Camper Video Surveillance with Frigate – AHD Cameras, RTSP Integration and 12V Power

Third party integrations
1

Hi everyone,

I’m currently planning a video surveillance system for my camper that integrates with Home Assistant (HA) and Frigate. The goal is to manage four external AHD cameras (front, rear, left, right) and optionally one interior camera – all powered entirely by the 12V leisure battery.

What I’ve planned so far:

  • 4x AHD cameras, permanently installed around the camper
  • Mini PC running Frigate, powerful enough for real-time object and motion detection
  • Home Assistant running separately on a Raspberry Pi
  • Conversion of AHD signals to RTSP streams using either a DVR or a custom setup (e.g., USB grabbers + ffmpeg)
  • Connecting the camera streams to Frigate via RTSP and integrating them into HA using the Frigate integration

My goals with Frigate:

  • Detect people, vehicles and possibly animals around the camper
  • Record events (clips, snapshots)
  • Trigger automations in HA (e.g. notifications, light control)
  • Entirely local operation, no cloud, privacy-friendly

Open questions & challenges:

  • Which technologies or components are best suited to convert multiple AHD camera feeds into RTSP streams?
  • Has anyone successfully implemented a custom grabber solution (e.g., USB capture or PCIe card with ffmpeg/motioneye)?
  • Are there any compact and energy-efficient DVRs or NVR alternatives that reliably provide RTSP output?
  • Any recommendations for low-power mini PCs suitable for running Frigate reliably?
  • Tips for safe 12V DC power supply (e.g., via DC-DC converters with fuse protection) for DVR and mini PC?

I’d greatly appreciate any advice, product tips or shared experiences. My goal is a robust, low-maintenance, privacy-conscious system for mobile use.

Thanks in advance! :blush:

Micha

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Hello Michael Meierhoff,

blakeblackshear/frigate · Discussions · GitHub is another good place to get help with Frigate.

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I’m looking to do the same, many people recommend just getting ip cameras to mount on the outside of my bus, but I want to also use some of these cameras as driving monitors (side-view and backup cams) so I want zero latency. With AHD I can split the signal to an analog monitor on the dash without needing to encode/decode.

Have you found any network encoding options yet for AHD and frigate?

As for power use something like a victron orion 12/12 to stabilize the voltage and put a small fuse block on the output to distribute to the cameras and dvr/encoder box.

For encoding my first try was a hikvision 8 channel dvr I got for 140 on ebay, but despite the datasheet showing support for rtsp output, it failed to make a valid rtsp stream that any client would accept, despite the encoding options I used (h.264/265, plus or no plus). Additionally, it turns out most DVRs don’t have the ability to mirror or rotate the analog camera input, and all of my AHD cameras are mirrored from the source (I guess because they’re designed as backup cameras), but it seems that frigate should be able to mirror/rotate the stream coming in through a ffmpeg argument.

I’m going to be digging more for encoders, but if you’ve found something for multiple channels that’s not crazy expensive please do share!

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