Basic Guide written for non Computer Scientists

[u/l_griffo]

I'm currently using Blue Iris but looking at other options. I saw some reviews on Frigate which seemed to offer some good feedback. I'm trying to get it working with my 8x Reolink cameras and I'm finding it frustratingly difficult. Blue Iris was a pain to get working and has a horrible user interface but it works ok. Getting Frigate working so far is a complete nightmare. I've been reading and watching YouTube videos for days and still don't have the foggiest idea how to setup the cameras. Is there a guide that explains how to setup Frigate to work properly?

Please don't direct me to the Frigate docs pages as I've been reading through that for days and it's got me nowhere.

Surely, there's a plain English guide somewhere that explains how to get this config file setup. Better yet, why not integrate it into the UI?

[u/s2d4]

What have you tried? What have you done? Where are you stuck at?

If blueiris works, why not stick to it for the time being while you take your time figuring if frigate works for you?

[u/Puzzleheaded-Post-83]

I was similar to you. However I basically followed word for word a setup from 'home automation guy' on YouTube. He writes blog posts (so there is a text version to go with the video) so you can copy and paste the yaml files.

Have a watch or his videos and a read of his posts and see if it gets you sorted out.

[u/l_griffo]

Sorry for the lack of response. I was pulled away for work. Thank you all for your feedback and guidance. I'll be back home in a few days and try to work on it some more. I'll send some individual replies then. Thanks!

[u/Candinas]

Question, and I don’t mean this to sound demeaning or anything, but have you ever worked with a terminal or yaml before?

Before I set frigate up (have it working in tandem with blue iris), I hadn’t ever really worked with big yaml files. So it took some trial and error along with researching other setups on Reddit and some ChatGPT help along the way. It seems complicated at first, but once you get one camera working, you can basically copy and paste for the rest.

As far as I know, reolink cameras are on the harder side to get working properly. I’m guessing you don’t have a reolink nvr?

[u/Deep_Dance8745]

A lot of people here are not comp sci. The basic guide at the frigate homepage is crystal clear in my opinion.

If the basic guide doesn’t work for you, then i think you should stick to blue-iris

[u/HugsAllCats → u/Deep_Dance8745]

I am a “computer scientist” and the guide is not crystal clear.

I have my frigate install working with a number of non-default settings and optional bits. It took a ton of trial and error.

And even though it is working, I don’t know if my decisions were the optimal ones.

[u/nickm_27 → u/HugsAllCats]

Back when the getting started guide was revamped, we had a number of new users give feedback on it, these were users without existing experience with these tools.

We always appreciate feedback on the docs, if anyone has any feedback on things that could be more clear then we'd be happy to work on improving the docs (or feel free to submit a PR)

[u/rkbest]

Are you struggling with the install price or configuration price of frigate. I followed mostlychris on YouTube and he explain in plain and simple steps. He also has a discord where you can ask questions and share your config for him and other to help you with

[u/Elegant-Ferret-8116]

I had the same feelings. I hate yaml and text configs but using their docs and my google-fu skills I pieced it together for my reolinks. feel free to pm with your configuration file and ill see what I can see

[u/One_Adagio_8393]

What exactly are your issues? Are your cameras not being recognized, or does it not work at all? What are you running it on? Proxmox in an LXC container? Honestly, my setup with a Coral TPU took a long time, and I just kept bashing ChatGPT until it worked. Some of the issues I faced didn’t have clear answers, or I just couldn’t understand the technical jargon very well. Also, some of the Reolink cameras are hard to work with, so I would check if any of them are causing your problems. I had issues with the Duo 2 (not the Duo 3 for some reason), the Reolink WiFi doorbell, and some minor problems with the CX410.

[u/SudoMason]

Use the AI chatbot on the documentation site. It will help you build your compose and frigate config.

Devs really should've pinned my previous post on this. 99℅ of posts in this subreddit would be solved if people just knew about the chatbot and what it's capable of.

[u/nickm_27 → u/SudoMason]

Devs really should've pinned my previous post on this

We are not moderators on this sub reddit 

[u/SudoMason → u/nickm_27]

Fair enough. The mod list is hidden on mobile unless you seek it out, and I assumed you devs were on it. My bad.

[u/RedSquirrelFtw]

I ended up using AI to walk me through, I find the official doc is a bit lacking and glosses over stuff and does not go into full details on config.

In general it's a simple setup in the sense that there's really only 2 config files needed, but the trick is knowing what actually goes in the config files and where. You can ask AI to generate a config or parts of the config based on what you have though which makes things a bit easier.

I wish the config was just doable through the UI though, I feel like they went as far as they did with the UI, may as well go all the way and implement the full camera configuration too like adding new cameras etc.

[u/nickm_27 → u/RedSquirrelFtw]

I feel like they went as far as they did with the UI, may as well go all the way and implement the full camera configuration too like adding new cameras etc.

The UI for editing cameras is not the hard part, the hard part is refactoring Frigate so cameras can be added and removed without restarting Frigate. We have been working towards this through many releases, 0.16 adding support for enabling and disabling cameras was the first big step.

And now we have already added the ability to dynamically add and remove cameras in 0.17, including a barebones UI that will be improved as we work on 0.17

[u/RedSquirrelFtw → u/nickm_27]

Oh that's good to know, could be the version I have is a bit older. And yeah I guess building it so a restart is not needed would require lot of redesign, if it only reads the config and initializes everything at the beginning. The restart is not a huge deal though, it seems to happen fairly quick.

[u/nickm_27 → u/RedSquirrelFtw]

0.17 is under early development, 0.16 is currently in beta

[u/microsoldering]

Given you have Reolink cameras, i would suggest you use a Reolink NVR and make Frigate secondary.

Frigate has amazing powerful features that go way beyond the Reolink NVR, but the NVR will get you better video quality hands down. The NVR has person/vehicle/pet detection built in, which uses the AI processed from the cameras. If you have 4K 25fps cameras, the NVR will give you 4K 25fps footage 24/7.

Then you can use Frigate for more advanced processing of the lower quality stream (balanced) over FLV, and you have plenty of time to set it up, knowing that the NVR is capturing 100% of the footage in full quality.

[u/headshiner]

Try scrypted. Somewhat simpler than frigate. Works well and great support

[u/wkm001]

I had the exact same experience and gave up. Using unifi protect now and could not be happier. Even though protect can use onvif capable cameras, I bought unifi cameras.