How to Install Frigate on NixOS Latest

Frigate is an open-source home surveillance software that uses machine learning models to detect objects in video streams. It can be run on various platforms and one of them is NixOS. In this tutorial, we'll go through the steps to install Frigate on NixOS Latest.

Prerequisites

Step 1: Create a Frigate Configuration File

Before installing Frigate, we need to create a configuration file for it. You can download a template config file from the official Frigate GitHub repository.

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/blakeblackshear/frigate/master/config.yml
$ cp config.yml /etc/nixos/

Step 2: Install the Required Dependencies

To run Frigate on NixOS, we need to install its required dependencies. We need to add these dependencies to the environment.systemPackages section of the configuration.nix file.

{ pkgs }: {
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    ffmpeg
    python39.Pillow
    python39.pyyaml
  ];
}

After modifying the configuration.nix file, run the following command to activate the changes:

$ sudo nixos-rebuild switch

Step 3: Install Frigate

To install Frigate on NixOS, we need to add it to the environment.systemPackages section of the configuration.nix file.

{ pkgs }: {
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    ffmpeg
    python39.Pillow
    python39.pyyaml
    frigate
  ];
}

After modifying the configuration.nix file, run the following command to activate the changes:

$ sudo nixos-rebuild switch

Step 4: Configure Frigate

After installing Frigate, we need to configure it using the configuration file we created in step 1. We need to edit the config.yml file and set the values according to our needs.

$ sudo vi /etc/nixos/config.yml

Once you're done editing the config.yml file, save it and exit.

Step 5: Start Frigate

To start Frigate, simply run the following command:

$ sudo systemctl start frigate

To check if Frigate is running properly, run the following command:

$ sudo systemctl status frigate

If there are no errors, Frigate should be running and ready to use.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we went through the steps to install Frigate on NixOS Latest. By following these steps, you can easily set up your own home surveillance system using Frigate.

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