A mini-PC like a Lenovo m720q or m920q can be had for about $120 on secondary markets. It works great for me as a frigate server. I'm using it with 6 cameras and plan to add couple of more. If you look around on ebay, you might able to find one with 16gb ram and even a m.2 or SSD drive included. Then get the m.2 (A+E) version of the Coral TPU board ($30-35). That can be inserted into the wifi board slot. The m720q has a i5-8400T. While it's a 8th gen intel CPU , its more than capable of handling Frigate , as well several other applications if you run it in Proxmox or even barebones install. It has one m.2 for storage slot. But can also hold one 2.5 inch SSD. So you can drop in a cheap nvme drive for boot & OS. Use a much cheaper larger SSD for video storage. (what i've done)
Rockchip are the most common "Chinese boards available with on-chip TPUs" as the GP comment puts it, and they are community supported by Frigate now: https://docs.frigate.video/frigate/hardware/#rockchip-platfo...
RK3566 boards are cheaper than a Raspberry Pi 5, but you get less model support, and no Frigate+ model.
A mini-PC like a Lenovo m720q or m920q can be had for about $120 on secondary markets. It works great for me as a frigate server. I'm using it with 6 cameras and plan to add couple of more. If you look around on ebay, you might able to find one with 16gb ram and even a m.2 or SSD drive included. Then get the m.2 (A+E) version of the Coral TPU board ($30-35). That can be inserted into the wifi board slot. The m720q has a i5-8400T. While it's a 8th gen intel CPU , its more than capable of handling Frigate , as well several other applications if you run it in Proxmox or even barebones install. It has one m.2 for storage slot. But can also hold one 2.5 inch SSD. So you can drop in a cheap nvme drive for boot & OS. Use a much cheaper larger SSD for video storage. (what i've done)