The Setup

I have 4 Reolink cams, 3 x 510WA and 1 x 510A - seems pretty much the same, just the "WA" hawing Wifi, and the "A" having POE.

I started installing frigate reading the docs and learning from this Youtube video.


Starting up

The first mistake was to install via DockerHub, now a days the image is at GitHub, so I spend a lot of time on an old version and new documentation.

Looking at many issues at gitHub, it seems that this is a very common mistake.

Second mistake, I started using the config from https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/camera_specific#reolink-cameras and with --shm-size=64m

This gave me ALL sort of trouble, and the camera streams stalled within seconds; i tried all sort of streams, https, rstp, rmtp etc etc.

Often ending like this:

I tried all the (bad) advices from a lot of videos, and a lot or article pointing out the problem was the cams.


Then I came across this Youtube video, and found that a simple standard RTSP are working just fine (must be enabled on the Camera) - WITH more memory for 4 cams / 8 streams (--shm-size=256m).

My first working config: config.yml.std

Works fine and the camera streams does not stall


Also the setup of the docker container may require som tweaking, I You have (or not have) the Google Coral.


Starting frigate:

docker run -d \  
  --name frigate \
  --restart=unless-stopped \
  --mount type=tmpfs,target=/tmp/cache,tmpfs-size=1000000000 \
  --device /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb \
  --shm-size=256m \
  -v /mnt/LaCie/nas/frigate:/media/frigate \
  -v /opt/frigate/config.yml:/config/config.yml:ro \
  -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro \
  -e FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD='***********' \
  -p 5000:5000 \
  -p 1935:1935 \
  ghcr.io/blakeblackshear/frigate:master-433bf69-tensorrt


A working/simple config

mqtt:
  host: 10.0.0.183
cameras:
  frigate_front_door_cam:
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://user:password@10.0.0.151:554//h264Preview_01_main
          roles:
            - detect
        - path: rtsp://user:password@10.0.0.151:554//h264Preview_01_sub
          roles:
            - record
    rtmp:
      enabled: False
    detect:
      width: 640
      height: 480
      fps: 10
    objects:
      track:
        - person
    snapshots:
      enabled: True
      timestamp: false
      bounding_box: True
      retain:
        default: 2
  frigate_garden_cam:
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://user:password@10.0.0.108:554//h264Preview_01_main
          roles:
            - detect
        - path: rtsp://user:password@10.0.0.108:554//h264Preview_01_sub
          roles:
            - record
    rtmp:
      enabled: False
    detect:
      width: 2560
      height: 1920
      fps: 10
    objects:
      track:
        - person
    snapshots:
      enabled: True
      timestamp: false
      bounding_box: True
      retain:
        default: 2
  frigate_behind_house_cam:
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://user:password@10.0.0.176:554//h264Preview_01_main
          roles:
            - detect
        - path: rtsp://user:password@10.0.0.176:554//h264Preview_01_sub
          roles:
            - record
    rtmp:
      enabled: False
    detect:
      width: 2560
      height: 1920
      fps: 10
    objects:
      track:
        - person
    snapshots:
      enabled: True
      timestamp: false
      bounding_box: True
      retain:
        default: 2
  frigate_carport_cam:
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://user:password@10.0.0.191:554//h264Preview_01_main
          roles:
            - detect
        - path: rtsp://user:password@10.0.0.191:554//h264Preview_01_sub
          roles:
            - record
    rtmp:
      enabled: False
    detect:
      width: 2560
      height: 1920
      fps: 10
    objects:
      track:
        - person
        - car
    snapshots:
      enabled: True
      timestamp: false
      bounding_box: True
      retain:
        default: 2
detectors:
  coral:
    type: edgetpu
    device: usb


CPU - With Google Coral

As the logs states:

2023-04-19 21:39:43.672054592  [INFO] Starting Frigate...
2023-04-19 21:39:45.123307770  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.app                    INFO    : Starting Frigate (0.12.0-433bf69)
2023-04-19 21:39:45.170477205  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] peewee_migrate                 INFO    : Starting migrations
2023-04-19 21:39:45.175774528  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] peewee_migrate                 INFO    : There is nothing to migrate
2023-04-19 21:39:45.204354047  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] detector.coral                 INFO    : Starting detection process: 290
2023-04-19 21:39:48.422390105  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.app                    INFO    : Output process started: 292
2023-04-19 21:39:48.422396583  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.comms.dispatcher       INFO    : Turning off snapshots for frigate_carport_cam
2023-04-19 21:39:48.422404731  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.app                    INFO    : Camera processor started for frigate_front_door_cam: 298
2023-04-19 21:39:48.422409419  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.app                    INFO    : Camera processor started for frigate_garden_cam: 300
2023-04-19 21:39:48.422426668  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.app                    INFO    : Camera processor started for frigate_behind_house_cam: 302
2023-04-19 21:39:48.422431296  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.app                    INFO    : Camera processor started for frigate_carport_cam: 303
2023-04-19 21:39:48.422434562  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.app                    INFO    : Capture process started for frigate_front_door_cam: 304
2023-04-19 21:39:48.422459193  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.app                    INFO    : Capture process started for frigate_garden_cam: 308
2023-04-19 21:39:48.422463190  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.app                    INFO    : Capture process started for frigate_behind_house_cam: 311
2023-04-19 21:39:48.422466294  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.app                    INFO    : Capture process started for frigate_carport_cam: 315
2023-04-19 21:39:48.446236449  [2023-04-19 21:39:45] frigate.detectors.plugins.edgetpu_tfl INFO    : Attempting to load TPU as usb
2023-04-19 21:39:48.446242266  [2023-04-19 21:39:48] frigate.detectors.plugins.edgetpu_tfl INFO    : TPU found

I assume the Google Coral is working, but still Frigate is highly CPU intensive for 4 cams:

With frigate not running:

If this is not improving / improved somehow, I will setup Frigate on a seperate piece of hardware.


This is 1 cam high res detect: