In 2024 I built a Pi Frigate NVR with Axzez's Interceptor 1U Case, and installed it in my 19" rack. Using a Coral TPU for object detection, it's been dutifully surveilling my property—on my terms (100% local, no cloud integration or account required).



I've wanted to downsize the setup while keeping cheap large hard drives1, and an AI accelerator.

Jeff Geerling is a software developer, author, and open-source contributor known for his expertise in infrastructure automation and Drupal development. Readers can learn about DevOps practices, Ansible automation, and web development with Drupal. With blog posts, tutorials, and open-source projects, Jeff Geerling shares  insights and best practices for building and managing web infrastructure.

Jeff Geerling

Jeff Geerling upgrades his local, cloud-free home surveillance system using a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 on the new Exaviz Cruiser carrier board, housed in a DeskPi prototype mini rack enclosure. The setup runs Frigate NVR with a Hailo 8 AI accelerator for object detection, two 4TB NAS drives in a RAID 1 array via mdadm, and leverages the Cruiser's built-in 8-port PoE+ switch for camera connectivity. Key hardware details include the PCIe/USB architecture trade-offs on the CM5, cooling challenges with the prototype enclosure, and software setup via an Ansible playbook. With three cameras (two 1080p, one 4K), CPU usage stayed under 5% and object detection ran at ~10ms, leaving plenty of headroom for more cameras.

Upgrading my Open Source Pi Surveillance Server with Frigate

PoE ports and power monitoring and control