Frugal NVR

Frugal NVR is a locally hosted Network Video Recorder with a focus on low resource usage.

For example, a Libre Computer "Le Potato" (a rough equivalent to a Raspberry PI 3) runs about 30% - 50% CPU utilization with the following:

• 8 1080p concurrent streams
• 3 2k concurrent streams
• disabled composite view
• 60 seconds delay between video segment scans on disk

Please note: This project is in a very early stage of development. The API is currently very unstable and not suitable for anyone that's not into tinkering as things evolve.

Features

• IP camera based motion detection
• Continuous recording of camera streams
• Configurable video retention time
• Logging of ONVIF camera motion events
• HTTP live stream of monitored cameras
• Tuned for low CPU usage
• Web-based UI
  • Real-time statistics
  • Composite overview
  • Live camera feed

Requirements

• IP camera(s) that:
  • support ONVIF
  • provide H264 video streams

Roadmap

• Multiple build targets
• Tighter integration with ONVIF (PTZ & more)
• Hardware accelleration
• AI inference & hardware support
• MQTT integration
• Home Assistant integration

Installation

Docker & Docker Compose

Below are install instructions based on using docker & docker-compose. If your docker environment varies, the below information is still useful for getting it up and running. ARMv7 & AMD64 builds are available.

0. Install docker & docker-compose
1. Create a FrugalNVR folder on your docker host.
2. Add a video and data sub-folder to the FrugalNVR folder.
3. Add a config.yml to the FrugalNVR folder. Example configuration:

# REQUIRED: Set this to the hosts network name or address that Frugal NVR is
# running on.
hostname: my-host.lan
# REQUIRED: Set this to where you would like Frugal to place temporary files.
# On Linux based hosts, /dev/shm is a good choice as it is using computer 
# memory to save wear and tear on physical drives.
tempPath: /your/temp/path
# OPTIONAL: Default is "ffmpeg". Set this to the ffmpeg binary on your system.
# If ffmpeg is on your system path, the default is sufficient.
ffmpegPath: ffmpeg
# OPTIONAL: Default is "mediainfo". Set this to the mediainfo binary on your
# system. If mediainfo is on your system path, the default is sufficient.
mediainfoPath: mediainfo
# OPTIONAL: Default is "/app/videos". The path that video streams will be
# recorded to. Must be an absolute path.
videoPath: /app/videos
# OPTIONAL: Default is "24". How many hours of recorded camera streams to 
# retain.
retainHours: 24
# OPTIONAL: Default is 10. How many seconds to wait before updating statistics
# on a segment. Resource constrained hosts should pick a larger number as this
# is (relatively) CPU intensive.
segmentUpdateFrequency: 10
# OPTIONAL: Default is "/app/data". The path that the SQLite database will be
# kept.
dbPath: /app/data
# OPTIONAL: Default is 'info'. Set how verbose FrugalNVR is on the console.
# Choices are debug, info, warn, error, and fatal.
logLevel: info
# MQTT based interface for camera
mqtt:
  # OPTIONAL: Default is "false". Enables the MQTT client
  enable: false
  # REQUIRED if enabled: Url to your MQTT instance
  url: mqtt://your-mqtt-host
  # OPTIONAL: Default is 'frugal-nvr'. Sets the base topic that Frugal NVR
  # will publish to.
  baseTopic: frugal-nvr
  # Home Assistant Auto Discovery support.
  hassDiscovery:
    # OPTIONAL: Default is "false". Enables support for Home Assistant auto
    # discovery.
    enable: true
    # OPTIONAL: Default is 'homeassistant'. Sets the base topic of
    # homeassistant.
    discoveryPrefix: homeassistant
  # OPTIONAL: Connection options can be found here
  # https://github.com/mqttjs/MQTT.js#client
  mqttOptions:
    username: my-username
    password: my-password
# The Web UI is the web-based interface to view the camera streams.
webUI:
  # OPTIONAL: Default is "true". Enables the Web UI.
  enable: true
  # OPTIONAL: Default is "3000".
  port: 3000
  # The overview is a composite of all camera streams.
  overview:
      # OPTIONAL: Default is "true". Enables the overview,  Set to false to
      # save host memory and CPU.
      enable: true
      # OPTIONAL: Default is 540. Sets the width of the thumbnail images
      # generated for the overview. Smaller is faster, bigger is prettier. :)
      thumbnailWidth: 540
# The media server provides FLV live streams of the cameras being monitored.
mediaServer:
  http:
    # REQUIRED: Default is "8000".
    port: 8000
# OPTIONAL: Global ONVIF settings to be applied to all cameras. If overriding
# settings are not defined for a specific camera, these settings will be used.
onvif:
  username: my-username
  password: my-password
# REQUIRED: List of cameras to be monitored.
cameras:
  # REQUIRED: The name to be used for a particular camera.
  - name: Camera One
    # OPTIONAL (if no global settings): Camera specific ONVIF settings.
    onvif:
      # REQUIRED: Host name or IP of the camera
      hostname: camera-one.lan
  # MOAR CAMERAS!
  - name: Camera Two
    onvif:
      hostname: camera-two.lan

4. Add a docker-compose.yml to the FrugalNVR folder. Example configuration:

services:
frugal-nvr:
  container_name: frugal-nvr
  restart: unless-stopped
  image: sclaflin/frugal-nvr:latest
  # Sets the size of /dev/shm. Frugal tends to have a lot of read/write
  # operations of temporary files. The shared memory disk is used to save wear
  # and tear on drives. Set this to a value large enough to accommodate the
  # largest video clips you think you may need. A good start is 500mb.
  shm_size: 500mb
  # Set this to your local time zone. Please note that this is important
  # to keep the WebUI working properly.
  environment:
    - TZ=America/Chicago
  # Expose the WebUI & Media Server ports
  ports:
    - 8000:8000
    - 3000:3000

  volumes:
    # Mount your hosts storage locations for video & data
    - ./videos:/app/videos
    - ./data:/app/data
    # Mount your config file to make it do the things (and stuff).
    - ./config.yml:/app/config.yml

5. Bring up the container with docker-compose up -d

Bare Metal

FrugalNVR requires the following pre-requisites:

• node.js >= v18.15.0 LTS
• ffmpeg >= 4.3.5
• mediainfo >= 20.09

1. Clone this repository.
2. Change directory into the FrugalNVR folder.
3. Add a config.yml file. Use the above example configuration above.
4. Install nodejs dependencies with npm ci
5. Build the webUI with npm run buildUI
6. Start it up with node index.js
7. Set up a watchdog / system service to keep it running.

Development

This application is developed within a VSCode devcontainer.

1. Clone this repository.
2. Open the project in VSCode.
3. CTRL+SHIFT+P: Reopen in Container.
4. Add a config.yml file. Use the above example configuration above.
5. Install nodejs dependencies with npm ci
6. npm run debugUI to start parcel and get hacking on the UI. Point your browser to http://localhost:1234
7. node index.js to get it running.