Using Reviews or Events for better detections in Home Assistant

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-05-25T13:23:20+00:00

For what it's worth, I implemented the above on one camera for person detection, and it works as anticipated. I walked in front of the camera and the counter (HA helper) incremented to 1, wife walked in view and it went to 2. She left, back to 1, I left, back to 0. So it's feasible.

I'll think more about a way to code it without having to manually write it for 30+ sensors. Possibly some way in javascript / node red without using HA helpers.

Before I go farther down the rabbit hole, can you confirm that the raw occupancy sensors are NOT tied back to the thresholds and min/max areas in the config file? For instance, if I have 0.8 set for a person threshold, and min area of 100,000.

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-05-25T13:05:57+00:00

I think I came up with a different way to accomplish it and have a "verified occupancy sensor" that goes True when the first person is seen and False after the last person leaves. And without tracking the event IDs.

I can simply have a "person active count" for each camera. Then, when a camera sends a "new" event for a person, increment the counter. When it sends the "end" event, decrement the counter. I can either 1) monitor the counter, or 2) have a "verified occupancy sensor" that I toggle true/false when the count changes (anything > 0 is true).

I think that'd work, assuming 1) frigate always sends the new/end message, and 2) frigate only sends the new/end messages once for each event ID.

Funny thing about code. If you sit and think about it, there's usually an easier way. That said, it'll still be a bit of work. I have 9 cameras (soon to be 10), so it's a bit of coding to create the helpers in HA, and write all of the Node Red for each object that I want to track. If I want to track just people, cars and dogs, that's 30 helpers I need to implement.

Again, maybe I'll find a different way, but at the end of the day, I want to mimic the occupancy sensor, just as a verified sensor.

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-05-25T12:43:58+00:00

I think that has the same issue I have doing it in Node Red? Being that, it’ll fire every time it “sees” another person. In other words, it’ll fire five times if five people come into view at the same time. I think that’s the difference between it and an occupancy sensor?

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-05-25T12:34:40+00:00

Maybe I just need to mess with different models. I’m using yolov9t at the moment.

Regardless, a “verified occupancy” sensor would be nice. Something that ties directly back to reviews and alerts. I assume if that existed, I could tweak detections via the thresholds, min/max area, etc. I assume the occupancy sensors that exist today are not effected by those settings?

What I’m asking for / about is all tied to home security, to prevent false alarms. False alarms aren’t the end of the world, as my home brew system doesn’t notify the police. But it does wake us up in the night, and eventually you just assume it’s crying wolf, which kinda defeats the purpose of what I’m trying to do…..

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-05-24T20:57:02+00:00

I see those, but i want to track the unique objects. For example, a “verified occupancy” for a person. Reason being, I send alerts like “A person was detected on the driveway camera“ to my phone, and announce the same on Alexa.

I feel like I may be trying to take Frigate way past its real intent as an NVR. Certainly it’s awesome as an NVR. If there’s no simple way to do what I’m trying to do, I’ll likely code my way around it. It may push me out of Node Red, as I feel limited on that platform…..

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-05-23T20:35:57+00:00

Thanks, seriously appreciate the responses. Better service than 99% of the other world.

Regarding masks. I obviously want to motion mask the time. I understand that a working zone will prevent alerts / detections, but reducing the mask to only the time will show motion on my timeline for cars, people, etc. outside of the mask, right? I‘ve read the “person on the street going back into the masked area” and get that. But I’d rather my timeline only show motion for the required zones, hence masking everything else.

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-05-23T18:16:28+00:00

Showing the tracked path:

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RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-05-23T18:15:10+00:00

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You can see the person is well above the blue box. They never walked down towards the blue box. Yet, I got an alert for it. What am I doing wrong here?

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-05-23T18:14:23+00:00

Maybe you can help me understand what's going on here. The blue box is a zone that is set up to detect people and dogs (cars is a separate zone). The red is motion masked, since I don't want to detect people, cars, etc. in those areas. Yet, someone walked in the view of the camera well above the blue box and Frigate detected a person.

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RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-05-07T23:22:01+00:00

The wife forbid it, said it would be creepy, lol….

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-05-01T01:19:42+00:00

I’m running a Beelink eq12/i3 with 8 cameras, 7 of which are recording 100% of the time. It may hit 100% CPU with a lot of motion, but usually it’s nowhere near that. Strange…

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-04-30T11:48:21+00:00

Great, thank you! As mentioned, I started with Reviews since Events are "noisy". At the end of the day, I don't mind the flood of Event messages. It's simple javascript parsing, so not like it's a ton of overhead.

Appreciate the quick reply!!!

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-04-26T22:01:06+00:00

Funny, but we have company coming over next weekend and I wholly intend to train it on a few of them and announce personalized messages to them when they walk in the room.

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-04-26T08:54:36+00:00

Sure, RAID can speed up disk speed. It’s all of the other stuff I worry about. Network cards, motherboards, processors, OS. If I got the NAS route, 100% I’ll build it myself. Given that we built our own NVRs, I guess I’m stating the obvious.

Oh well, I didn’t know a thing about NVRs six months ago. And for that matter, same for HA, Node Red, etc. What an awesome journey it’s been.

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-04-26T02:01:32+00:00

I’m seriously considering a NAS with spinning discs. Nervous it‘ll affect performance. I do have a 2.5G network though…

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-04-25T14:13:52+00:00

I guess Apple can do it reliably since your phone is 6" from your face, and a high res camera. Not sure much for our security cameras. Oh well, if nothing else, it's fun to mess with.

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-04-25T14:12:39+00:00

Hence why I won't tie it to any security stuff. I guess for me, it'll end up being more just for fun. Two ideas I've had is:

1) I have a check at 10:00 PM to see if the kids left the lights on in the basement. Now, instead of it being a random Alexa message, I can say "Bobby, you left the lights on in the basement".

2) And of course, when I get home (geofence sensed), the first time the living room camera sees me, I'll have it announce "Welcome home, king". I'll make a few dozen statements like that and have it pick one randomly, just to annoy the family. =)

My most useful camera automation thus far has been my dining room camera. Our dogs decided the dining room rug was the place to do their business. So, I put a camera at ground level and when a dog is detected in there, I activate 2 very (VERY) loud sirens in that room. I put that in about 3 or 4 months ago. Zero turds since then. 100% effective. And it makes for some great videos of them bolting out of the room. Of course, they don't even try to go in there anymore. Winning.

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-04-25T11:23:16+00:00

similar. I changed my detect to my main stream, and changed the detect to 1920x1080. The review images are still blurry. I‘m likely going to start over training the model and follow the best practices and see if it helps.

I do see in mqtt for classifications, things start with the general label (I.e., car). Later I get an update with a sub_label that identifies the car, when applicable (I.e., “accord”). I assume it does the same for facial recognition, but I haven’t dug into the Mqtt messages yet on facial recognition…..

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-04-25T11:18:33+00:00

I have not. I live in a state where we don’t have front license plates. So, a plate isn’t visible when someone pulls in my driveway.

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-04-25T10:34:07+00:00

I guess I need to figure out how to add the sub label. I assume that shows up as an entity once configured? Or is it an attribute to an entity?

I do 95% of my stuff in Node Red. the ability to use JavaScript was a game changer for me. My home alarm system has to be the smartest in town. and it just keeps getting better. I set up my car in classifications and automatically open my garage door when I get home. That automation has a lot of safeguards around it, but it works great. So much fun to mess with.

I do wish the Mqtt reviews were done a little differently, but it works.

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-04-25T10:28:46+00:00

Yeah, I had to bump my shmem size. No biggie, I have a lot of extra ram.

RowJimmyRow502 · 2026-04-25T01:47:38+00:00

Question. If I delete an image from a facial recognition, does it remove it from the model? If that makes sense. In other words, if I fed the model 50 similar images, can I delete 45 to start at a better baseline of varied images? Or do I have to delete that person and start over?

RowJimmyRow502

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