I need help please… I’m trying to design a system for a large residence that will require 12 or more cameras. This is in addition to hundreds of lights and other HA devices.
My current setup is a Pi4 running Debian 10 and HA Supervised. I’m using a 256GB SSD drive. All software are latest versions. I’m still waiting for a CORAL which is backordered but expected in 3 weeks.
So, here’s where I’m a bit stuck. In order to support the large system being planned I need more horsepower and would like to use a RAID for better reliability. The home is in a remote location in Costa Rica and will be occupied about 50% of the time. This home must work reliably while I’m away.
I have some UNIX experience from long ago and am slowly reviving the long dormant brain cells. Docker is new to me.
My Questions are:
1- Recommended platform to run Frigate with 12+ active cameras
2- Should this also run HA or should HA run on a different platform? (if yes then how do I configure this?)
3- Should I stick with HA supervised HASIO or move to a docker or other approach?
I have a few months to work out these details before I need to begin installation.
I run a Lorex (rebranded dahua) 8 camera nvr system through frigate w/coral. I run everything in docker containers on the same host (HA, frigate, zwavejs, mqtt, glances, unificontroller, appdaemon, esphome).
I use an 8th generation i3 NUC, 16gb of RAM (ubuntu 20.04). No issues at all. I never get above 25% cpu usage and if I turned off Frigate it’s probably at 10-15%. Frigate is really an amazing piece of code. I used to have crappy reolink cameras that didn’t play well with others but once I replaced those frigate has been rock solid.
Yes, I am using the as well Dahua cameras and have no issues. Make sure you get a enterprise grade or server grade computer if you want reliability with an at least i5 CPU or even Xeon that have Intel CPU. For the coral get the PCI or m.2 version instead of usb.
Thanks for the info. I’ve been looking at the NUC approach and it seems the best route. I’d love to use an M1 Mac Mini, but the NUC/Intel is far better supported.
I’m interested in the issues you had with reolink. I’m using a single reolink and have no issues. I bought the reolink so I’d have a camera to play with for now but I need to find both indoor and outdoor cameras for the project.
N84283T is the NVR system I have. The cameras are POE with power through the NVR itself. I cannot find anything to complain about with them. I only use the NVR for 24/7 recording/storage (3TB HDD); do all the motion detection and notifications through HA/Frigate. Each camera is accessible via RTSP stream.
You asked about Reolink. Outside of Frigate, they were fine for what they were (cheap POE cameras). But with Frigate, the image would randomly freeze in frigate which would bring down the docker container. I never could diagnose it to where it would stay stable for more than a week or so max. There is a fair amount of Reolink discussion on the Frigate chain. Apparently RTMP works better for them but Reolink’s NVR doesn’t provide RTMP, only RTSP. I just wanted something more reliable with lights/siren/2 way audio and the Lorex hasn’t disappointed.
Lorex seems to have the variety of cameras I’m looking for and their camera/NVR packages are very cost competitive.
If you don’t mind, I have some additional questions.
I did a Google search for “Lorex home Assistant” and found some posts that raised these questions:
Can all the POE cameras connected to the POE ports of the NVR be seen and addressed directly? Some people were claiming that only one camera could be seen.
Is there an add-on for the NVR to expose its features, triggers, and video streams to HA?
Each POE camera has it’s own RTSP stream available. In my use case it is definitely not true that you only see one camera feed and I highly doubt that is accurate for any of their NVRs. Each RTSP address contains the channel from the NVR so by definition they are all separate links.
There is no NVR add on but I use Frigate for all the triggers, streams, snapshots, video clips. I really only use the NVR for local storage of 24/7 recordings. You can actually use Frigate to store 24/7 but I find it easier to search with the NVR software. But technically Frigate can replace an entire NVR.
You can add RTSP streams to HA as generic camera platforms. I have done so in the past but do not currently. The Frigate integration adds the RTSP streams as well.
You may want to take a trip over to ipcamtalk.com where you will be able to learn a ton more about well…IP cams. It seems lorex is owned by dahua and run as a subsidiary. Some amcrest cams are also rebadged dahuas. There is a good integration with HA for amcrest which works with my dahua cams.
I agree with birca1987 on the PC. I wouldn’t trust a Pi for your whole estate. Money spent up front on a more powerful system will let you expand without redoing hardware.
You can do a proxmox server and run HassOS in a VM and then you can use other VMs or LXC containers for as many other things as you have RAM and HDD space for.
This could be a NUC style or a full desktop tower or even a rackmount server. Depends on how involved you want to get and how much storage you’ll need there. Will you use this for things like a plex server with TB of storage or just HA?
Things to consider. Hope this helps in some way.
Thanks again for the advice. Are the Lorex camera deterrent features (strobe light and siren) accessible through HA? I was planning to install sirens and strobes anyway and it would be great if these were accessible.
There are different schools of thought on these questions, but I’ll tell you my viewpoint.
The reason I used a VM was for multiple reasons. I wanted good hardware, but couldn’t afford to run all the things I want to run on bare metal. So proxmox was a way to run a different OS for each specific purpose without having to have another (physical) PC. One other thing was that I wanted a supported HA install. This method allowed me to have both. Right now I have 13 VMs or LXCs on my proxmox. You can run docker in either one…just make sure you allow nesting.
Another plus of proxmox is that you can easily make backups of each VM/LXC and restore later.
There is a performance hit for the VM, but I don’t think it is unacceptable. I have frigate detect me stepping outside my house and HA running an automation that takes a snapshot and sends a telegram message to my phone all before my screen door shuts.
So you have to weigh the things you want to do and decide where to compromise. I’m running frigate on the HassOS VM as an addon with CPU as detector and two cams. When there are people and vehicles visible to both cams I see spikes to about 20% CPU usage. HassOS has less than half of the resources of my Proxmox server too. Pretty sure the coral would help with that as you add more cams. If you have an unlimited budget, don’t have space constraints and don’t care about the power bill then you don’t need to do what I did and your compromise would be spending more money. Both upfront for more PC hardware and ongoing.