Frigate¶

Frigate is an open-source NVR (network video recorder) with real-time AI object detection for security cameras.

Why¶

Traditional NVRs record continuously and leave you to scrub through hours of footage. Frigate uses AI object detection (via Google Coral TPU or CPU) to identify people, cars, animals, and other objects in real time — so you only get notified when something meaningful happens. It integrates natively with Home Assistant and publishes MQTT events to Mosquitto, making it the backbone of camera-based automations. Self-hosting keeps your camera feeds entirely on-network with no cloud dependency.

Compose File¶

compose.yaml

Access¶

URL	Description
`https://frigate.${DOMAINNAME}`	Web UI (Traefik forward-auth)

Port	Protocol	Description
8554	RTSP	RTSP restreaming
8555	TCP + UDP	WebRTC

Architecture¶

Image: blakeblackshear/frigate
Networks: frigate-frontend (Traefik-facing), iot-backend (internal IoT communication — connects to Mosquitto for MQTT events)
Reverse proxy: Traefik with chain-auth@file middleware

Root Container Exception¶

Frigate runs as root because it requires direct access to hardware devices (GPU for detection, optional Coral TPU) and manages its own internal processes (nginx, go2rtc, detector workers). read_only and user: are therefore omitted. cap_drop: ALL and no-new-privileges are still applied.

Init Container¶

frigate-init seeds a minimal config file from ./config/config.yml into ./data/config/ on first deploy only (cp -n — never overwrites). The config lives in ./data/ because Frigate's built-in UI config editor needs write access.

Services¶

Container	Role
`frigate-init`	One-shot init: seeds `config.yml` into `./data/config/` (`cp -n`)
`frigate`	NVR with AI object detection, RTSP restreaming, and WebRTC

Hardware Acceleration¶

The compose file includes commented-out devices: directives for Intel QuickSync (/dev/dri) and Google Coral TPU (/dev/bus/usb). Uncomment the appropriate section for your hardware.

Secrets¶

Managed via secret.sops.env (SOPS-encrypted, decrypted to .env at deploy time):

DOMAINNAME — base domain for Traefik routing

First-Run Setup¶

Create the dataset vm-pool/apps/services/frigate in TrueNAS
Deploy the stack — no TrueNAS service account needed (runs as root)
(Optional) Uncomment the devices: section in compose.yaml for GPU or Coral TPU hardware acceleration
Configure cameras in the Frigate web UI
Add the Frigate integration to Home Assistant

Upgrade Notes¶

Review the Frigate release notes before major version upgrades — config schema changes are common. The init container uses cp -n, so config updates from the repo are only applied on first deploy. Subsequent config changes should be made through the Frigate UI.