home-assistant.md 7.9 KB


id: home-assistant

title: Home Assistant Integration

The best way to integrate with Home Assistant is to use the official integration.

Installation

Preparation

The Frigate integration requires the mqtt integration to be installed and manually configured first.

See the MQTT integration documentation for more details.

Integration installation

Available via HACS as a default repository. To install:

  • Use HACS to install the integration:

    Home Assistant > HACS > Integrations > "Explore & Add Integrations" > Frigate
    
  • Restart Home Assistant.

  • Then add/configure the integration:

    Home Assistant > Configuration > Integrations > Add Integration > Frigate
    

Note: You will also need media_source enabled in your Home Assistant configuration for the Media Browser to appear.

(Optional) Lovelace Card Installation

To install the optional companion Lovelace card, please see the separate installation instructions for that card.

Configuration

When configuring the integration, you will be asked for the following parameters:

Variable Description
URL The URL of your frigate instance, the URL you use to access Frigate in the browser. This may look like http://<host>:5000/. If you are using HassOS with the addon, the URL should be http://ccab4aaf-frigate:5000 (or http://ccab4aaf-frigate-beta:5000 if your are using the beta version of the addon). Live streams required port 1935, see RTMP streams

Options

Home Assistant > Configuration > Integrations > Frigate > Options
Option Description
RTMP URL Template A jinja2 template that is used to override the standard RTMP stream URL (e.g. for use with reverse proxies). This option is only shown to users who have advanced mode enabled. See RTMP streams below.

Entities Provided

Platform Description
camera Live camera stream (requires RTMP), camera for image of the last detected object.
sensor States to monitor Frigate performance, object counts for all zones and cameras.
switch Switch entities to toggle detection, recordings and snapshots.
binary_sensor A "motion" binary sensor entity per camera/zone/object.

Media Browser Support

The integration provides:

  • Browsing event recordings with thumbnails
  • Browsing snapshots
  • Browsing recordings by month, day, camera, time

This is accessible via "Media Browser" on the left menu panel in Home Assistant.

Notification API

Many people do not want to expose Frigate to the web, so the integration creates some public API endpoints that can be used for notifications.

To load a thumbnail for an event:

https://HA_URL/api/frigate/notifications/<event-id>/thumbnail.jpg

To load a snapshot for an event:

https://HA_URL/api/frigate/notifications/<event-id>/snapshot.jpg

To load a video clip of an event:

https://HA_URL/api/frigate/notifications/<event-id>/clip.mp4

RTMP stream

In order for the live streams to function they need to be accessible on the RTMP port (default: 1935) at <frigatehost>:1935. Home Assistant will directly connect to that streaming port when the live camera is viewed.

RTMP URL Template

For advanced usecases, this behavior can be changed with the RTMP URL template option. When set, this string will override the default stream address that is derived from the default behavior described above. This option supports jinja2 templates and has the camera dict variables from Frigate API available for the template. Note that no Home Assistant state is available to the template, only the camera dict from Frigate.

This is potentially useful when Frigate is behind a reverse proxy, and/or when the default stream port is otherwise not accessible to Home Assistant (e.g. firewall rules).

RTMP URL Template Examples

Use a different port number:

rtmp://<frigate_host>:2000/live/front_door

Use the camera name in the stream URL:

rtmp://<frigate_host>:2000/live/{{ name }}

Use the camera name in the stream URL, converting it to lowercase first:

rtmp://<frigate_host>:2000/live/{{ name|lower }}

Multiple Instance Support

The Frigate integration seamlessly supports the use of multiple Frigate servers.

Requirements for Multiple Instances

In order for multiple Frigate instances to function correctly, the topic_prefix and client_id parameters must be set differently per server. See MQTT configuration for how to set these.

API URLs

When multiple Frigate instances are configured, API URLs should include an identifier to tell Home Assistant which Frigate instance to refer to. The identifier used is the MQTT client_id paremeter included in the configuration, and is used like so:

https://HA_URL/api/frigate/<client-id>/notifications/<event-id>/thumbnail.jpg
https://HA_URL/api/frigate/<client-id>/clips/front_door-1624599978.427826-976jaa.mp4

Default Treatment

When a single Frigate instance is configured, the client-id parameter need not be specified in URLs/identifiers -- that single instance is assumed. When multiple Frigate instances are configured, the user must explicitly specify which server they are referring to.

FAQ

If I am detecting multiple objects, how do I assign the correct binary_sensor to the camera in HomeKit?

The HomeKit integration randomly links one of the binary sensors (motion sensor entities) grouped with the camera device in Home Assistant. You can specify a linked_motion_sensor in the Home Assistant HomeKit configuration for each camera.