I’m working on getting rid of my Nest cameras around the house and trying to figure out my best option for an NVR. I really only have need/want for 2 cameras right now. One is the doorbell, and another is just a camera pointed at my back door/garage doors. I’ve already replaced the doorbell with a Reolink, and the other one is on the list for replacement soon.
As far as hardware I currently have the following possible landing places for Frigate(or other software):
- Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q with an i5-7500T
- This currently has a Proxmox with:
- Linux Mint VM (running Jellyfin inside here)
- Several other LXCs (adguard, docker, tailscale etc)
- This currently has a Proxmox with:
- Lincplus Lincstation N2 NAS running Truenas
- This currently has Immich running as an app
I don’t really need a ton of long term storage or video or anything. A few days would be more than enough, especially if I am able to get some smart alerts through Home Assistant as well.
I have thought about buying another mini pc of some form and dedicating it to Frigate because I understand it can be a bit resource hungry, but I don’t really know for sure if that is necessary. Another option along those lines would be to just buy a Reolink NVR.
I have also thought about moving Jellyfin to an LXC and passing the intel igpu to Jellyfin there. And then I could run Frigate inside of Docker? Do I understand that I could then share the igpu between Jellyfin and Docker/Frigate?
I know this is all kinda scattered. I feel like I almost have too many possible options and I don’t know which one is best these days.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters LXC Linux Containers NVR Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV) PoE Power over Ethernet
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
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I have a LaView LV-N9808C8E. It is quite a bit outdated, so I would not recommend that model, as the web interface requires Silverlight and the iOS app doesn’t work on the latest iOS.
BUT, it is basically an offline NVR with 1TB harddrive that records continuously from my 6 ip cameras (all wired with PoE directly to the NVR). I think this model supports up to 8 cameras.
Then, on my home server I run frigate with a Coral USB to pull the rtsp streams and do object detection. When objects are detected, the screenshots are sent to Home Assistant for alerts.
This gives me good real time notifications and nothing is exposed to the internet or any 3rd parties.
If I want to watch real time camera feeds, and I can use my wireguard vpn + vlc to watch an individual camera via rtsp (I used to be able to use the iOS LaView app when on my vpn, but it no longer works). If I need to go back and look at recordings, since the LaView NVR is continuously recording, I can go back and pull video directly from the device for the last few days.
- 1 for Frigate with Coral USB ( + scrypted with frigate plugin if you want recordings in apple home )
I am currently using scrypted (https://www.scrypted.app/) on debian. I found it scrytped easier to set-up and get into than frigate.
Frigate isn’t a resource hog unless you enable the inference and classification stuff. If you don’t need that, and are only running 2 cameras, it should be fine.
Shinobi is another option without all the advanced junk you may not need though.
Oh awesome, that is great to know. Looks like I should do a little more Frigate research.
Definitely +1 on Frigate!!
Frigate is painful to set up. It won’t just go out and query the onvif capabilities so you have to try and figure out its RTSP url manually and ptz support is primitive. Its low resource and stable once you manage to get it to work.
Blue Iris is much easier and more capable, but uses Windows, and its a resource hog, and its paid. But if you get past that, BI is really good.
I heard blue iris can be run with wine on linux
I tried it a couple years ago and it wasn’t very successful. But maybe that’s changed.
Blue Iris is by far the most capable NVR, but it’s Windows-only so you’d need a Windows or Windows Server VM. For a basic setup, Frigate is more than sufficient.
I’d say try Frigate on your ThinkCentre and see how well it runs. I wouldn’t buy new hardware prematurely.
Do I understand that I could then share the igpu between Jellyfin and Docker/Frigate?
I’m not sure about containers like LXC, but generally you need SR-IOV or GVT-g support to share a GPU across multiple VMs. I think your CPU supports GVT-g, so you should be able to find a guide on setting it up.
+1 for BlueIris. I run Linux almost everywhere else, but BlueIris was easy to set up and has been rock solid (I.e. no intervention) on a Lenovo mini pc (I think it’s @ I5 7500T) and 4 Reolink cameras for years.
Every once in a while I think to replace it, but this is one of those things that I haven’t found a compelling reason to follow through on.
From Frigate’s site, regarding their paid + subscription.
Frigate+ models are trained using images from actual security cameras in use by Frigate users located all over the world.
I’m hoping this is fully opt-in, but it doesn’t say.
Yes, this is fully opt-in. You have to manually choose images and submit them if you’d like to use them as training data.
