--- title: Tracking my Cat with Frigate NVR | daily.dev description: A hands-on walkthrough of migrating from ZoneMinder to Frigate NVR for a home security camera setup. The author runs Frigate on an Ubuntu VM in Proxmox, passes... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/tracking-my-cat-with-frigate-nvr-jemtjyvgv twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Tracking my Cat with Frigate NVR | daily.dev og:description: A hands-on walkthrough of migrating from ZoneMinder to Frigate NVR for a home security camera setup. The author runs Frigate on an Ubuntu VM in Proxmox, passes... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/tracking-my-cat-with-frigate-nvr-jemtjyvgv og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/JEMtjyVGv.png og:image:alt: Tracking my Cat with Frigate NVR og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Tracking my Cat with Frigate NVR **[apalrd's adventures](https://daily.dev/sources/apalrd)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A hands-on walkthrough of migrating from ZoneMinder to Frigate NVR for a home security camera setup. The author runs Frigate on an Ubuntu VM in Proxmox, passes through two Coral AI M.2 accelerators for object detection, and configures six cameras with varying resolutions and frame rates. Key lessons include Frigate's mandatory detection requirement per camera, the CPU cost of high-resolution ffmpeg decoding, and the practical limits of Coral AI at 1440p. The final config runs door cameras at 1440p/5fps for person and cat detection, wide-field cameras on D1 sub-streams for car/person, and a 4K varifocal on a 720p sub-stream. 3D printer cameras bypass Frigate entirely via Home Assistant. The result successfully tracks the author's cat and filters out false positives like bugs and tree shadows better than ZoneMinder. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Can Frigate NVR add a camera without enabling object detection? No, Frigate requires a detect behavior for every camera — you cannot add a camera without object detection enabled. This means cameras you only want to view or record, such as 3D printer monitors, need to be handled outside Frigate, for example by adding them directly to Home Assistant for restreaming. _Home lab builders navigating Frigate's camera requirements share workarounds on daily.dev._ ### How many cameras can two Coral AI M.2 accelerators handle in Frigate at 1440p? Two Coral AI M.2 accelerators struggle to run four cameras at 1440p/15fps simultaneously in Frigate. A more sustainable configuration is 5fps analysis per camera, using sub-streams (D1 or 720p) for detection on wide-field cameras while reserving the high-resolution main stream for recording only, reducing both Coral and CPU load significantly. _Developers tuning Frigate and Coral AI setups find real-world configs discussed on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Upgrading my Open Source Pi Surveillance Server with Frigate](https://daily.dev/posts/upgrading-my-open-source-pi-surveillance-server-with-frigate-2kym7qr18) · Jeff Geerling · 33 upvotes · 0 comments - [My security cameras now describe what they see, and not a single frame leaves the house](https://daily.dev/posts/my-security-cameras-now-describe-what-they-see-and-not-a-single-frame-leaves-the-house-ijsgs1xsl) · XDA Developers · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [You don't need an NVR for your home security system, you just need Frigate](https://daily.dev/posts/you-don-t-need-an-nvr-for-your-home-security-system-you-just-need-frigate-9ix3wzzqo) · XDA Developers · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#self-hosting](https://daily.dev/tags/self-hosting), [#object-detection](https://daily.dev/tags/object-detection) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/tracking-my-cat-with-frigate-nvr-jemtjyvgv) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Tracking my Cat with Frigate NVR","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/tracking-my-cat-with-frigate-nvr-jemtjyvgv","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/tracking-my-cat-with-frigate-nvr-jemtjyvgv"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:56:49.436Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:24:24.944Z","description":"A hands-on walkthrough of migrating from ZoneMinder to Frigate NVR for a home security camera setup. 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