When it comes to home security, you can count on Blue Iris or Frigate. The former is a seasoned security software with a feature-rich arsenal, while Frigate is an AI-powered nimble upstart.
However, this isn’t just a competition of features and specs. It’s about which software is robust enough to bolster the security of your family and property while giving you the ultimate peace of mind.
In this article, we will explore the capabilities of these two. We will also reveal their technical prowess, hidden secrets, and other features that are essential for you to know before going with one.
But first, here’s a prelude:
Quick Summary
Blue Iris takes the crown because:
- It offers more recording modes, such as schedule-based, motion-triggered, and continuous recording compared to Frigate’s object-detection recording.
- Has more features that enhance remote access; you can use the web browser, mobile apps, and desktop app. Frigate lacks built-in remote access features.
- Blue Iris offers extensive alert options like email, SMS, push notifications, and phone calls that Frigate lacks.
- It integrates with Home Assistant, Google Assistant, Alexa, SmartThings, doorbells, alarm panels, web services, and more. Frigate mainly integrates with Home Assistant.
- Blue Iris also supports extensive customizations. You can customize camera settings, motion detection, and schedules for alerts and recordings. Frigate’s customizations are limited to object detection.
Let’s now dig into the two.
Introduction: Blue Iris vs Frigate
What is Blue Iris?
Blue Iris is a video security and webcam software that lets people have remote access and control over security cameras on iPhones, computers, and Android phones.
How It Works
With Blue Iris, you can keep an eye on your children and pets, and prevent crime. But the software is not just popular among homeowners, you can use it for business security, as well.
Specifically, you can monitor what employees are doing, secure business premises, safeguard assets, and bolster security.
The software helps you record motion-triggered or continuous events. It also lets you receive real-time notifications through SMS, email, or phone calls.
Most importantly, you can customize different features and settings, such as overlays, alerts, and schedules, for a personalized Blue Iris experience.
Besides, it integrates with different third-party systems and devices for increased functionality.
What is Frigate?
Frigate is an open-source NVR (Network Video Recorder) that focuses on real-time AI object detection. All processing occurs locally on your devices, meaning no camera feed gets out of your home.
Frigate offloads object detection to Google Coral TPU, allowing any modest hardware to perform advanced analysis to establish whether the motion is a car, person, or any other object.
Local processing saves you from paying to have personal camera footage uploaded to the cloud for further analysis.
How It Works
Frigate supports local processing; you can keep your analysis and recordings on a local device, saving you from privacy concerns and cloud storage fees.
Frigate integrates with other home automation platforms, such as Home Assistant, transforming existing IP cameras into intelligent security gadgets.
Frigate’s primary use is home monitoring and security. Instead of triggering alerts for any movement that might cause false alarms, the software only detects real threats posed by cars or people.
Frigate targets specific events, too. For example, you only get alerts when activities occur in designated areas, such as the porch or driveway.
You can use the software to trigger automations, such as automatically sending alerts, turning on lights, or activating sirens after detecting specific objects.
Live Viewing
Blue Iris
Blue Iris provides different ways for real-time viewing of your cameras, giving you an idea of the happenings around your property.
Blue Iris’ main window showcases a clear layout of the cameras, allowing you to organize them in tiles, grids, or stand-alone windows, personalizing the view to your preferences.
You can also access the live feeds from a web browser and view the cameras remotely without using any software.
If you don’t want to monitor your security cameras from the browser, you can use Blue Iris’ mobile apps for Android and iOS. That way, you will receive notifications, observe live feeds, and control the cameras right from your mobile device.
When viewing any part of the camera, you can use the live stream presets to quickly change from one viewing layout to the next or zoom in on a particular area.
If you are using PTZ (Pan-Tilt-Zoom) cameras, you can use Blue Iris to pan, tilt, and zoom from a remote location and view specific areas from close range.
You can listen to live audio from the camera access, too.
Frigate
Frigate has a built-in interface where you can access your favorite browser. The interface showcases the cameras’ simple grid showing a live feed and a few controls.
The live view is resource-efficient. It uses less network bandwidth and CPU, thus systems with fewer cameras and resources can use it effectively.
Frigate’s live view doesn’t focus on the video feed. Instead, it’s about object detection in real time. The live feed shows bounding objects on detected objects, such as animals, cars, or people, minimizing false alarms.
Frigate works effectively when integrated with Home Assistant to create custom visualizations and automations. For example, you can get a notification when someone enters a restricted section.
Verdict
Both platforms support remote and real-time live viewing of cameras. However, Frigate offers a better, simpler, resource-efficient, and object-detection-oriented live viewing experience than Blue Iris which provides more detailed and extensive live viewing.
Recording
Blue Iris
Blue Iris offers various options for effective footage capture and management. It supports continuous recording, allowing you to capture footage 24 hours a day. This functionality is suitable in high-security places with ongoing activity.
You can configure the software to record events whenever motion is detected, minimizing CPU usage and storage space. Other options related to this include pre- and post-trigger buffers which refer to capturing footage before and after motion is detected respectively.
Blue Iris also lets you record footage at specific times, such as when there’s no one at home or at night.
Additional recording features include multi-stream recording, audio recording, and time-lapse recording. You can also export the recordings in AVI or MP4 formats for offline use or to share with others.
Frigate
Frigate allows for continuous recording but only lets you capture object-detected footage. This functionality helps to balance between comprehensive coverage and well-organized storage.
It also supports motion-triggered recording, but only when an object is detected. This functionality further lowers storage use while focusing only on the most essential events.
Verdict
Blue Iris provides more customization and recording modes than Frigate.
Notifications
Blue Iris
Blue Iris has a vibrant alert system that alerts you when an activity occurs on your property. You can set notifications to trigger at particular times, such as when a pet enters a restricted area or when darkness sets in.
You can also receive alerts based on particular events, including audio disturbances, doorbell presses, or license recordings.
Additionally, you can integrate Blue Iris with various security systems and get notifications after triggers from these devices, such as alarms and door sensors.
The alerts can occur in different ways, such as email, phone calls, SMS, push notifications on mobile devices via the Blue Iris app, and pop-up notifications on the computer screen.
Frigate
When using Frigate, you will receive alerts, but they are largely focused on object detection and integration with other systems.
Typically, alerts are triggered whenever Frigate detects particular objects like animals, cars, people, or any other predefined object category in your camera feed.
Specifying these object categories excludes false positives from shadows, wind, and any other movement, encouraging more relevant notifications.
You can also decide on the object types to trigger notifications for each camera, allowing you to focus on what’s most important. For instance, receive alerts when a car passes your driveway, not when people walk by.
You can also define particular zones or areas in the camera frame to keep tabs on objects and initiate notifications when there’s an activity inside those areas. This feature focuses on your most vital areas, eliminating irrelevant notifications.
Frigate delivers alerts through Home Assistant notifications directly on the Home Assistant dashboard. You can also receive alerts via REST API or webhook support. This feature lets developers integrate the software with custom scripts or other notification systems.
Verdict
Both platforms support alerts, but Blue Iris has more alert delivery methods than Frigate, including SMS, email, push notifications, pop-up notifications, and phone calls.
Remote Access
Blue Iris
If you want to monitor a security system from any location in the world, you can use Blue Iris. You can use any browser on a tablet, laptop, or smartphone to access live camera feeds. This feature allows you to know what is happening on your property even when you are miles away from it.
You can also use Blue Iris’ Android and iOS apps to access live feeds, get notifications, and control PTZ (Pan-Tilt-Zoom) cameras right from a smartphone or tablet.
Blue Iris comes with a desktop application that you can use to access the system live from a computer.
Playback control is another crucial feature. You can use it to remotely access and review recorded footage, search for any event, and export clips for evidence or analysis.
Furthermore, you can see the notification history, tweak the notification settings, and acknowledge notifications remotely so you don’t miss any events.
Frigate
Frigate is mainly designed for local use in your home network, and it focuses on privacy and processing on your local device. Therefore, Frigate lacks built-in remote access capabilities like mobile applications or web interfaces.
However, if you want to use Frigate for remote access, you should integrate it with Home Assistant. This integration will let you remotely access recordings, live feeds, and alerts via Home Assistant’s mobile app or web interface.
Before enabling home access, be sure to consider resource usage and security implications.
Verdict
Blue Iris wins when it comes to remote access, providing several features for remote access. On the other hand, Frigate emphasizes privacy and local processing, with limited remote access functionalities.
Customization
Blue Iris
Blue Iris supports a high level of customization, letting you modify the security system to your preferences. You can adjust a camera’s sharpness, brightness, saturation, and contrast to enhance video clarity and quality.
You can customize motion detection by defining sensitivity zones, tweaking detection thresholds, and configuring post- and pre-recording buffers for accurate motion-based recording.
You can adjust schedules for alerts and recordings based on your unique needs or day-to-day routine.
Further, you can set recording triggers, notifications, and automated actions based on particular events like license plate readings, audio interferences, and doorbell presses.
Frigate
While Frigate’s customization options aren’t extensive, you can tailor it to your preferences in various ways. First, you can select the object type (car, animal, or person) that the software should detect and record for every camera.
Second, when configuring object detection, you can select the minimum confidence level to guarantee precise alerts and weed out any false alarms.
Moreover, Frigate lets you define particular sections in the camera frame for more accurate object identification.
When it comes to recording, Frigate lets you customize the duration you would like to keep the recordings per camera or object. You can also modify the recording’s resolution.
You can also choose how notifications are sent and set thresholds regarding an event’s minimum duration or number of object detections before an alert goes out.
Verdict
Blue Iris offers more extensive customizations, helping you build a security system suited to your needs.
Integration
Blue Iris
You can integrate Blue Iris with various smart home systems, such as Home Assistant, SmartThings, and voice assistants (Alexa and Google Assistant).
It also integrates with various security systems, such as access control systems, alarm panels, and doorbell systems.
Additionally, Blue Iris integrates with email and SMS services, Network Attached Storage (NAS), web services, and weather stations.
These integrations allow you to receive timely notifications, automate responses, access the footage from different platforms, and foster a vibrant and suitable security setup.
Frigate
Frigate integrates well with Home Assistant and other automation systems, such as NodeRed, OpenHab, and any platform using MQTT support.
Frigate integrates with the media browser of Home Assistant where it offers objection detection information, live camera feeds, and notifications.
Verdict
Blue Iris offers more extensive native integrations with smart home automation platforms, doorbells, alarm panels, and web services. On the other hand, Frigate primarily integrates with Home Assistant and has limited native support for any other platform.
Pricing
Blue Iris
You can download Blue Iris for free and use it for non-commercial and personal projects. The free version gives you access to all the main features, such as basic camera customization, notifications, recording, and live viewing.
If you want to use Blue Iris for commercial purposes, you must purchase a license that starts from $39.99 for one camera.
Premium features such as advanced analytics and access to mobile apps include separate add-ons, increasing the cost.
Frigate
Frigate is entirely free to use and open-source. However, to run Frigate, you need to invest in hardware, such as Raspberry Pi. You might need to meet the cost of a Home Assistance setup, as well.
However, there’s Frigate+ which costs $50 per year and gives you access to models that are trained to analyze your video footage.
Verdict
Frigate wins; you don’t need to purchase a license to use it commercially.
Wrapping Up: Blue Iris vs Frigate
Blue Iris carries the day for us.
Not only does it support several recordings and options for alerts, but it also offers more features for remote access, customization, and integration.
That said, do review the two tools closely before making a decision. Sometimes, personal needs and requirements determine the most suitable choice.
