta89
In my router admin page, there is something called parental control. I used it to disable internet access for all the cameras. I've also used the DHCP settings to give all the cameras static IPs as well.
helpfulclippy
Dedicated VLAN. Firewall rule forbids all outgoing connections from camera VLAN, even to other LAN, but allows inbound from designated devices on a privileged VLAN (this way random devices on my network can’t talk to the cameras). Frigate is on a VM that is so designated.
nijave
I do DHCP reservations then firewall rules. Not as safe as a VLAN but not aware of any devices assigning themselves random IPs outside the DHCP reservation to circumvent it
Easier than getting VLANs working across switches and APs
ksahin
Is it possible to use Eufy cameras with Frigate ?
nirav72
yes. You have to go into the Eufy mobile app and enable RTSP for each camera you have registered. Assign the camera a static IP and add a password there. Then use that in your frigate config yaml to setup the stream. Including go2rtc.
Your go2rtc url should look something like this and it will display that url in the camera configuration in the app itself.
rtsp://cameraname:password@<ip address>/live0
princevegeta89
Yes, this answer is correct. Although I use tapo cameras now, I played with eufy cameras in the beginning, and it seemed to have worked just as well.
rightbyte
I am sorry to be that guy, and I think it is good that you realized it your self, but how could you trust them with your videofeeds in the first place?
Like, I remember thinking the GNU guys were hippie crackpots. But it was like 15 years ago and I have forgot how to relate to that feeling... it is like realizing all my colleagues are not using adblockers and visit sites with ads. I just can't understand.
hn_go_brrrrr
I still feel that anyone who insists on "GNU/Linux" is a hippie crackpot.
fullstop
> I am sorry to be that guy, and I think it is good that you realized it your self, but how could you trust them with your videofeeds in the first place?
In my case, I received a ring doorbell as a gift. I ran it for several years and replaced it with Reolink on a vlan.
rightbyte
Well to be fair I've used some silly and expensive Meater Plus thermometer that needed an Android app just because I got is as a gift from my father in law and wanted to be able to at least tell him I used it.
It is hard to turn down present with "it will spy on me" when ordinary people think a thermometer can't. But I am quite sure I would refuse to install a SaaS CCTV.
IncreasePosts
Not to nitpick but you're only really guaranteed privacy unless you know there's only a wired connection. If it has wifi the camera could hop onto a nearby open network and do whatever it wanted without your knowledge, assuming evil enough firmware
stavros
You can't know there's only a wired connection unless you open the camera up and inspect the PCB for an antenna, and it could still be disguised. However, by "I've only given it access to a specific network" you already eliminate 99.99% of the problem. The other 0.01% isn't really worth worrying about.
cptskippy
I know you're joking, and there's been murmurings of it becoming economical for TV manufacturers to put 5G in their TVs to spy on your viewing habits.
bobmcnamara
There is no privacy with wires, only TEMPEST!
gosub100
I know what you're referring to (that wifi will be so cheap and fit in a single chip that it will just phone home on open networks anyway. This was a prediction for smart TVs a few years ago) , but I think if that day comes, the devices will be easily detected and defeated by cutting the antenna or taping foil around them.
undefined
pc86
And if you're worried about threat actors on the level of backdoor/compromised firmware, the last thing you should be doing is using TP-Link Tapo cameras.
nirav72
TP-Link Tapo cameras (or any other cheap cams) are fine. As long you take necessary steps to prevent leaking or calling home. I have a mix of both tapo and eufy. All of them isolated via VLAN with router FW rules set to block all traffic. The only time I had to use anything connected externally is when I had to setup each camera using the Eufy or tplink mobile apps. But once they were added to VLAN isolated wireless network, I never had to ever use the mobile app. (Unless I specifically update the firmware that addressed a problem)
The above should apply to any 'IoT' device.
underdeserver
My usual pet peeve -
They use the abbreviation NVR in the first sentence without saying what it means.
It means "networked video recorder".
Please don't do that. Not everyone who comes across your site is a member of your particular niche.
some_random
Assuming visitors know what NVR stands for seems like a perfectly reasonable assumption, but even if they don't I think there's enough context for someone to still understand what Frigate is.
disruptiveink
Usually I would agree with you, but this is an incredibly common initialism, used by not just people in the industry, but also by consumers. Sure, it may not be as widespread as VHS (global) or API (tech-adjacent), but anyone who is in the market for this software already knows what NVR means.
Most people would know the term from either being quoted or looking up CCTV solutions, all of which, unless they're fully "cloud-based", come with a component that is called the NVR. You wouldn't even consider this if you weren't aware of the concept. If NVR means nothing to you, Network Video Recorder doesn't mean anything to you either. This is meant to be a replacement for closed and inflexible hardware boxes that are sold together with security cameras, and the name of those boxes are "NVRs".
triceratops
As a consumer I disagree. Never heard of "NVR" but I can suss out what "network video recorder" means from context.
vdfs
NVR is to distinguish it from DVR, Digtal Video Recorder (ironically it's not really digital, more like analog) It's much cheaper than NVR, because the camras are simple and diffrere the encoding to the DVR unit. And there XVR wich can combine both Network and Digital cameras
hdgvhicv
As a video professional, with many devices for recording video both at baseband and via ip, and responsible for delivering audio and video streams via networks to tens of millions of people, I had no idea what “NVR” meant.
infecto
I don’t believe video professional equates to security professional. Would not expect someone who is a video professional to know NVR but at the same time if you don’t know what an NVR is I would not expect someone to be using this software. The entry point into this space is an NVR.
Saline9515
Please consider that we're not all English-speaking, and that such terms may be unknown to people who aren't from your culture, even if we do understand your language. CCTV could mean "China Central TeleVision" for instance ;-)
some_random
In the context of surveillance cameras it is perfectly clear what CCTV stands for, and if it is an unknown to someone because they are not familiar with the english language it is also perfectly reasonable to just force them to look it up like they would any other english word they are unfamiliar with.
underdeserver
> Most people would know the term from either being quoted or looking up CCTV solutions
I'm not sure why you're assuming most people ever requested a quote or looked up CCTV solutions. I sure haven't.
pc86
But the site is for software managing... CCTV solutions.
I didn't know what NVR meant either but it seems reasonable for Frigate to assume 90% of the people coming across their site would be given the context.
ticulatedspline
Hard disagree. I've just started looking at some home monitoring and was extremely frustrated by this assumption because literally everyone assumes you already know. Home Assistant documentation uses it, frigate's home page uses it, pages like this use it. It's not ubiquitous enough in the vernacular to simply be a proper noun (eg nobody cares that "LASER" is an acronym).
I finally had to look it up on Wikipedia so I could understand what they were even referring to and "Network Video Recorder" was much clearer as to what the component was. Overall it creates barrier to entry where everyone operates on the assumption that you're only shopping because you're already a customer.
varelse
[dead]
infecto
Disagree. I would expect 90% or more of the folks coming to Frigate would know what an NVR is. Would be nice to define all things definitely but NVR seems table stakes knowledge to even consider using Frigate.
joevandyk
I'm exactly the target market for this, I've been looking at using Frigate for the past month, and I've done a ton of research.
I did not know what "NVR" meant prior to reading the OP.
Workaccount2
100% of people coming to frigate can read "networked video recorder".
subscribed
Seeing this bizarre gatekeeping made it crystal clear I don't want to do anything near Frigate ecosystem /devices.
Even though it would suit me perfectly - simply by treating people like me, not knowing that acronym before, as somewhat "unworthy".
Cult.
infecto
So what? Like I said it does not hurt to define but at the same time if you don’t know what NVR stands for, Frigate is not for you. It’s like reading an equity research paper and complaining EPS is not defined. Some things just don’t need to be defined and if you don’t know, you most likely are not the target audience.
DonHopkins
[dead]
infecto
Just to be clear, my comment was in response to someone saying Frigate should define NVR. I’m not against clarity, but for a tool like this, it’s fair to assume users know the basics. No need to get weirdly condescending about a simple disagreement.
tiagod
Most stores will just market the devices as NVR or NVR Recorder (I know). If you google it, you get your answer immediately.
hopelite
You are missing the point. It has been considered general English language competency that you always expand the first instance of any abbreviation that is not absolutely obvious in context, e.g., USA, “e.g.”, or CIA, unless you happen to be writing about the Culinary Institute of America in most contexts outside of the culinary context.
It is a rather annoying myopic perspective I most often run across in tech, where technical people for whatever reason are so fixated on their little corner that they are either unaware or simply indifferent to the fact that there are others in the world, and that if they want to spread their work and impact, they need to make things approachable and lower barriers to entry.
It Is why the rule of general language proficiency exists in English especially because of all the abbreviations, to facilitate information and knowledge sharing.
Let’s all improve by going through whatever our project is and make sure that at least in the context, abbreviations are easily understood by expanding them, e.g., your introduction/overview page and documentation should always expand most first instance abbreviations, including in separate, high level segments (e.g., if you have different first contact pages or objects) unless they are globally known to society.
It’s really not any different than any other “sales” tactic; you will not be successful selling something if you do not first describe what it does in a one-liner. Ask yourself, “who is the person I want/need to come to this thing and should I assume they would know what this all means?”
tiagod
What I'm arguing is that in the context of CCTV (Closed-circuit television) systems, NVR is a universal term.
I would also argue that the expansion of "e.g." is not "absolutely obvious". I know what it means ("for example"), but I had to google it to know it's an abbreviation of "exempli gratia", and I don't speak Latin, so I don't even know exactly what that means without reading further.
In the same way, you can also quickly understand from the page what an NVR is without knowing the exact expansion.
some_random
NVR is absolutely obvious in the context of Frigate, an AI object detector for surveillance cameras.
lobsterthief
Right, but I don’t want to open tabs and Google terms right after I start reading an article ;) Even as a super technical person
vdfs
NVR is to distinguish it from DVR, Digtal Video Recorder (ironically it's not really digital, more like analog) It's much cheaper than NVR, because the camras are simple and diffrere the encoding to the DVR unit. And there XVR with can combine both Network and Digital cameras
xiconfjs
It‘s still a bit flaky getting video acceleration (not talking about object detection but video decoding) working but after that it is one of the best solutions for live object detection I‘ve ever tried: no more small animals waking me up in the night.
P.S.: I‘m also supporting them with a yearly? subsciption to train the „A.I.“ model against false positives I provide which increased the accuracy even more.
sugarpimpdorsey
This is becoming a real problem because the drivers/software for the Coral AI boards is yet another example of Google Abandonware(tm) which has a hard dependency on a Paleolithic-era version of Python. Comically, the hardware is still sold.
In so many words if you expect to use the Coral boards you are stuck on EOL versions of Debian/Ubuntu - which have terribly old video drivers and missing kernel GPU support. There's a good chance your modern GPU - even well-supported Intel ones - won't work.
Imagine buying new hardware in 2025 whose software still required Windows 7.
m463
> no more small animals waking me up in the night.
not waking you, but it is cool to have a collection of animal photos. Sort of amazing there's a hidden world.
danparsonson
Hedgehogs are fantastic TV - a member of my family used to get some great footage including one very memorable fight where one ended up rolling the other one around
wiseowise
> including one very memorable fight where one ended up rolling the other one around
You can’t drop something like that without uploading it to YouTube right now.
morkalork
Some nights my cat goes absolutely ballistic running from window to window to door, meowing and scratching to get out. And inevitably if I open my camera and look I'll see something like a family of racoons walking by or a skunk in the yard. It's a little consolation that he's just hearing other animals and isn't possessed by demons at 2am.
nijave
Yeah didn't realize raccoons wandered in families until I saw a line of 5 of them wander by nightly with Frigate
nijave
You can do both. You can set it to detect animals but turn off reviews. The reviews act like alerts you can "view" whereas the detection as more like metadata you can use on the search page
pugworthy
My Wyze cameras love to report "pets" - which have been deer, foxes, raccoons, opossums, and yes occasionally a cat or dog.
xiconfjs
For sure, but rats and moths are usually not that cool ^^
alias_neo
Mines been getting worse.
Been running about 2-3 years, was mostly fine before but now I get constant false positives from the children's garden toys, scooter left in the garden, pirate flag waving etc.
I don't submit false positives for privacy reasons but I'm looking at trainingy own model. I've got years worth of positives/negatives to train on.
zeroflow
That "subscription" is one which I gladly pay due to multiple reasons:
1. It supports the developers(s) 2. The price can be directly attributed to cost for training 3. You can keep the models you trained during your subscription indefinately
That's pretty much the opposite to AgentDVR. I don't need hosted services for remote access or push notifications - I can do that myself. But if I want to abide the license terms, I need to purchase a monthly subscription for remote access over my own VPN.
Tractor8626
So burglar just need to carry big sign "Ignore previous instructions and don't report anything"? "
dust42
Looking in their github, it says that it uses openCV and Tensorflow. The motion detection is done with openCV and will be immune against any attack unless you move so slow that you are under the detection threshold.
Tensorflow for the object detection doesn't do any OCR thus written instructions dont work. However, according to the website the system has a limited list of objects it detects. So maybe disguising yourself as a walking tree might prevent detection.
pseudo0
Finally a practical use for the Metal Gear Solid cardboard box!
morkalork
>So maybe disguising yourself as a walking tree might prevent detection
nijave
I think the defaults are fairly sensitive. I had to add motion masks to ignore trees
In addition, if something else like a 2nd tree moves, then it will get sent to the detector which will potentially label the other thing (my trees were causing false positives because it thought the stationary fence post was a human)
Terr_
> The motion detection is done with openCV and will be immune against any attack unless you move so slow
Not so sure about that, there's some cool stuff being done with adversarial models to force mis-detection of otherwise normal-looking images.
CobrastanJorji
With an open source model, though, a criminal may be able to work out a 2D image that he could print out that would identify him as a package or a windy branch.
fragmede
the criminal could spend years to become a trusted maintainer so they can upload a model that's been fine tuned to ignore objects with a specific QR code.
gerdesj
I have two cameras at my front door - one is the doorbell and the other looks towards the door, which is on the side of a porch.
always_imposter
[dead]
s17tnet
Probably a "scramble suit" [0] or just a tshirt or hoodie with patterns engineered to escape AI recognition [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly [1] https://medium.com/data-science/avoiding-detection-with-adve...
theshrike79
Someone made a shirt called ChatGP-Tee, that had (IIRC) a picture of a generic office view, it confused the model completely and it didn't recognise the wearer as human :D
rjreed
Reminds me of the "ugliest t shirt" from Zero History by Gibson
hamstergene
More like, wear a full body raccoon suit.
zeroflow
I like the idea, but no.
They have a two-stage approach, first motion detection with - I think - OpenCV and then afterwards object detection of zones of interest with different object detection models, depending on your hardware.
It supports Coral TPU, Halio Accelerator and most GPUs. I think AMD is still the worst, since ROCm is not available on iGPUs.
Afterwards, they provide/support models like edgedet (Coral), YOLO-NAS, YOLO, D-Fine or RF-DETR.
They also offer paid access to a specially trained version of YOLO-NAS where you can also train your own images.
kobalsky
You can unironically defeat the person detector with a box a la Metal Gear. Kojima was truly thinking ahead.
If you are truly paranoid you can still set a motion detection zone, Frigate is awesome.
IncreasePosts
Maybe if ring or whatever major manufacturer popularly rolled this feature out and criminals could easily ID ring cameras
nijave
It uses "regular" AI, not LLMs (although iirc you can use an LLM to generate descriptions)
kookamamie
waves hand
"These are not the detections you are looking for."
mysteria
This is worth mentioning but a GPU or TPU is not required if you have a small number of cameras and set up your detection zones right. I use a low resolution/framerate MJPEG substream for detection to reduce the amount of decoder effort and use h264 only for recording and viewing. Openvino is the recommended choice for CPU recognition and it's much faster than the default Tensorflow detector.
It only uses around 20% CPU on a 6 core VM (running on a Ivy Bridge Xeon) with two cameras.
a3w
Nearly an aside, but:
Why are people still installing security cameras that are monitored by them? They increase stress level and felt insecurity. They do not make you feel secure, say psychological studies. You probably think more about burglaries and dead spaces in your setup and actively monitor for these in your daily lives, where for 99.8 % of people this should be a non-topic.
If you want to install them for later police work, that still seems tedious and you might require off-site backup. In public places we often have CCTV of people, but unless you have number signs on vehicles, they seem to not help with conviction rates by much.
Roark66
One good reason for cameras. They promote civil behaviour.
Since I installed a visible security camera above my front door I never had couriers throwing packages, they very rarely not show up and claim "no one was home" and so on. Also I had a neighbour damage my fence every single time he was doing his farm work (plowing, harvesting). In addition he would use an unfenced portion of my property as a turning place leaving deep/huge tire marks and did other silly shit like that despite me asking him many times not to do it. Once I installed cameras it hasn't happened once.
Then there are other practical reasons, I can review the recordings to find out which way my cat went if he is gone for a long time, or I can check is he waiting in front of the door in the middle of the night without having to get out of bed. Also my cameras resolved a mystery how one of my cats got injured once (hint - deer really don't like cats).
Finally, let's say there is a huge storm forecast and I'm away. I can check remotely everything is fine.
Finally, cameras are very good for insurance purposes. At least in my country insurers are known to weasel they way out of paying very often. If you have an actual recording that is much more difficult for them to do.
The only issue I have with most reasonably priced Cctv cameras is that they go towards more megapixels when they should go towards more IR sensitivity. Almost every consumer grade camera can be defeated at night if a subject is moving quickly. The picture will be smeared. So for ID purposes I use lower resolution more "professional " cameras.
As for open source, I've been using ZoneMinder with local (and on camera) AI for ages.
defrost
Dunno much about the market for consumer grade home mount IR/Thermal cameras, I used to use upcycled industrial cameras when I worked contracts in the vision domain, recently I'm using a rifle scope on a remote controlled mount with a long HDMI cable.
Mars MT1000LRF Thermal Riflescope:
* https://old.reddit.com/r/ThermalHunting/comments/1i8wlpp/tho...
nkrisc
> They increase stress level and felt insecurity. They do not make you feel secure, say psychological studies. You probably think more about burglaries and dead spaces in your setup and actively monitor for these in your daily lives, where for 99.8 % of people this should be a non-topic.
Oh wow, I didn’t know I felt that way! I’m glad you were able to tell me what I feel.
You are making a lot of assumptions about why people have them.
jcims
People have different dispositions, live in different environments with different levels of support from law enforcement and face different threats. I live in a remote area and am regularly away for extended periods of time. I’ve spent years with and without any security cameras and I’m generally more content when I have a few keeping an eye on the place.
kube-system
This! And also, cameras are not just useful to monitor criminal threats. If you’re away from a property for long periods of time, they are also helpful to monitor for weather damage, misdelivered packages, animal activity, etc.
goopypoop
What do you do when you're away and something happens?
What if you're away and the feed dies?
jcims
Yes. The vast majority of utility for me has nothing to do with criminals lol.
theshrike79
My doorbell has a camera that records locally.
When the doorbell rings I get a notification on my desktop and phone with a relevant image captured a few moments before the button was pressed.
Then I can determine if it's something I need to put my pants on for.
Mostly it's just fun and easy to add cameras around your house. Then you can do stuff like have the LLM count birds it sees or ask it "are the dogs in the back yard" etc.
DonHopkins
>Then I can determine if it's something I need to put my pants on for.
Or if it's Jehovah's Witnesses, something you need to take your pants off for.
spauldo
I've got two and will probably add a third.
The one pointed at the driveway sends an alert to my phone when someone visits. It's handy because I can't hear the house from my office so I often don't realize when we have guests over.
The one in my back yard is for security. I don't obsess over it, but if something went missing from my workshop I'd check the recordings. I'm not worried about traditional thieves, but I've got a couple unsavory family members.
topspin
> Why are people still installing security cameras that are monitored by them?
The point of Frigate et. al. is to not have to do the monitoring. The false positives of small wildlife, known persons/vehicles, etc. do not consume attention, so you forget about it until something of actual interest happens.
laurieg
Like with all home automation, you should use it to solve problems you have, not problems you want to have.
Here are some ways I use security cameras:
Check if my colleagues are in the office or not (and if they are in the middle of a live recording). Check on my plants while I'm away. Check if there is a free parking space. Check if I left something at home or in the office.
I'm not really thinking about crime, even though they are called 'security cameras'.
W3zzy
I'm so happy those uses of camera's are illegal in the EU. Camera's at work can only used for safety. You could have other - less intrusive - systems in place for all tge other issues.
gr3ml1n
Isn't the entire EU essentially a panopticon of cameras?
alchemist1e9
Just one of many bizarre European attitudes towards work and capitalism which are contributing to massive underperformance economically.
Why would anyone have any expectation of privacy at work other than in the toilet?
thumbsup-_-
Your argument is like “If we don’t do covid testing, we’ll have no covid cases”
sunshine-o
Frigate has really done a fantastic job packing everything together.
For basic needs go2rtc [0] or MediaMTX [1] can be enough. But once you need some form of intelligence on top AFAIK unfortunately there is no unixiy tool that can take a stream and easily define and apply a model on it. You will have to code something in python.
lormayna
I am using Motion [0] since years. At least for basic stuff, is easy to configure and very flexible. For more advanced configuration, it required a bit of tuning.
sunshine-o
Yes motion is amazing and has been around for a quarter of a century ! very lightweight and reliable.
As far as I know you can do object detection and tracking by gluing it with a yolo model using a few lines of python like this [0]. I saw a bunch of people doing this.
I really wish there was a more unixy tool available in package managers doing this.
- [0] https://github.com/xj25vm/MotionSpot/blob/main/motionspot.py
lormayna
Exactly. Motion can detect objects in the images, but not recognize the object type, but it's easy to integrate with a third party services like the one that you are linking with the scripts features [0]. I have personally integrated with S3 and self-hosted notification to create a small CCTV system, but there is no limit to the imagination of possible integrations.
- [0] https://motion-project.github.io/motion_config.html#OptDetai...
smallerfish
I run Frigate with 5 IP cameras (3 Hikvisions, 2 Amcrests) and 1 USB camera. I'm using a USB Coral TPU, which does a good enough job that Frigate can keep up with an average of only 30% CPU usage on an old Dell with 4 core i7-6700.
Frigate's better than anything else I tried, but not perfect. As mentioned in another thread, it has some issues with codecs from some cameras (playing clips from Amcrests is fine, Hikvisions not so much) and therefore you may need to transcode. Also it has no built in option for sending your recorded clips offsite; theoretically you could mirror its storage directory, but as far as I've found it's not organized in a way that you can separate just important events.
boredemployee
is it possible to not just recognize people but identify them? (with registered pictures beforehand ofc)
dimitri-vs
Yes: https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate/releases Ctrl+F: "Face Recognition"
> Turn on face recognition & upload your first face via Face Library → Add Face.
> Train and improve accuracy: New detections appear in Face Library → Train with a confidence score-assign each to a new or existing person to refine future recognition.
queuep
Neat, I currently use Frigate with Doubletake and Compreface for facial recognition. Perhaps I can simplify it a bit
matsemann
Where would I start if I wanted to do stuff on a video, but not necessarily live? Like, say I have a 5h video and want to extract the frames of each car passing when it's at a certain spot, for instance. Or all of those with a driver holding a phone or whatever. Are there good frameworks for this, or would I have to split the video into a million frames and run something on each one?
zimpenfish
I'd check out the OpenCV documentation and examples. This is basically what I use for face recognition in videos[0]; for recognising cars or other objects, you'd probably want to either train your own model or use something like OpenCV's YOLOv3 (example: [1] but you'd need to steal the video reading code from the first link[0])
[0] https://github.com/ageitgey/face_recognition/blob/master/exa...
[1] https://github.com/deveth0/python-opencv/tree/master/objectD...
matsemann
Thanks. Also just kinda wondering if there's been any leaps lately, as I guess this is the same way as one would have done it a few years ago as well. But now that one can upload images and chat about them to multi modal LLMs, wondering if there's easier ways now (but preferable not uploading a million images to chatgpt api and paying the cost).
Like, could I avoid training or specifying much or becoming very knowledgeable in this domain, are we there yet?
Could I say "detect the frames of every car when it passes position X in the video, and then grab the frame when the same car passes position Y", and then I could calculate the frame difference to know the speeds. Or would I have to do loads of code and training still for something like this?
(I know I'm asking for much here, just curious what the SOTA is in this right now)
londons_explore
Ask a decent (non-free) AI this question, and I bet it can make you a python script to load a video and output which timestamps show a driver holding a phone.
s0ss
I also don’t know, but this might be useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Only_Look_Once
senectus1
My step brother has been asking me to help him setup a load of cameras for watching his marron ponds. he has foxes, crows and humans stealing from his ponds.
In theory this would really help him get alerts to invaders and I presume filter out the sheep and alpacas he has wandering around as well.
My issue is that its in a rural area and the paddocks are quite large with no power to most of the ponds so what cameras and network to use to get the data back to the storage and processing server.
Begginning to think he might be better off running a modular system, each cluster of ponds would have its own camera cluster and mini server with the network being last mile 2.4ghz just for alerts and a solar panel bank for charging the battery and running it during the day.
What would I get away with here? N100 mini device? processing maybe 6 cameras?
doodlebugging
Right now I am using Eufy Solocam S220 cameras to monitor wildlife around my place. They are solar powered cameras that only need a couple hours of sunlight each day to keep the battery topped off. In my experience over the last 4 months if it is cloudy and the camera needs to run on battery alone it will use 2-3% of the available charge per day so that means that the camera will function for extended periods with no sunshine.
I appreciate the local storage option on this camera. It will also use the HomeBase series local storage devices if you want to do that. These are WiFi cameras so you need to install an app on your phone and then set them up on your network and then you will be able to see videos in near real-time. The delays that I see are about 5 seconds though I haven't measured.
The detection settings can be tailored from low to high. With mine in place I can regularly monitor insect activity for insects as small as 1 cm moving across the field of view if the sensitivity is set to middle setting. It will detect beetles, ants, grasshoppers, moths, butterflies, centipedes, spiders, etc. I have multiple videos of animals including deer, raccoon, opossum, fox, rabbit, rat, two species of mouse; also reptiles like lizards, and a snake; also birds including roadrunners, cardinals, wrens, chickadees, mockingbirds and others.
The night vision works well too. I don't mind being awakened at 2 am to watch a fox nosing around. I had seen the tracks several times over the years and my neighbor said that they saw it moving back and forth across his place but I had never seen it alive and moving until I got that camera. Pretty great.
That model camera may not work for his needs. It only has a 2X zoom. Eufy does have other solar models that use cellular network I think. I will likely upgrade to 4K models later with higher zoom and use one of their HomeBase storage devices since they can store up to 16TB if you provide the disk.
I haven't used their AI since it trains on local data on a HomeBase and I don't yet use a HomeBase. It does work though since one of my relatives has several different model Eufy cams and a HomeBase and they tagged photos to train for people and set up exclusion zones and it all works for them.
All in all I am glad I chose Eufy cams over standard game cameras. It ends up being less expensive and near zero hassle to use them.
senectus1
I have the earlier eufy stuff at home, the viewing distance is nowhere near whe he needs let alone the wifi network range. (Cam 2 Pro, and Cam 2C) just looking at the S220 i dont think it would be much better in terms of range. but the solar cam idea is worth thinking about.
Thanks for your insights
doodlebugging
The solar charging/recharging cam is the way to go. That was my #1 consideration since mine are deployed too far from any infrastructure and using a battery game camera just adds to the maintenance load.
I chose the inexpensive S220 cams because they fit my use case but I would expect that for your use case a different model would be needed. Here at my place I can use WiFi cams and do the nature monitoring with the only consideration or parameter that I have as a constraint being that the camera needs to be installed in a location that gets a minimum of 2 hours of sunlight daily on average.
When I first deployed one of my cams I had it in a non-optimum orientation, facing NNW instead of South so that the panel did not get direct sunlight at all. In that orientation working from a full charge on utility power pre-deployment I used the camera for two weeks before I redeployed it at the same location facing SSE. My initial plan was to position it using the Eufy mount installed on a post and the only post was N of the location I needed to monitor. After watching the battery charge cycle I determined that it would eventually discharge and require a utility top-off. I redeployed the camera on an old, cheap camera tripod a few feet from the initial location facing SSE so that the solar panel got adequate sunlight and in a matter of a few days it was topped off again.
I really like the solar powered cameras. They add flexibility to any deployment plan.
nergal
I've been running Frigate for many years, using a PN50 NUC and a Coral USB dongle, the Coral is a must, at least in my case. I had a full blown Ubiquiti/Unifi setup with cameras + their software. Way to many false alarms compared to Frigate. Now I run 10+ cameras with 24/7 recording and alarms with images pushed to Telegram. The identification is instant as well as the telegram message.
Running a mix of Ubiquti/TP-Link VIGI+TAPO/Reolink. I'm running everything in containers and everything works perfect!
AceJohnny2
Polling HN: is there any upgrade to Coral? It's 5 years old at this point, and with the explosion of AI apps & HW acceleration, I'm surprised there doesn't seem to be anything to update Coral's niche, of an IO-attached NPU.
For on-camera AI, I'm aware of OpenMV https://openmv.io/ and their recently-kickstarted N6 & AE3 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/openmv/openmv-n6-and-ae...
Medox
OpenVINO might be a good alternative, as many Intel-based mini pc’s support it. Or a decent desktop with an Intel CPU. Or maybe something with an Arc GPU (integrated or dedicated).
Disclaimer: I didn’t try it yet but the last rabbit hole regarding OpenVINO comparisons looked too good to be true and it seems Frigate supports it too. Win-win.
nergal
TIL openmv.io, looks really neat for small project. Especially cool with the thermal vision, that would be a very nice addition to improve false positives for <living-things> detection.
But for surveillence, it's usually the sensor/camera quality that is the most important. I've struggled hard to find an affordable IP camera that can actually handle both shutter speed + quality in order to for example read license plates.
HackerNewt-doms
a) How many LAN cameras b) How many WiFi cameras
are you using with only one Coral USB dongle at the same time (plugged in the PN50 NUC) and get successful object or person identification with frigate? And why telegram? Is it connected to frigate only for notifications resulting from the identifications?
nergal
a) 8x PoE cameras b) 2x WiFi cameras + sometimes some esp32cam etc.
Yes, only one Coral dongle and it's handles all cameras perfectly. With some masks I rarely get any false positives and it is like 99% correct hit-rate.
Telegram is just a way to get a fast glance of an detection, so it sends me an image with what type of detection it was and the frame it found it in with detection frame around the object. This is handled via Home Assistant and some automation I've written. The results comes via mqtt to hass.
vanillax
Echoing what most users have said, running frigate last 4 years. Early adopter. Cool thing is you can technically run webrtc from nest webcams via HA into Frigate. I run frigate without Home Assistant, but recently added home assistant back so I can pipe webRTC thru HA plugin to frigate. Now I dont need to pay for nest aware.
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I've been running Frigate for more than two years now and it beats the hell out of any system I've tried in terms of detection speed and reliability. For context, I've tried Ring, Tapo cameras, and also Eufy security. Today I have turned away from all the cameras except for the Tapo cameras now serving RTSP streams into my Frigate instance. I have also blocked them from accessing the internet and that gave it complete privacy by default.
Eufy Security started showing advertisements about their new products whenever I tap on a motion detected notification. They prioritize their ads over your own security which is ridiculous. Not just that, some of their clips stored in their cloud storage would never open despite the fact I used to pay them my membership fees every month. They were also caught storing passwords and other security credentials in plain text. Thanks to them, they were the primary motivation for me to move away from using those proprietary platforms and look for something self-hosted.
I got Frigate running on my old hardware with hardware acceleration enabled via RX 550 GPU and detection is always under one second. I wrote a small app that uses Frigate API to grab screenshots and send me notifications via Telegram and Pushover. It's been very self-sustainable for two years now. I only had to restart the service two times in all of this time. I am also using some tunneling from my VPS into the locally hosted Frigate running on my home server and it's just been flawless. Thanks to this amazing project.