Comment by rahimnathwani
2 days ago
But even CPU inference is both faster and more energy efficient with a modern Arm SBC chip
Where I live, electricity costs 45 cents per kWh. What would be a good Arm SBC to run Frigate, assuming I have 4 cameras?
I’m not sure what’s the most optimal for cost/performance, but a Pi 5 8G + Hailo 8 looks like it will be a good option.
* https://www.reddit.com/r/frigate_nvr/s/ncxP1YQDfB
* https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate/blob/e773d63c16d9...
I tested frigate on this combination and I must recommend against it. The Raspberry Pi 5 lacks hardware accelerated video encode like it's predecessor the Pi 4. Due to this limitation, a Pi 5 will struggle with more than a few cameras, even with the 26 TOPS Hailo.
I think the decoder is more important than the encoder. The Pi 5 does have a h265 hardware decoder, if your cameras supports that.
Just accelerate it with AI instead! :)
I'd also keep an eye on the Rubik Pi 3 as it looks specifically designed to compete with the Pi 5 + AI kit and should provide a faster, cheaper, more efficient option. They're only just starting to ship and no support in Frigate yet, so just something to consider if you're not in a hurry to build a system.
* https://www.rubikpi.ai/
* https://liliputing.com/rubik-pi-is-a-compact-dev-board-with-...
* https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/01/09/qualcomm-qcs6490-rub...
Frigate is surprisingly not that cpu intensive with if you have Coral.
I got repurposed HP G2 SFF desktop with old i5-6500 cpu running proxmox with bunch of VMs and LXC containers including frigate.
I am passing both coral USB through to frigate container for object detection and passing intel's gpu through for video decoding.
With 10 cameras continuously recording, corals inference cpu usage is about 12%, frigate CPU usage is about 5%, although a service called go2rtc which is used by frigate to read the cameras streams and restream them to frigate takes up about 15% of the cpu.
Overall my cpu usage fluctuates below 30% on that entire machine devoted to more than proxmox.
I did run the watt calculation on that machine and it was something reasonable, dont recall it right now
Just get OAK cameras from luxonis.
If you want home surveillance, you can just tie a bunch to ethernet and they'll do on-device AI.
I'm running frigate on an SFF computer I got off eBay for $100 with an i7-8700. It averages around 14 watts. OpenVino for object detection and intel-qsv hardware acceleration preset.
how many cameras are you running with that? Whats your inference speed in frigate metrics?
6 cameras, 10.54ms. All other metrics are 0-3.5%
What are you trying to do, if you don't mind me asking?
I'm looking to upgrade my home surveillance setup, currently running Arlo Pro 2 cameras. They work fine, but I'd prefer higher resolution and to avoid saturating my internet upstream with frequent video uploads.
My needs are pretty much the same as people who buy camera bundles from big box stores. I want reliable motion detection for intruders, deliveries, and visitors, and the ability to watch videos recorded in the past couple of weeks.