Cameras and Object Detection with Frigate

Frigate records your security cameras and recognizes people, vehicles, and animals in what they see. On a Selora Hub it runs on the Hub itself, next to Home Assistant, so video and detection stay in the home. Selora installs it, keeps it up to date, and connects it to Home Assistant for you.

This page covers turning Frigate on, adding cameras, and what to do next: face recognition, which runs on the Hub, and camera descriptions, which use Selora AI Cloud. Installers planning a job can also read Set Up Cameras with Frigate.

What you need

• A paid plan. Frigate is included with every paid plan, from Essentials up. It is not part of the Free plan. You can check your plan on the Billing page of your Selora Homes account.
• Enough memory on the Hub. A standard Selora Hub runs either Frigate or Selora AI Local, not both. If Selora AI Local is on, turn it off before you turn Frigate on; Selora AI keeps working through Selora AI Cloud. Hubs with 32 GB of RAM, which come with larger plans, run both.
• IP cameras on the home network. We recommend Reolink or UniFi Protect cameras, but any camera that offers an RTSP stream should work. See the recommended cameras.
• A fixed IP address for each camera. Frigate connects to each camera at its address. If the router hands a camera a new address, Frigate loses it until the address is updated in Frigate. Reserve an address for every camera on the router before you add it: see Reserve IP addresses.

Turn on Frigate

The homeowner, or an installer who manages the Hub, can turn Frigate on from the Selora Homes account.

1. Log in to your Selora Homes account and open the installation.
2. On the Overview, find Frigate in the Services card.
3. Turn on the switch, then confirm in the Enable Frigate? window.

The first time, the Hub downloads Frigate, which can take several minutes. The row shows Starting, then Running.

While Frigate starts, the Hub also sets up Home Assistant for it:

• It connects Frigate to Home Assistant’s MQTT broker. If the home does not have one yet, it installs one.
• It adds the Frigate integration, which brings Frigate’s cameras and detections into Home Assistant. Home Assistant restarts once to load it.
• It adds Frigate to the Home Assistant sidebar.

Add your cameras

Frigate starts with no cameras. There are two ways to add them.

Ask Selora AI

With Selora AI 1.2.0 or later, ask it in chat to add your cameras to Frigate. It finds the cameras already in Home Assistant and the ones it can see on the home network, and shows them on a card. For a camera that is not in Home Assistant yet, type its username and password on the card: they go straight to Frigate and never to the AI.

Selora AI records each camera’s main stream and runs detection on its smaller stream. It tracks people unless you ask for more, such as cars or animals, and you can tell it how many days of recordings to keep.

Use Frigate’s camera wizard

You can also add a camera yourself in Frigate:

1. Open Frigate (see below).
2. Go to Settings, then Global configuration, then Camera management, and select Add Camera.
3. Enter the camera’s name, IP address, username, and password, and follow the wizard.

Frigate’s guide walks through each step of the wizard: Adding a camera with the Add Camera Wizard.

Camera tips

A few things make Frigate more reliable and lighter on the Hub.

• Choose PoE cameras over Wi-Fi. A Wi-Fi camera’s stream drops more often, and Frigate loses the camera each time, more so with several of them. A PoE (Power over Ethernet) camera gets its video and its power through one network cable, from a PoE switch or injector, so it stays connected.
• Give every camera a fixed IP address. See What you need: a camera that changes address drops out of Frigate.
• Mask the time overlay. The date and time most cameras print on the picture changes every second, and Frigate sees that as motion. It then spends the Hub’s processing on frames where nothing happens. Turn the overlay off in the camera’s settings if you do not need it, or draw a motion mask over it in Frigate. Mask only what moves for no reason, like the timestamp or the sky: masking too much makes people and cars harder to follow.
• UniFi: G5 cameras and newer need a UniFi Protect console to share their video with Frigate.

Frigate’s camera setup guide and notes per camera brand go further.

Open Frigate

Once Frigate is running, there are two ways in, and neither asks for a separate Frigate login:

• From your Selora Homes account: select Open in the Frigate row. With remote access turned on, it opens from anywhere. Without it, the link reads Open at home and works only from a device on the home network.
• From Home Assistant: select Frigate in the sidebar. Your Home Assistant login is enough.

What to do next

Once Frigate is on, Selora AI (1.2.0 or later) suggests the next steps on its home screen, one at a time. You can also ask for any of them in chat. Nothing changes until you say yes, and you can dismiss any suggestion you don’t want.

• Add your cameras. Selora AI lists the cameras Frigate could watch and adds them on a card. See Add your cameras.
• Turn on camera descriptions. Selora AI describes the people and vehicles your cameras see, so you can search them in plain words. See Camera descriptions.
• Turn on face recognition. Frigate learns the faces of the people you know. See Face recognition.
• Try automation ideas. For a camera that detects people, animals, or cars, Selora AI suggests automations built from what the home already has, such as a notification when someone is detected while nobody is home, or a light that turns on in the camera’s area. Each one opens on the usual automation card for you to accept.

You can also ask Selora AI what the cameras saw, for example “Did anyone come to the front door this afternoon?” The answer shows each event with the picture Frigate saved. See Cameras and Frigate.

Face recognition

Frigate tells you a person is at the door. With face recognition, it tells you who. Ask “Was Alice home at noon?”, or be told only when someone you don’t know comes by.

Face recognition runs on the Hub, on its graphics processor: no face leaves the house. Frigate downloads the recognition model once, the first time.

Turn it on

Accept the suggestion on Selora AI’s home screen, or ask Selora AI to turn on face recognition. It explains what it does and asks before turning it on. Frigate then restarts, which takes about a minute.

Add the people to recognize

Frigate recognizes nobody until you show it who to look for. Once face recognition is on, Selora AI shows a card where you add each person: a name, then real photos of their face.

• 5 to 10 photos per person to begin with, 20 to 30 for good results.
• Well lit, front-facing, without a hat or sunglasses. Avoid black-and-white night shots.
• Varied photos matter more than many.

The photos go straight from the card to Frigate on the Hub. They never pass through the AI or the conversation, and Selora AI never asks for them in chat.

Make it better over time

Frigate’s Face Library lists, under Recent Recognitions, the faces it saw. Assigning each one to the right person trains it further. Open the Face Library from Frigate (see Open Frigate).

Which cameras it works on

Frigate looks for a face only on a person it detects, so the camera has to track people, and be close enough to see a face. A camera at the front door works well; one facing the street usually does not.

Camera descriptions

Frigate tells you a car went by. With descriptions, Selora AI tells you which one, in words you can search:

Frigate sees: Car

Selora AI describes: A white FedEx cargo van parked on the driveway.

Then ask “Any FedEx truck today?” and the chat shows it.

How it works, and what it means for privacy

Unlike detection and face recognition, descriptions do not run on the Hub. When Frigate tracks a person or a vehicle on a camera with descriptions on, it sends pictures of it to Selora AI Cloud, where an AI model writes the description.

• Use it on outdoor cameras, such as one facing the driveway or the street. That is where descriptions help most.
• Do not use it on indoor cameras. Their pictures are of the people who live in the home, and those pictures would leave the house.

Turn them on, one camera at a time

Every camera starts with descriptions off. Accept the suggestion on Selora AI’s home screen, or ask Selora AI, for example “Describe what the driveway camera sees.” It asks about each camera in turn, and only your yes turns one on. When a camera has zones in Frigate, you can choose to describe only what enters one of them, such as the driveway.

Credits

Descriptions use Selora AI credits, the same ones as the assistant, and the assistant always comes first:

• They stop at 60%. Descriptions pause once this period’s use, chat included, reaches 60% of your credits for the period. The rest stays for the assistant. Buying top-up credits raises that line and resumes them.
• Or let them use your top-ups. The homeowner can turn on Use top-up credits on the installation’s Selora AI page in the Selora Homes account. Descriptions can then use 60% of your plan’s credits plus all your top-up credits, and 40% of the plan’s credits stay for the assistant.
• A daily limit keeps one busy day from using up the period. Once it runs out, descriptions resume at midnight UTC. Top-ups do not raise the daily limit.

The same Selora AI page shows how many credits went to descriptions this period and today. To make them last, describe fewer cameras, or only what enters a zone.

Turn off Frigate

Turn off the switch in the Frigate row and confirm. Frigate stops, but its recordings, clips, and cameras are kept, so turning it back on finds them where they were.

If the home moves to the Free plan, Frigate turns off and the row says it stays off until the home is on a paid plan again.

Troubleshooting

“This hub doesn’t have enough memory to run Frigate alongside Selora AI Local.” A standard Hub runs one or the other. Turn off Selora AI Local on the Selora AI card, then turn Frigate on. To run both, the home needs a Hub with 32 GB of RAM.

“This hub will run Frigate with little memory to spare.” Frigate will run, but the Hub may slow down when it is busy.

“Not finished yet.” The Hub could not finish every step yet, often because Home Assistant was waiting to restart. It tries again on its own; check back in a few minutes.

A camera stops showing video. Check that the camera still has the same IP address. If the router gave it a new one, reserve an address for it, then update the camera in Frigate or ask Selora AI to add it again.

Recordings play in one browser but not another. The camera probably sends H.265 video, which saves space but not every browser can play. In the camera’s video or stream settings, switch the encoding to H.264, which plays in the most browsers and in the Home Assistant app.