Frigate is a popular NVR; it:

  • decodes video streams from cameras
  • detects and publishes events
  • integrates with [[Home Assistant]]

Frigate can be installed in the [[Home Assistant]] itself; I do not want to do that because Frigate can be used without Home Assistant -and because I want to be able to record the camera feeds on a disk that does not belong to Home Assistant.

Frigate documentation advises against running Frigate in a ProxMox LXC, and suggests a VM instead; I did try using a community script that creates an LXC as discussed in discussions - and decided to run it in my docker VM because:

  • it seems simpler
  • two-way talk works out of the box when I use VM but not when I use LXC

[[TODO]] stop microphone from hijacking the video with two-way talk

Frigate uses MQTT to publish events; for Home Assistant to feel them, MQTT instance Frigate publishes to has to be the same Home Assistant uses. I'll try to expose and re-use the instant running in my Home Assistant, but it may be cleaner to run MQTT stand-alone on Proxmox.

My Reolink Doorbell Wi-Fi had ONVIF and RTSP enabled out-of-the-box; those settings are under Network | Advanced | Server.

Frigate documentation recommends setting on Reolink cameras:

  • Device | Stream | Interframe Interval (which it calls Interframe Space) to 1x for each stream;
  • Device | Stream | Frame Rate Mode to Constant;

When adding Reolink camera I specified:

  • IP address
  • ONVIF port 8000
  • user admin and its password