I’ve now managed to get the stream of my HiWatch Series, model HWI- T641H-Z 2.8-12 mm by accessing via browser to rtsp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@192.168.30.50:554/Streaming/Channels/101. Working nice. But on its own, very unusful unless I get storage and image detection going. So, I need something like Frigate.

I believe the Frigate docs suggest running in a docker container installed on a VM. Very convienient as I have Proxmox (installed on a optiples 7070 micropc with 32MB ram) running a VM on which i have a few containers. The idea is to mount a “frigate” dataset created on my Truenas server on Proxmox which is then mounted to the VM. Lots of layers but hoping it should be ok.

I heard that the Google Coral TPU is not sold anymore. Is this going to be a problem for Frigate image recognition? Are there alternatives to the Coral TPU?

  • trilobite@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    Because you can’t get it working or because you think BI is better? And if the latter, can you expand on the “why”?

    • ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      Oh, I can get it working well enough. But it’s really bare of features. PTZ is a mess to get working. Motion-sensor control is very non-intuitive. The mobile app is a PWA. Don’t even get me started on Frigate’s docuentation.

      BI completely outclasses it, in so many directions. It’s ONVIF self-configuration is flawless. The AI object recognition lets you use multiple backends if you don’t want to use the CodeProject one they ship. Automations are very easy to set up and clone/slave to other cameras. The WebUI is almost as full featured as the desktop client. The mobile app is it’s own beast and can easily jump between servers. Support gets back to you quickly.

      I could go on, but it’s not even a contest currently. Maybe someone that has hours upon hours to work on Frigate would be able to configure the same things, but it’s not at all easy.

      I’d absolutely love to go with something opensource and I keep trying to find something, hell, I’ve tried to build it myself. But I’m not hopeful that I’m going to find enough reason to stop paying $70/yr for anything that’s even half as good.

      But good luck.

      • trilobite@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        Ah, yes, the small detail i was missing … BI is not open source. I had forgotten.

        Many many years ago.i tried MotioEye it seemed half decent with a RasPi camera. Anyone tried recently?

        • ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          Very rudimentary. It was what I started with when I was trying to roll my own, and I had to tack on anything to deal with PTZ and alert automation.

            • ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              0·
              3 days ago

              Shinobi? Iirc, it was open source once upon a time. I always found it had a very weird interface and UX but ymmv.

              • trilobite@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
                1·
                3 days ago

                Ok, probably came across it at some point but just now was browsing the website, which appears to be more user friendly. It appears to have a docker option and a dedicate mobile app. Based on website features content seems to be quite mature. https://shinobi.video/features

                There seems to be a commercial entity behind it. The licence seems to be ad hoc https://gitlab.com/Shinobi-Systems/Shinobi/-/blob/dev/LICENSE.md

                Not sure this becomes closed/payment only at some point or whether it has closed source blobs.

                • ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  1·
                  3 days ago

                  Yah, that was where I figured it was going too, which was why I figured it went closed source.

                  Give it a try if Frigate doesn’t work out, it’s been trying to go paid for a few years now I think, but it doesn’t seem likely they’ll be able to knock off BI with what they have going there.

                  • trilobite@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
                    1·
                    2 days ago

                    Apparently is Shinobi CE (Community Edition) which is licensed under GPLv3 but no longer maintained and Shinobi Pro (current codebase) under a “Shinobi Open Source Software License Agreement”. From what I understand though the source code is still fully available and inspectable. The Shinobi licence simply puts restrictions on it’s use (i.e. they want to monetise for commercial deployment). Quite clearly they are competing with BI as you say. They must have a unique selling point I hope … It means that only Frigate is truly open source/free software.