Installation

Frigate is a Docker container that can be run on any Docker host including as a HassOS Addon. Note that a Home Assistant Addon is not the same thing as the integration. The integration is required to integrate Frigate into Home Assistant.

Dependencies#

MQTT broker - Frigate requires an MQTT broker. If using Home Assistant, Frigate and Home Assistant must be connected to the same MQTT broker.

Preparing your hardware#

Operating System#

Frigate runs best with docker installed on bare metal debian-based distributions. For ideal performance, Frigate needs access to underlying hardware for the Coral and GPU devices. Running Frigate in a VM on top of Proxmox, ESXi, Virtualbox, etc. is not recommended. The virtualization layer often introduces a sizable amount of overhead for communication with Coral devices, but not in all circumstances.

Windows is not officially supported, but some users have had success getting it to run under WSL or Virtualbox. Getting the GPU and/or Coral devices properly passed to Frigate may be difficult or impossible. Search previous discussions or issues for help.

Storage#

Frigate uses the following locations for read/write operations in the container. Docker volume mappings can be used to map these to any location on your host machine.

caution

Note that Frigate does not currently support limiting recordings based on available disk space automatically. If using recordings, you must specify retention settings for a number of days that will fit within the available disk space of your drive or Frigate will crash.

/media/frigate/clips: Used for snapshot storage. In the future, it will likely be renamed from clips to snapshots. The file structure here cannot be modified and isn't intended to be browsed or managed manually.
/media/frigate/recordings: Internal system storage for recording segments. The file structure here cannot be modified and isn't intended to be browsed or managed manually.
/media/frigate/frigate.db: Default location for the sqlite database. You will also see several files alongside this file while frigate is running. If moving the database location (often needed when using a network drive at /media/frigate), it is recommended to mount a volume with docker at /db and change the storage location of the database to /db/frigate.db in the config file.
/tmp/cache: Cache location for recording segments. Initial recordings are written here before being checked and converted to mp4 and moved to the recordings folder.
/dev/shm: It is not recommended to modify this directory or map it with docker. This is the location for raw decoded frames in shared memory and it's size is impacted by the shm-size calculations below.
/config/config.yml: Default location of the config file.

Common docker compose storage configurations#

Writing to a local disk or external USB drive:

version: "3.9"
services:
  frigate:
    ...
    volumes:
      - /path/to/your/config.yml:/config/config.yml:ro
      - /path/to/your/storage:/media/frigate
      - type: tmpfs # Optional: 1GB of memory, reduces SSD/SD Card wear
        target: /tmp/cache
        tmpfs:
          size: 1000000000
    ...

Writing to a network drive with database on a local drive:

version: "3.9"
services:
  frigate:
    ...
    volumes:
      - /path/to/your/config.yml:/config/config.yml:ro
      - /path/to/network/storage:/media/frigate
      - /path/to/local/disk:/db
      - type: tmpfs # Optional: 1GB of memory, reduces SSD/SD Card wear
        target: /tmp/cache
        tmpfs:
          size: 1000000000
    ...

frigate.yml

database:
  path: /db/frigate.db

Calculating required shm-size#

Frigate utilizes shared memory to store frames during processing. The default shm-size provided by Docker is 64m.

The default shm-size of 64m is fine for setups with 2 or less 1080p cameras. If frigate is exiting with "Bus error" messages, it is likely because you have too many high resolution cameras and you need to specify a higher shm size.

You can calculate the necessary shm-size for each camera with the following formula using the resolution specified for detect:

(width * height * 1.5 * 9 + 270480)/1048576 = <shm size in mb>

The shm size cannot be set per container for Home Assistant Addons. You must set default-shm-size in /etc/docker/daemon.json to increase the default shm size. This will increase the shm size for all of your docker containers. This may or may not cause issues with your setup. https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/dockerd/#daemon-configuration-file

Raspberry Pi 3/4#

By default, the Raspberry Pi limits the amount of memory available to the GPU. In order to use ffmpeg hardware acceleration, you must increase the available memory by setting gpu_mem to the maximum recommended value in config.txt as described in the official docs.

Additionally, the USB Coral draws a considerable amount of power. If using any other USB devices such as an SSD, you will experience instability due to the Pi not providing enough power to USB devices. You will need to purchase an external USB hub with it's own power supply. Some have reported success with this (affiliate link).

Docker#

Running in Docker with compose is the recommended install method:

version: "3.9"
services:
  frigate:
    container_name: frigate
    privileged: true # this may not be necessary for all setups
    restart: unless-stopped
    image: blakeblackshear/frigate:stable
    shm_size: "64mb" # update for your cameras based on calculation above
    devices:
      - /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb # passes the USB Coral, needs to be modified for other versions
      - /dev/apex_0:/dev/apex_0 # passes a PCIe Coral, follow driver instructions here https://coral.ai/docs/m2/get-started/#2a-on-linux
      - /dev/dri/renderD128 # for intel hwaccel, needs to be updated for your hardware
    volumes:
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - /path/to/your/config.yml:/config/config.yml:ro
      - /path/to/your/storage:/media/frigate
      - type: tmpfs # Optional: 1GB of memory, reduces SSD/SD Card wear
        target: /tmp/cache
        tmpfs:
          size: 1000000000
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
      - "1935:1935" # RTMP feeds
    environment:
      FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD: "password"

If you can't use docker compose, you can run the container with something similar to this:

docker run -d \
  --name frigate \
  --restart=unless-stopped \
  --mount type=tmpfs,target=/tmp/cache,tmpfs-size=1000000000 \
  --device /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb \
  --device /dev/dri/renderD128 \
  --shm-size=64m \
  -v /path/to/your/storage:/media/frigate \
  -v /path/to/your/config.yml:/config/config.yml:ro \
  -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro \
  -e FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD='password' \
  -p 5000:5000 \
  -p 1935:1935 \
  blakeblackshear/frigate:stable

Home Assistant Operating System (HassOS)#

caution

Due to limitations in Home Assistant Operating System, utilizing external storage for recordings or snapshots requires modifying udev rules manually.

tip

If possible, it is recommended to run Frigate standalone in Docker and use Frigate's Proxy Addon.

HassOS users can install via the addon repository.

Navigate to Supervisor > Add-on Store > Repositories
Add https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate-hass-addons
Install your desired Frigate NVR Addon and navigate to it's page
Setup your network configuration in the Configuration tab
(not for proxy addon) Create the file frigate.yml in your config directory with your detailed Frigate configuration
Start the addon container
(not for proxy addon) If you are using hardware acceleration for ffmpeg, you may need to disable "Protection mode"

There are several versions of the addon available:

Addon Version	Description
Frigate NVR	Current release with protection mode on
Frigate NVR (Full Access)	Current release with the option to disable protection mode
Frigate NVR Beta	Beta release with protection mode on
Frigate NVR Beta (Full Access)	Beta release with the option to disable protection mode

Home Assistant Supervised#

tip

If possible, it is recommended to run Frigate standalone in Docker and use Frigate's Proxy Addon.

When running Home Assistant with the Supervised install method, you can get the benefit of running the Addon along with the ability to customize the storage used by Frigate.

In order to customize the storage location for Frigate, simply use fstab to mount the drive you want at /usr/share/hassio/media. Here is an example fstab entry:

UUID=1a65fec6-c25f-404a-b3d2-1f2fcf6095c8 /media/data ext4 defaults 0 0
/media/data/homeassistant/media /usr/share/hassio/media none bind 0 0

Then follow the instructions listed for Home Assistant Operating System.

Kubernetes#

Use the helm chart.

Unraid#

Many people have powerful enough NAS devices or home servers to also run docker. There is a Unraid Community App. To install make sure you have the community app plugin here. Then search for "Frigate" in the apps section within Unraid - you can see the online store here

Proxmox#

It is recommended to run Frigate in LXC for maximum performance. See this discussion for more information.

ESX#

For details on running Frigate under ESX, see details here.