Cameras You Control: Frigate NVR, PoE Cameras, Local Object Detection and Home Assistant Alerts Without the Cloud

Cameras You Control is a practical guide to a security camera system that answers only to you: wired PoE cameras on their own network with no route to the internet, Frigate NVR recording to a disk you sized on purpose, object detection on your own hardware, and Home Assistant alerts with a picture. It starts with choosing cameras by the lines on the spec sheet that matter (RTSP, two streams, H.264, ONVIF, PoE class and power draw) and builds the system one decision at a time: a camera VLAN where cameras can reach only DHCP and the time server, Frigate 0.18 in Docker on a Proxmox VM or a mini PC with a pinned image and shared memory sized for your cameras, hardware decoding and OpenVINO detection on an Intel integrated GPU, zones that keep the public sidewalk out of your alerts, and a retention plan with the storage arithmetic written down. Home Assistant gets one notification per alert, updated in place with a snapshot, plus home/away profiles and a camera-offline alert. Remote viewing happens over a VPN, never a port forward, with Frigate's own users, roles and login rate limit in front. The last chapters cover health checks, config validation, an update and rollback routine, and a complete reference build with every file in full. Every version, option, default and menu path was checked against the official Frigate 0.18, Home Assistant, OPNsense and HACS documentation in November 2026. No prices, no brand endorsements.

What you get

• Before We Start: why a local NVR, the system this book builds, and Frigate vs Blue Iris vs a vendor NVR box vs cloud cameras as one table of facts
• Choosing cameras: RTSP and ONVIF Profiles S and T, main and sub streams, H.264 vs H.265 and which browsers play it, smart codecs and keyframes, bitrate and storage, PoE 802.3af/at/bt power budgets, and avoiding cloud-only cameras
• A network for cameras: a camera VLAN with no internet, OPNsense aliases and rules in both directions, DHCP reservations, NTP from the firewall with a redirect for stubborn cameras, and watching what cameras try to reach
• Installing Frigate: VM or mini PC, the folder layout, shared memory sizing, a pinned Docker Compose file with secrets in .env, testing streams with ffprobe, go2rtc restreaming, the first config, first login and safe mode
• Detectors and decoding: Frigate's detection pipeline, hardware decoding presets by Intel generation, OpenVINO on the iGPU, why the Coral is no longer the default, object filters, stationary objects and reading System Metrics
• Zones, masks and filters: zones with required_zones, object filter masks, motion masks, motion tuning, and Frigate 0.18 profiles
• Recording and retention: continuous, motion and alert/detection layers, three retention plans, storage arithmetic, emergency cleanup, snapshots, exports, H.265 on Apple devices and what to back up
• Frigate and Home Assistant: Mosquitto, the integration through HACS or the 2026.11 Marketplace on the authenticated port, review items, an alert automation with a snapshot, home/away and a camera-offline alert
• Remote viewing, safely: WireGuard or Tailscale instead of port forwards, firewall rules for Frigate's ports, restream authentication, users, roles, rate limits and a trusted certificate
• Keeping it healthy and putting it together: uptime, metrics, disk and mount checks, log reading, config validation, an update and rollback routine, and a complete reference build with every file

74 pages, 22 diagrams plus a chapter-opener graphic for every chapter, a camera system checklist and a cheat sheet. PDF and EPUB. Homelab the Right Way, Book 15.

Not sure yet? Read the free sample first: the cover, the full table of contents and all of Chapter 3, "Installing Frigate" (choosing VM or mini PC, the folder layout, sizing shared memory, a pinned Docker Compose file with secrets in .env, Frigate's four ports and which to publish, testing camera streams with ffprobe, go2rtc restreaming, the first config.yml line by line, first login and the admin password, safe mode, and adding cameras one at a time), at https://payhip.com/b/Vz6dk

Also in a bundle: Everything Bundle: every ebook in the store, $89 · Homelab Bundle, $59.