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Frigate

Frigate Security Cameras Troubleshooting

Find solutions for common Frigate security cameras problems. Step-by-step guides to get your devices working again.

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Browse 30 troubleshooting guides for Frigate security cameras. Each guide targets a specific problem — from initial setup and connectivity issues to performance drops and error codes — with step-by-step instructions, difficulty ratings, and estimated repair times. Select a guide below to start fixing your Frigate device.

Frigate is a local-first open-source NVR project built for private, high-control camera detection automation.

Troubleshooting Guides (30)

How to Fix Frigate Live View Slow or Not Loading

Device: Frigate Live View Performance (Frigate live view via go2rtc WebRTC/MSE paths)

Frigate live view loads slowly, stutters, or fails completely while recordings may still work. This is commonly caused by keyframe settings, codec/browser incompatibility, constrained hardware decode paths, or overloaded stream role design.

hard 20-30 minutes 466 views

How to Fix Frigate No Frames Received With go2rtc

Device: Frigate Stream Ingestion (Frigate NVR with go2rtc camera streams)

Frigate shows No frames received for one or more cameras while go2rtc is enabled. Recording and live view may fail intermittently. This is often caused by incorrect stream role mapping, unstable camera RTSP paths, keyframe settings, or go2rtc stream definition issues.

hard 20-30 minutes 395 views

How to Fix Frigate Clips Not Saving to Storage

Device: Frigate Clip Storage (Frigate recording and clip retention)

Frigate detects events and shows them in the web UI, but the recorded clips are not saved to your storage drive. The event list shows entries but clicking them shows no video, or the clips directory is empty. This happens when the storage path is not correctly mapped in Docker, the disk is full, recording is not enabled per camera, or the Frigate process lacks write permissions to the storage directory.

hard 20-30 minutes 268 views

How to Fix Frigate Recording Gaps During High Motion

Device: Frigate High-Motion Recording (Frigate continuous/event recording)

Frigate recordings have gaps — missing seconds or minutes of video, especially during periods when multiple cameras detect motion simultaneously. The system cannot keep up with the combined CPU, RAM, and disk I/O demands of decoding, detecting, and recording multiple streams at once.

hard 20-30 minutes 167 views

Why Is Frigate Coral TPU Not Detected After Update?

Device: Frigate Coral TPU Detection (Frigate with Coral USB/PCIe edge TPU)

After updating Frigate or host environment, Coral TPU detection fails and object detection stops. The service may run, but inference does not process. Typical causes include device permission changes, container mapping issues, host driver conflicts, or update-level compatibility shifts.

hard 20-30 minutes 146 views

How to Fix Frigate Detection Delays and Missed Objects

Device: Frigate Detection Tuning (Frigate with CPU/TPU detectors)

Frigate is missing objects (people, cars) that walk through the camera view, or detections are delayed by several seconds. People may appear and leave the frame before Frigate identifies them. Low detect FPS, overloaded detection hardware, high detect resolution, overly strict motion filtering, or degraded sub stream quality are the most common causes.

hard 20-30 minutes 99 views

How to Fix Frigate Detecting Shadows as People

Device: Frigate False Person Detections (Frigate classifier false positives)

Frigate is detecting shadows as people — you get constant false notifications throughout the day, especially at sunrise and sunset when shadows are long. The object detection model misclassifies shadow shapes as person detections, triggering recordings and Home Assistant automations for non-events.

medium 15-20 minutes 98 views

How to Fix Frigate Camera Stream Failing with FFmpeg Exit Code

Device: Frigate FFmpeg Exit Issues (Frigate ingest pipeline failures)

Your Frigate camera stream fails with an FFmpeg exit code in the logs. The camera shows a black screen or 'No stream available' in the Frigate web UI. Different exit codes point to different problems: RTSP connection timeouts, codec incompatibility (H.265 without hardware decoding), out-of-memory kills, or corrupt stream data from the camera.

hard 20-30 minutes 98 views

Why Is Frigate Recording Retention Deleting Clips Too Early?

Device: Frigate Retention Policy Issues (Frigate clip and recording retention behavior)

Frigate is deleting recording clips sooner than the configured retention period — recordings from a few days ago are already gone even though retention is set to 14 or 30 days. Storage pressure forces early deletion when disk usage hits the limit, and event retention must be configured separately from continuous recording retention to preserve important clips.

medium 10-20 minutes 97 views

How to Fix Frigate Camera Roles Misconfigured

Device: Frigate Camera Roles (Frigate detect/record/live role mapping)

Your Frigate camera roles are misconfigured — object detection is running on the high-resolution main stream (causing high CPU), recordings are saving in low resolution, or the live view shows the wrong stream. Frigate uses separate stream roles (detect, record, restream) that should map to the camera's sub stream and main stream correctly.

hard 20-30 minutes 89 views

How to Fix Frigate MQTT Events Not Publishing

Device: Frigate MQTT Pipeline (Frigate MQTT event delivery)

Frigate detects events and shows them in the web UI, but MQTT events are not being published — Home Assistant automations do not trigger, Node-RED flows receive nothing, and mosquitto_sub shows no messages on the frigate/# topic. The MQTT broker connection may be down, credentials may be wrong, or the topic prefix may be misconfigured.

medium 15-20 minutes 86 views

How to Fix Frigate High CPU Usage After Config Changes

Device: Frigate Performance Regression (Frigate NVR resource optimization)

After changing your Frigate configuration, CPU usage spiked from 20% to 90%+ and the system is sluggish. The most common cause is accidentally assigning the detect role to the high-resolution main stream instead of the sub stream, or losing hardware-accelerated video decoding after changing FFmpeg settings.

hard 20-30 minutes 73 views

Why Is Frigate MQTT Event Feed Delayed?

Device: Frigate MQTT Delay (Frigate event broker latency)

Frigate MQTT event messages are delayed — Home Assistant automations trigger minutes after the actual detection, or the MQTT event feed lags behind real-time camera activity. The delay can originate from the MQTT broker, Frigate's internal detection processing lag, large MQTT payloads, or downstream automation engine latency.

medium 15-20 minutes 70 views

How to Fix Frigate Motion Masks Ignoring Actual Motion Areas

Device: Frigate Motion Mask Tuning (Frigate motion prefilter masking)

You added a motion mask in Frigate to block detections in a specific area (trees, road, neighbor's yard), but motion events are still being triggered there. The mask may be the wrong type (motion mask vs. object filter mask), the coordinates may not match the detect stream resolution, the mask may not fully cover the area, or the config was not reloaded after the change.

medium 15-20 minutes 70 views

How to Fix Frigate Recording Audio Out of Sync

Device: Frigate AV Sync (Frigate audio/video synchronization)

Frigate recordings play back with audio noticeably out of sync with the video — voices do not match lip movement, or sounds occur before or after the corresponding visual event. The audio-video drift usually starts at the camera level where the audio encoder clock runs at a slightly different rate than the video encoder, and accumulates over longer recordings.

hard 20-30 minutes 69 views

How to Fix Frigate RTSP Authentication Failures

Device: Frigate Camera Authentication (RTSP credentials and camera access)

Frigate cannot connect to your camera's RTSP stream — the logs show "401 Unauthorized", "Authentication failed", or "Connection refused." The RTSP URL format varies by camera brand, passwords with special characters need URL encoding, and the authentication method (Basic vs. Digest) must match between FFmpeg and the camera.

medium 15-20 minutes 69 views

Why Is Frigate Person Detection Missing at Night?

Device: Frigate Night Detection (Frigate low-light object detection)

Frigate detects people reliably during the day but misses them at night — person detections drop off after sunset even though the camera shows people moving in the IR view. Night images are grayscale with lower contrast, causing the detection model to return lower confidence scores that fall below the default threshold.

hard 20-30 minutes 67 views

How to Fix Frigate Object Snapshots Not Generating

Device: Frigate Snapshot Pipeline (Frigate object snapshot outputs)

Frigate events appear in the timeline but no snapshot images are generated — thumbnails show blank or broken, MQTT snapshot messages are empty, and the snapshot API returns no image. Snapshots must be explicitly enabled per camera, detection must be running, and the storage directory must have available space.

medium 15-20 minutes 64 views

Why Is Frigate Event Retention Deleting Clips Too Early?

Device: Frigate Retention Policy (Frigate event and clip lifecycle)

Frigate is deleting event recording clips earlier than expected — events from a few days ago no longer have associated video clips, and important detections are lost. This happens when event-level retention is not configured separately from continuous recording retention, or when storage pressure triggers auto-cleanup that overrides retention settings.

medium 15-20 minutes 64 views

How to Fix Frigate Event Clips Not Playing in Browser

Device: Frigate Browser Playback Issues (Frigate web clip playback compatibility)

You click on a Frigate event to view the recorded clip, but the video does not play — the browser shows a black box, a loading spinner that never resolves, or a codec error. The most common cause is the camera recording in H.265 (HEVC), which most browsers cannot play natively. Other causes include corrupt clip files, missing file permissions, or an outdated Frigate version.

medium 15-20 minutes 61 views

How to Fix Frigate Zone Filters Missing Expected Events

Device: Frigate Zone Filter Tuning (Frigate zone-based event filtering)

You defined a zone in Frigate but expected detection events are not triggering — people walk through the zone area but no zone events appear in the event list or MQTT feed. The zone coordinates may not cover the intended area, the object type filter may exclude the detected object class, the zone boundary may be too tight, or the zone inertia setting requires more consecutive frames than the object spends in the zone.

hard 20-30 minutes 61 views

Why Is Frigate Recording Audio Out of Sync with Video?

Device: Frigate Audio Sync Drift (Frigate A/V synchronization stability)

Frigate recordings play back with audio that gradually drifts out of sync with the video — audio leads or lags by several seconds in longer recordings. This is caused by mismatched audio/video clock sources, UDP packet loss dropping frames from one stream, incompatible audio codecs, or a camera firmware bug in the RTSP stream itself.

hard 20-30 minutes 58 views

How to Fix Frigate Snapshot Images Not Saving to Storage

Device: Frigate Snapshot Save Failures (Frigate snapshot file persistence)

Frigate is not saving snapshot images to storage — the snapshot directory is empty, event thumbnails are blank, and the latest snapshot API returns no image. Snapshots must be explicitly enabled per camera in frigate.yml, the storage directory must be writable and have available space, and retention settings control how long snapshots are kept before auto-deletion.

medium 10-15 minutes 53 views

Why Is Frigate Recording But Not Sending Notifications?

Device: Frigate Notification Pipeline (Frigate + Home Assistant/notification integrations)

Frigate is recording video and detecting objects, but no push notifications are being sent to your phone or other notification services. Frigate relies on MQTT to publish events to Home Assistant, which then triggers an automation that sends the notification — any break in this chain (MQTT disconnect, missing HA integration, misconfigured automation, broken notify service, or detection disabled) stops notifications.

medium 15-20 minutes 53 views

How to Fix Frigate Birdseye Not Showing One Camera

Device: Frigate Birdseye Layout (Frigate Birdseye camera visibility)

One of your cameras does not appear in Frigate's Birdseye combined overview while other cameras show up normally. The camera may not be enabled for Birdseye in your frigate.yml config, the Birdseye mode may be set to 'objects' (hiding the camera when no detection is active), or the camera's RTSP stream may not be connecting.

easy 10-15 minutes 50 views

Why Does Frigate Camera Stream Freeze After Hours?

Device: Frigate Long-Run Stream Stability (Frigate + RTSP camera uptime)

One or more Frigate camera streams freeze after running continuously for several hours — the live view shows a static image from hours ago, recordings have gaps, and detection stops. The camera's RTSP session timeout drops the connection, FFmpeg does not reconnect automatically, or the FFmpeg process leaks memory until it crashes.

hard 20-30 minutes 48 views

Why Is Frigate Detect FPS Dropping Over Time?

Device: Frigate Detect FPS Degradation (Frigate long-run detector performance)

Frigate's object detection FPS gradually decreases over hours of operation — detection starts at 5 FPS but drops to 1-2 FPS or lower after several hours, causing missed detections and delayed events. This is typically caused by CPU overload, thermal throttling of the Coral TPU, memory pressure, or constant motion triggering detection on every frame.

hard 20-30 minutes 46 views

How to Fix Frigate Birdseye View Not Updating in Real Time

Device: Frigate Birdseye Lag (Frigate Birdseye compositor update path)

Your Frigate Birdseye view freezes, lags behind real-time, or only updates when objects are detected. The combined overview is not showing live camera feeds continuously. This happens when the system lacks CPU to composite multiple camera feeds, when Birdseye mode is set to 'objects' or 'motion' instead of 'continuous,' or when the detect stream FPS is too low.

hard 20-30 minutes 45 views

How to Fix Frigate Event Thumbnail Not Loading

Device: Frigate Event Thumbnails (Frigate UI event preview rendering)

Frigate events appear in the timeline but thumbnails show as broken images, blank placeholders, or never load. Thumbnails are generated from detection snapshots — if snapshots are not enabled, storage is full, the MQTT connection is broken, or the detect stream quality is too low, thumbnails fail to generate or display.

easy 10-15 minutes 45 views

Why Is Frigate Audio Not Working in Live View?

Device: Frigate Live Audio (Frigate live stream audio path)

Frigate live view shows video but no audio — the stream is silent in the web UI and Home Assistant. Audio must be enabled on the camera, included in the RTSP stream as AAC, passed through by Frigate's restream configuration, and unmuted in the browser (which auto-mutes video elements by default).

medium 15-20 minutes 41 views