So I’ve decided to try Frigate for my IP cameras. Withy that in mind I’ve spent the last couple days trying to understand Docker so I can install it, and got to the point where I’m relatively confident I can install.
Then I saw the note “An MQTT broker is optional with Frigate, but is required for the Home Assistant integration.”
I do want to integrate, so I guess I have to figure this out before I continue. I searched the docs but don’t really understand what I’m looking at.
IUs there a resource available that will explain what MQTT Is? What the MQTT Broker is? and how to integrate it into these two?
Clients subscribe to topics on an MQTT broker and when an update is published to that topic (by another client) then updates are pushed out to all subscribers.
So for example Frigate publishes to a number of topics that Home assistant is subscribed to. In that way Home Assistant receives updates from Frigate.
Home Assistant has a discovery protocol for MQTT so that if a client publishes a message with the correct format to a special homeassistant topic on the broker then home assistant can automatically create entities like sensors and such.
Home assistant has an MQTT integration for connecting as a client to an MQTT broker: MQTT - Home Assistant You need this.
There are a number of youtube videos on setting up the Mosquitto MQTT broker add-on.
MQTT Explorer is a free PC client that can connect to the broker to inspect the message topics. Very handy for debugging. Though not required. https://mqtt-explorer.com/