External Frigate Access Proxied Through Home Assistant

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What is the correct/secure way to view Frigate cameras in Home Assistant when outside my home network? I currently have external access with my domain/ssl working correctly. I am trying to use the Frigate card. But, the video is very choppy and does not have audio when accessed externally. When on my home network, the feed is smooth and has audio.

So far I have tried various combinations of:

  • Forwarding both ports 8555 and 18555 to Home Assistant
  • Using HA, webrtc, and go2rtc as the live video provider (in the card settings) with the ports forwarded to Home Assistant
  • Forwarding port 8555 to directly to Frigate

So far, the only method that has worked is directly forwarding port 8555 to my Frigate instance, but my understanding is that anyone can access that un-authenticated. I also tried editing a go2rtc.yaml file in my config directory, but looking at the go2rtc debug page in Home Assistant, it doesn’t seem to use or allow that config (pointing to a Home Assistant controlled config in /tmp).

What are the recommended combination of port forwarding and configurations that I need for this to work? Most of the answers I have found online are to use a VPN, but I do not want to use a VPN because of the WAF. Is there some way that Home Assistant can proxy the webrtc/go2rtc stream to Frigate only for authenticated users?

I am running Home Assistant OS with NGINX Home Assistant SSL proxy. My Frigate is on a separate docker host and added using the Frigate integration.

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If you’re still interesting, you can see my recent dialog about similar problem.
My own solution now is to prevent built-in go2rtc from running by exclude it from default_config. Go2rtc is running in separate docker container and is configuring as provided by developer. You can insert it’s URL to go2rtc: section of configuration.yaml. If you have auto-configured streams, you can copy-paste them.
External access is provided through a chain “go2rtc stream - Frigate card”. Live provider - AlexxIT WebRTC card, which also must be installed in HA.
Basically, you doesn’t need any camera entity, if you not using Onvif PTZ (it’s a separate issue).