Experiences With Frigate?

[Dramus]

Currently have six cameras, using Synology Surveillance Station for the NVR.

Thinking of adding one or two more cameras. I've one free Surveillance Station license left, and I don't care to buy another. SS is "ok," but their mobile app, DS Cam, is lousy IMO.

So I'm thinking of giving Frigate a go.

I'd be running it on our home "everything" server, which also serves as my desktop:

• Intel Core Ultra 5 225
• 16GB of (fast) RAM
• 1TB of Samsung NVMe SSDs in RAID 1, with a hot spare
• ASUS GeForce GT 1030 2GB GDDR5 graphics card
• Linux Mint 22.1 (Xia) Cinnamon

The CPU's integrated Intel GPU is disabled due to system stability problems. (That's why I have the graphics card.)

To avoid beating up the SSDs, I figured on NFS-exporting a directory from my Synology NAS, mounting it on the server, and storing the camera recordings there.

Mainly, I'm wondering:

1. What everybody's experiences have been with Frigate—the good, the bad, and the ugly;
2. Thoughts on running it on my everyday desktop/server, particularly regarding resource consumption;
3. Whether storing recordings on an NFS-mounted NAS share is a good idea, and whether there are any gotchas concerning database placement or recording reliability;
4. What mobile apps are available; and
5. How well those mobile apps work.

Thanks in advance!

 

[jeremyx]

Not a full review, but a few specifics on your setup questions.

Resources: the big load is decoding plus object detection, so point detect at each camera's substream at around 5 fps and only record the main stream. With the iGPU off, OpenVINO on the CPU is the usual detector choice, and the GT 1030 should still be able to handle decoding with the nvidia hwaccel preset. With 7 or 8 cameras that should leave a desktop usable, but watch CPU for the first week before trusting it.

SSD wear: Frigate writes segments to /tmp/cache first, so make that a tmpfs in your compose file (a GB or so). That plus recordings on the NAS keeps writes off the NVMe pretty well.

NFS: recordings on an NFS share work fine for a lot of people. The gotcha is the database. Keep frigate.db (it's SQLite) on local disk, since SQLite and network shares don't get along. Also make sure the mount comes up before Docker starts the container, otherwise Frigate can quietly record into the empty local directory under the mount point after a reboot or NAS hiccup.

Mobile: there's no official native app. Most people install the web UI as a PWA on the phone, or use the Home Assistant app with the Frigate integration if they run HA. For remote viewing, a VPN like WireGuard or Tailscale beats opening ports.

 

[Dramus]

Thanks for the informative follow-up, @jeremyx!

The lack of a mobile app kind of removes one of the main reasons for making a change. Synology's DS Cam being truly execrable is perhaps the main reason I'd abandon Synology Surveillance Station.

I'll await further comment and decide later.