Hi, all. I know this is aforum for HA, but since Frigate seems to be the recommend nvr for HA, i thought many of you might have the experience to help me out.
I’m planning a purchase of hardware for a security camera system. I wanted to cover 3 sides of the house with a 4k+ 180° FOV camera and utilize usb corals for object, person, and vehicle detection. I was also going to add a 16tb drive.
Is this camera compatible with frigate (2x 4k)?
If not, do you have a recomendation that is not $400 per camera from amcrest or hikvision (per side)?
How much ram should i have?
What cpu should i consider? Intel celeron or ryzen 5?
I expect to use the full dual 4k resolution with 3 cameras and maybe add more 1080p interior cameras. Will 2 corals be enough for relatively light traffic suburbs?
I expect 16 gb hhd to be enough for a week. Any comments?
I currently have a docker version running on my docker server with no coral and a j1900 that i run HA from. I connected a reolink ptz camera with onvif and http. It is hard to tell how much of the cpu usage is from the lack of a coral. I know Amcrest, hikvision, and dahua are recomended, but they are literally 2x to 4x what reolink charges.
16 Reolink cameras (various models, but mostly 410/510a/520), two Duo2s (both with floodlights attached) and a WiFi doorbell. All of them are POE aside from the doorbell. I have cameras both internally and externally on my property.
Frigate is running and capturing 10 of them (all my external cameras) via docker with 16GB ram and 1TB internal NVMe and 2TB external SSD. I also have a Coral TPU passed through USB.
HA is running on a separate server (so completely isolated from Frigate).
I’ve seen people in the Frigate github say they have had issues with the Duo3. Personally, I’d go with the Duo2 with the floodlight attachment. You can get them for $180 US on Amazon. In fact, right now they are on sale for $135.99 (lightning deal I suppose). Mine have been fantastic. The picture quality is really good, very responsive, but with the famous night picture quality issues that Reolinks are known for. The floodlights on the camera do help with that. Hard to put into perspective from an image, but this is the view from my east camera. It replaced 2 cameras, so yay! Plus, they support up to 256GB SD cards for local recording. The onboard AI has actually be surprisingly good even catching things that Frigate missed or got wrong. Plus, can’t go wrong with a local storage backup!
I would go with at least 8GB of RAM. In my setup, with 16GB, Frigate sits right around 4GB usage. CPU doesn’t really matter with a Coral TPU, so I would just go with whatever you can afford as it won’t be used that much.
LOL, like I said, I have 10 cameras in Frigate now, all recording at full 4K and doing detection on the substream. You don’t need 2 Corals… 1 is plenty. Unless you are expecting a LOT of processing of people, cars, etc, 1 Coral TPU won’t even break a sweat for just a few cameras.
I can only speak to Amcrest as I’ve used those in the past. They were “ok” for POE cameras, but I found that I had to reboot them often, especially during extreme hot or cold spells. I went with Reolinks about 5(?) years ago and have been very happy with them. 2 of my older 410s are showing their age (long time to view the stream, trouble saving settings, etc), but they have been in some pretty harsh environments. I’m going to upgrade them to 510a soon.
Just wanted to clarify the issue in frigate github are with the duo 2. I also had an issue with mine and ultimately sent it back after the reolink engineers couldn’t solve the issue. I am not aware of any users in the frigate repo that have tried the duo 3
When I tested Reolink I didn’t like lowlight performance. Features were great for price. For small area they are fine but I am in country with large dark area so this is issue for me.
I prefer any of the recent Amcrest POE models. Lowlight performance is amazing.
IP8M-2796EW-AI is $99usd no mic with spot
IP5M-B1186EW-28MM is $59 USD.
IP5M-B1276EW-AI Is update model I think. Adds mic and spotlight at same price
IP8M-2779EW-A is turret style with mic and spot
I would go with IP5M-B1276EW-AI and for that price increase cameras and coverage.
I’m not entirely believing that the document says that. Granted, it’s appears there are hardware limitations on some older models, this may not be an issue for anyone starting off with buying their hardware.
True. It mentions specific older models and I didn’t dive deep into the GitHub link.
My biggest problem with Reolink was night vision and far distance but this was last year model and I only tested for a week in a single location. They did look beautiful in daylight and I think in city it is non issue.
The Reolink I tested had a police strobe on it that I thought would be handy for turn on during emergency to help identify home.
I considered mixing some of them in but in the end I think the Amcrest images were just better if only slightly.
lol they still suck in lowlight conditions. But for my uses, that’s fine. Where it’s really dark, I have floodlights, so that’s not an issue. The Duo2 has a really wide and far view, so I use those primarily.
Huh, I never saw those, but the Duo2 has a siten and a floodlight that I can control through HA. Can’t say that I ever have used the siren though (my neighbor would kill me lol). The floodlights are nice (POE powered) and respond really quickly.
I realized i had a few typos in the my original post. I meant 16tb drive.
It seems like i should get the dou2 instead. It seems like dou3 does not live up to the resolution expectations and may have other resolution related issues based on Amazon reviews.
I was planning on buying a mini pc for the build. Based on your extensive knowledge, i think i can get away with a low power cpu, but i do see that it relies on the cpu for decompression and even for motion detection. So I’ll just future proof a bit.
I currently have 3 exterior reolink ptz cameras and 2 inside. I wanted to add them all, but i was not sure if i had to buy “real” pc to get what i want.
I was hoping to use this to play with ai vision, so i will make full use of that coral. Honestly, that thing sounds pretty amazing. It is almost the same tflops as a 1060 and puts my jetson nano to shame.
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll check those out. One of the things that seemed odd to me was that Amcrest/dahua/hikvion cameras often don’t have ir lights. If rather not wire a whole set ir flood lights. They are at the same time regarded as having great night vision. I can see they have larger sensors, but does that really overcome the lack of ir lights? Or is that only about one’s with ir lights?
I have some light thanks to street lights, but ir lights are a must. I have 3 reolink ptz cameras outside and they seem okay, but could be better. I just need to cover 3 sides with a wide view since one of my cars was broken in to off camera when parked in the street. The reason i was thinking about the dou-like cameras is the 180° fov that i can use to cover my entire street, side, and back yard. I was hoping better resolution would get me a more precise alerts like a person after midnight. A legible license plate might be hoping for too much
Yes. No IR is enough. Moonlight is sufficient and street lights would be really bright. There is a single maybe 100watt bulb 150+ ft from my cameras and no other light and that is sufficient. The areas that have actual light are very clear. I have iPhone 11 and looking through camera in low light is similar to result from Amcrest. Great contrast and good image.
I learned that turning off noise reduction is must also as it create ghosts. My white great Pyrenees dogs would disappear at night. I eventually realized NR was mistaking them for noise and eliminate them from image. Same with people. No problems after turn it off. Image is grainy but this is common in dark images.
Camera dependent on IR will be distance limited(under 25ft) by IR. This was my issue. Inneed camera to see object at 100+ ft out at night with poor light. I have camera in open field with zero supporting light(moonlight only) and on clear nights I can see moving objects 200’ away. Can’t always identify, but I just need to know if I have animal or person roaming field at night.
Like I said, iPhone camera in low light with no flash may be good equivalent. Dont let me oversell it though. I liked the Reolink just wasn’t as confident in low light. It was Good however and I use them at my mom house in city. My brother set them up and I never check them so no long term comparison. Feature wise they are superior for price
