Frigate NVR

Self-hosted camera system with AI object detection. Frigate processes RTSP/ONVIF camera streams locally, runs object-detection on CPU (or optional Coral TPU / OpenVINO iGPU / CUDA GPU), and records motion-triggered clips. Crow surfaces cameras, events, snapshots, and clips through MCP tools so your AI assistant can reason over what's happening on your property — without any footage leaving your home network.

What You Get

• Local AI object detection (person, car, dog, package, etc.)
• Motion-triggered recording with configurable retention
• JWT-authenticated REST API on :8971
• Crow's Nest "Cameras" panel: camera list, recent events with thumbnails, system stats
• MCP tools for cameras, events, snapshots, clips, and detect toggle
• Frigate's own Web UI embedded as a tab in the Nest panel

When to Use vs MotionEye

	Frigate	MotionEye
AI object detection	Yes (local, CPU/Coral/OpenVINO/CUDA)	No
RTSP / ONVIF cameras	Yes	Yes
USB webcams	No	Yes
Hardware	x86 preferred (Pi 5 + Coral works)	Pi-class friendly
UI	Modern React SPA	Classic web admin
Crow MCP tools	Full (events, clips, snapshots, detect toggle)	Iframe-only

Pick Frigate if you have RTSP cameras and want "who was at the front door at 9pm?" answered automatically. Pick MotionEye for a lightweight Pi deployment or USB-webcam setups.

Setup

Install the bundle

"Crow, install the Frigate bundle"

Or via Extensions in the Crow's Nest → find Frigate under Cameras.

This runs Frigate in Docker using the official ghcr.io/blakeblackshear/frigate:stable image and exposes:

• :8971 — authenticated UI + REST API (loopback only)
• :8554 — RTSP restreamer (loopback only)
• :8555 — WebRTC for low-latency live view (LAN)

Port 5000 (Frigate's internal unauthenticated API) is intentionally not published.

First-run admin password

Frigate generates an admin password on first start. Find it in the container logs:

docker logs crow-frigate 2>&1 | grep "Password:"

Set these in ~/.crow/bundles/frigate/.env:

FRIGATE_URL=http://localhost:8971
FRIGATE_USER=admin
FRIGATE_PASSWORD=<password from logs>

Then restart the bundle so the MCP server can authenticate:

"Crow, restart the Frigate bundle"

You should also log in to the Web UI and rotate the password.

Add a camera

Edit ~/.crow/data/frigate/config/config.yml (seeded from bundles/frigate/config.yml.example on install). Example RTSP source:

cameras:
  front_door:
    enabled: true
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://user:pass@192.168.1.42:554/stream
          roles:
            - detect
            - record
    detect:
      width: 1280
      height: 720
      fps: 5
    objects:
      track:
        - person
        - car
        - dog

Then:

"Crow, restart the Frigate bundle"

The camera should appear in the Crow's Nest "Cameras" panel and via crow_frigate_list_cameras.

Disk discipline

Default retention is 7 days of motion-triggered recordings. Rough formula:

GB/day ≈ cameras × bitrate_mbps × 10.8

One 1080p camera at 2 Mbps → ~22 GB for 7 days of continuous recording, less for motion-only. Check disk headroom before raising record.retain.days:

df -h ~/.crow/data/frigate/media

The bundle's install script aborts if < 10 GB free on the target filesystem, and warns below 50 GB. A cleanup watchlist alerts if the media directory exceeds 30 GB.

MCP Tools

Tool	Purpose
crow_frigate_list_cameras	Camera list with detect/record state
crow_frigate_list_events	Events filtered by camera, label, time window
crow_frigate_latest_by_label	Most recent event for a label (e.g. "most recent person")
crow_frigate_snapshot	Snapshot URL for an event or camera-latest
crow_frigate_clip_url	MP4 clip URL for an event
crow_frigate_set_detect	Enable/disable detect per camera (destructive — requires confirm: true)
crow_frigate_stats	Version, uptime, detector inference time, process count

Example prompts

"What Frigate cameras do I have?" → calls crow_frigate_list_cameras

"Was there anyone at the front door between 8pm and 10pm last night?" → calls crow_frigate_list_events with camera, label=person, after/before filters

"Show me the most recent car detection" → calls crow_frigate_latest_by_label with label=car

"Give me the clip URL for event abc123" → calls crow_frigate_clip_url

Sharing snapshots/clips off-tailnet

Frigate URLs are authenticated and work only from the Crow gateway or the Nest panel's iframe. Do NOT share raw Frigate URLs off-tailnet — they won't work (the receiver has no session), and even if they did, that would expose the Frigate UI externally.

To share externally: upload the file via crow_upload_file first, then share the resulting Crow storage URL.

Troubleshooting

"Cannot reach Frigate" The container is not running. Start it:

cd ~/.crow/bundles/frigate && docker compose up -d

"Frigate authentication expired or invalid"FRIGATE_USER / FRIGATE_PASSWORD in .env are wrong or missing. Re-check the container logs for the first-run password, or use a user you've created in the Web UI. Restart the bundle after editing .env.

"Frigate endpoint not found" Version skew. Our bundle targets :stable which currently resolves to Frigate 0.17. If a future version changes endpoint paths, open an issue.

Tile does not appear in Extensions panel The bundle is installed to ~/.crow/bundles/frigate/ but panels.json / panel symlinks are missing. Re-run:

~/crow/scripts/crow bundle install frigate

and verify ~/.crow/panels/frigate.js exists. Then restart the gateway.

Can't reach Web UI tab in the Nest panel Frigate's JWT cookie is first-party to :8971. The iframe must be loaded from the same host where Frigate is published. If the panel iframe shows a blank page, confirm FRIGATE_URL points to a browser-reachable URL.

Future Work

• Coral TPU acceleration — requires libedgetpu1-std on the host, udev rules, /dev/bus/usb mount, and a known USB3 re-enumeration workaround. Not wired in v1.
• MQTT event stream — Frigate can push events to MQTT in real time. Wiring this to Crow notifications (so "person detected at front door" becomes a push notification) needs a mosquitto broker and an event-to-notification bridge.
• Home Assistant auto-linking — works at the MQTT layer. Install both the Home Assistant bundle and a broker to wire it up.

Security Notes

• Frigate's internal port 5000 is unauthenticated and deliberately not published. Don't expose it.
• Port 8971 (authenticated UI) is bound to loopback by default. The Nest panel proxies through the Crow gateway's auth boundary.
• Never map /dashboard/frigate, /api/frigate/*, or /frigate/* into a Tailscale Funnel prefix — the rejectFunneled middleware enforces this, and tests/auth-network.test.js has a regression test for it.