Frigate NVR — Local AI Video Surveillance
Your cameras.
Your AI. Your hardware.
Frigate is the open source NVR that monitors your security cameras with locally processed AI. Real object detection on every frame — no cloud, no monthly fees, and no footage ever leaving your building. And with Home Assistant, it becomes the eyes of your whole smart home.
Interface image © the Frigate project (frigate.video) — not our property, shown for illustration.
Why local AI beats the cloud.
Traditional NVRs alert on pixels changing. Cloud cameras send your video to someone else's servers. Frigate does neither.
Real detection, not motion
Frigate runs AI object detection on your camera streams in real time — a person on the porch triggers an alert, a tree branch in the wind doesn't. False positives all but disappear.
Private by design
Video is analyzed and recorded entirely on-site. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is mined, and your cameras keep working even when the internet doesn't.
Yours forever
Frigate is free and open source. No subscriptions to keep your recordings, no accounts to create, no features held ransom behind a paywall.
This is what smart looks like.
Real screenshots from Frigate — the same interface you'll get on day one.
Detection you can see.
Frigate draws a live box around every person, car, and animal it tracks, with a confidence score. When it alerts you, you know exactly why — no more guessing what set off the recorder at 3 AM.
Zones put you in control.
Draw zones right on the camera image: the front walk, the driveway, the loading dock. Get alerted when a person enters the yard — not when a car drives past on the street. Each zone has its own rules.
Review in seconds, not hours.
The review dashboard pre-sorts everything into alerts (a person approaching the building) and detections (everything else it saw), so you triage a whole day of footage over coffee. Every event has its clip, snapshot, and timeline one tap away.
Live view that keeps up.
Built-in go2rtc restreaming delivers low-latency live video to any browser on your network — with two-way audio on supported cameras. Watch one camera or a wall of them.
Screenshots © the Frigate project (frigate.video) and its documentation — not our property, shown for illustration.
A serious NVR. Seriously smart.
Everything you expect from a professional recorder, plus intelligence no traditional NVR can match.
Object Detection
Detects and tracks people, cars, animals, and more on every camera, analyzing every frame in real time.
Zones
Draw zones to know the exact moment a person steps on the front walk or a car pulls into the driveway.
24/7 Recording
Continuous and event-based recording with independent retention rules per camera — keep events longer, footage shorter.
Review Dashboard
Alerts and detections are pre-sorted so you review what matters in seconds, not hours of timeline scrubbing.
Hardware Acceleration
Supports Google Coral Edge TPU, Intel OpenVINO, NVIDIA TensorRT, and more for fast, efficient detection.
Low-Latency Live View
Built-in go2rtc restreaming delivers fast live view with two-way audio on supported cameras.
Face & Plate Recognition
Recognize familiar faces and read license plates — processed locally, like everything else.
Smart Search
Semantic search finds moments by description — "red truck" or "person with a package" — right in your history.
Better together.
Frigate has a first-class Home Assistant integration. Pair the two and your cameras stop being a thing you check — and start being a thing that acts.
One dashboard for everything.
Live cameras side by side with your lights, locks, alarm, and sensors. Every object and zone from Frigate becomes a Home Assistant entity you can automate on: person in driveway after dark → floodlights on, announce on the speakers, check the doors are locked.
Notifications worth having.
The moment a person reaches your door, your phone shows a snapshot with the clip one tap away — actionable, instant, and filtered by AI so it only fires when it matters. Browse and replay every Frigate clip right inside Home Assistant's media browser.
Want it turnkey? We can ship your Frigate server with Home Assistant pre-installed and already linked — one box, ready to go. Ask us →
Screenshots © the Frigate project (frigate.video) — not our property, shown for illustration.
Plays well with everything else, too.
MQTT, Node-RED & openHAB
Every detection is published over MQTT in real time — build any automation you can imagine on any platform.
HomeKit, Alexa & Google
Through Home Assistant, your Frigate cameras can be exposed to Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home.
Any RTSP Camera
Brand-agnostic by design. Frigate works with virtually any IP camera that outputs an RTSP stream — including every IP camera line we carry.
Models trained on real security cameras.
An optional $50/year upgrade: detection models built from real-world security camera footage instead of generic internet images — and fine-tuned on images from your own cameras.
Knows who's delivering.
Frigate+ models detect packages and recognize carrier logos — UPS, FedEx, Amazon, DHL, USPS — so "the Amazon van just pulled up" can be an automation, not a surprise.
Faces and plates, found fast.
Frigate+ models locate faces and license plates alongside every other object in a single pass, making recognition faster and lighter on your hardware.
Purpose-Built Base Models
Trained on security camera imagery — day, night, IR, rain — for accuracy generic models can't reach.
Fine-Tuned to Your Cameras
Submit and annotate images from your own scenes and get up to 12 custom model trainings per year.
More Objects
Packages and delivery-carrier logos, wildlife, waste bins, and more — beyond what standard models know.
Models you download are yours to keep — even if you cancel. Subscriptions are purchased directly from frigate.video.
Example images © the Frigate project (frigate.video) — not our property, shown for illustration.
Built for your building.
The same Frigate server scales from a two-camera porch to a 32-camera site. Here's what it does for each.
Homes
Know the difference between the mail carrier, the dog, and a stranger at 2 AM. Phone alerts only when a person is actually there — and your family's footage never leaves the house.
Storefronts & Retail
Person-at-the-back-door alerts after hours, license plates at the curb cut, and weeks of 24/7 footage on cheap local storage — with zero monthly per-camera fees eating your margin.
Offices & Warehouses
Zone alerts on entrances, docks, and server rooms. Review an entire weekend in minutes. Keeps recording through internet outages — the footage is in the building, not in a data center.
Installers & Integrators
One skill, every job: the same open platform on every site, no license audits, no vendor lock-in. Sell the hardware once and the client owns it — we pre-configure so you just mount cameras.
Everything you need. One order.
We spec, supply, and pre-configure complete Frigate systems — server, AI accelerator, cameras, switch, and storage — ready to plug in.
The Server
A compact mini PC or rack server with an AI accelerator, delivered with Frigate — and optionally Home Assistant — installed and your cameras configured.
IP Cameras
Any RTSP camera works. Our Redcore, Ironpixel, and OTK IP camera lines are proven performers with Frigate.
PoE Switches
Power every camera over a single cable with a properly sized PoE switch.
Surveillance Storage
WD Purple surveillance-rated drives sized for your retention needs — we'll do the math for you.
What you get with Frigate.
- Real-time AI object detection on every camera
- 24/7 continuous + event recording
- Custom zones and motion masks per camera
- Review dashboard with alerts & detections
- Low-latency live view with two-way audio
- Face recognition & license plate reading
- Semantic search across your footage
- Home Assistant & MQTT integration
- Autotracking on supported PTZ cameras
- Audio detection (glass breaking, speech, bark)
- Web UI from any browser on your network
- Free software updates from an active open source community
Good questions. Straight answers.
Does Frigate need an internet connection?
No. Detection, recording, and live view all run on your local network — cameras keep recording and alerting on-site even if your internet is down. You only need internet for remote viewing away from home (typically via Home Assistant or a VPN, which we can set up) and for software updates.
Are there really no monthly fees?
Really. Frigate is free, open source software (MIT license) — no channel licenses, no per-camera charges, no cloud storage bills. The only optional cost is Frigate+ ($50/year, purchased directly from frigate.video) if you want custom-trained detection models. You never need it to use Frigate.
Will it work with my existing cameras?
Almost certainly. Frigate works with virtually any IP camera that outputs an RTSP stream — Hikvision, Uniview, Dahua, Amcrest, Reolink, TVT, and every IP camera line we sell. Bring us your camera list and we'll confirm before you spend a dollar.
Isn't open source software complicated to set up?
It can be — that's exactly what we solve. Our servers arrive with Frigate installed, your cameras configured, hardware acceleration tuned, and storage formatted. You plug it in and open a browser. Home Assistant pre-install is a free option if you want the full smart home.
How is this different from a Hikvision or Uniview NVR?
A traditional NVR records everything and alerts on motion. Frigate understands what it sees: it tells you a person entered the driveway, not that pixels changed. You also get open hardware (add drives, RAM, or move your recordings anywhere), smart home integration, and zero license fees — with the trade-off that it runs on a small server instead of a sealed appliance.
How many cameras can one server handle?
Our compact 2-bay server comfortably runs up to 32 cameras, and the 4-bay 64-channel server handles the biggest sites with up to 96 TB of storage. Beyond that — call/text 917-977-1277 and we'll spec it.
Ready to go local?
Tell us your site — how many cameras, what you want detected, how long to keep footage — and we'll build a Frigate system around it, with Home Assistant pre-configured if you want the full smart home.
Trade professional? Call/text 917-977-1277 or email sales@1800dvr.com for volume pricing.
Frigate is a free, open source (MIT-licensed) project — learn more at frigate.video. Frigate and Frigate+ are trademarks of Frigate, LLC. Home Assistant is a trademark of the Open Home Foundation. Security System Depot is an independent integrator and reseller and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Frigate, LLC or the Open Home Foundation.
Image credit & disclaimer: all product screenshots and example images on this page are the property of the Frigate project and Frigate, LLC (sourced from frigate.video and docs.frigate.video). They are not our photographs and are used solely to illustrate the software we install and support. If you are a rights holder and would like an image removed, contact us.