2025-08-27

My Frigate Documentation

Hardware

I wanted something that would last a long time, the common brands based from my research are HikVision and Dahua. Here are my requirements:

Supports Frigate
High quality - atleast 4mp
With POE - so that there are less wires and no more trouble of looking for the nearest power outlet
Lightweight - I need it to be as light as possible because I can’t drill in my current place so I have to stick it on the ceiling. I ended up going with a dome type CCTV since they are the lightest
With audio - I need to record what people are talking about (plus points for digital memories)
IR - the most common CCTVs have lights that will be activated when it’s dark. I don’t want to flash everyone around my place in the middle of the night.

This requirement is really hard to find locally for me. But after more research, I finally found the perfect one - Dahua DH-IPC-HDBW2541E-S. It has checked all the boxes, I don’t need to worry about anything else. Put in the heavy duty tape, put it on the ceiling, open it, point to the best angle, and you’re good to go.

Configuration File

mqtt:
  enabled: false
audio: # <- enable audio events for all camera
  enabled: false

go2rtc:
  streams:
    living_room_main:
      - rtsp://{FRIGATE_RTSP_USER}:{FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD}@10.10.50.1:554/live0
    living_room_sub:
      - rtsp://{FRIGATE_RTSP_USER}:{FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD}@10.10.50.1:554/live1

cameras:
  living_room: # <------ Name the camera
    enabled: true
    ffmpeg:
      output_args:
        record: preset-record-generic-audio-aac
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://{FRIGATE_RTSP_USER}:{FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD}@127.0.0.1:8554/living_room_main     # <----- The stream you want to use for record
          input_args: preset-rtsp-restream
          roles:
            - record
        - path: rtsp://{FRIGATE_RTSP_USER}:{FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD}@127.0.0.1:8554/living_room_sub     # <----- The stream you want to use for detection
          input_args: preset-rtsp-restream
          roles:
            - detect
            - audio
    live:
      stream_name: living_room_main
    detect:
      enabled: true # <---- disable detection until you have a working camera feed
      width: 704
      height: 576
      fps: 5
    objects:
      track:
        - person
        - dog
        - cat
      filters:
        person:
          threshold: 0.8
    snapshots:
      enabled: true
      timestamp: false
      bounding_box: true
      retain:
        default: 5
    record:
      enabled: true
      retain:
        days: 3
        mode: all
      alerts:
        retain:
          days: 7
          mode: motion
      detections:
        retain:
          days: 7
          mode: motion
    motion:
      mask: 0.551,0.034,0.958,0.034,0.957,0.082,0.552,0.081
version: 0.15-1