Frigate Notifications via Home Assistant

Push notifications to the HA Companion App when Frigate detects objects, with tap-to-view clips and snapshots.

Architecture: Frigate → MQTT → Home Assistant → SgtBatten Blueprint → HA Companion App

Prerequisites

Step 1: Verify MQTT Connectivity

Frigate and Home Assistant must both be connected to the same MQTT broker. This is the most common failure point.

Frigate Config

Ensure mqtt is enabled in your Frigate config with the broker IP pointing to your Mosquitto instance:

mqtt:
  enabled: true
  host: 10.10.30.40    # IP of your Mosquitto broker
  port: 1883
  topic_prefix: frigate
  client_id: frigate

Verify the Connection

Check Frigate's logs for MQTT status:

docker logs frigate 2>&1 | grep -i mqtt

Healthy output shows a successful connection. Repeated MQTT disconnected errors indicate a problem — see Troubleshooting.

On the HA side, verify at Settings → Devices & Services → MQTT that the integration shows Connected. You can also subscribe to frigate/# under Developer Tools → MQTT → Listen to a topic and confirm frigate/stats messages arrive.

Step 2: Disable Frigate TLS

Frigate enables TLS with a self-signed certificate by default on port 8971. Home Assistant cannot verify self-signed certs and will return 502 Bad Gateway errors when proxying clip and snapshot requests.

Add this to your Frigate config:

tls:
  enabled: false

Restart Frigate after adding this.

Step 3: Enable the Notification Proxy

The Frigate HACS integration includes an unauthenticated API proxy that serves thumbnails, snapshots, and clips to your phone's push notifications. Without this, notification images will not load.

1. Enable Advanced Mode in HA: click your user profile icon (bottom-left sidebar) → toggle Advanced Mode on.
2. Go to Settings → Devices & Services → Frigate → Configure (gear icon).
3. Check "Enable the unauthenticated notification event proxy".
4. Save.

The proxy exposes these endpoints under your HA URL:

/api/frigate/notifications/<event-id>/thumbnail.jpg
/api/frigate/notifications/<event-id>/snapshot.jpg
/api/frigate/notifications/<event-id>/clip.mp4

Step 4: Enable Recording and Snapshots

Both must be enabled in your Frigate config for clips and snapshots to be available in notifications:

record:
  enabled: true

snapshots:
  enabled: true

These can be set globally or per-camera.

Step 5: Import the SgtBatten Blueprint

In Home Assistant:

1. Go to Settings → Automations & Scenes → Blueprints → Import Blueprint.

2. Paste the URL:

   https://github.com/SgtBatten/HA_blueprints/blob/main/Frigate_Camera_Notifications/Stable.yaml
   

3. Click Preview Blueprint → Import Blueprint.

Step 6: Create the Automation

Click Create Automation on the imported blueprint and configure:

alias: Frigate - Camera Notifications
use_blueprint:
  path: SgtBatten/Stable.yaml
  input:
    camera:
      - camera.cam_03          # Your Frigate camera entity
    notify_device: <device-id> # Selected from dropdown
    base_url: http://10.10.30.40:8123
    title: "{{label}} Detected"
    labels:
      - person
      - car
      - dog
      - cat

Configuration Notes

base_url — Use your HA's internal URL for local-only notifications. For notifications that work away from home, use a Cloudflare Tunnel URL (without Cloudflare Access — see Remote Access). Include the scheme (http:// or https://), no trailing slash.

labels — Only include objects that are in your Frigate objects.track list. If an object isn't tracked by Frigate, it will never generate an event and the filter will never match.

Multiple Devices

To notify more than one phone, create a notification group in configuration.yaml:

notify:
  - name: family_phones
    platform: group
    services:
      - service: mobile_app_your_phone
      - service: mobile_app_wifes_phone

Then set the Notification Group field in the blueprint to family_phones (this overrides the single device selection).

Step 7: Test

Walk in front of the camera. Within a few seconds you should receive a push notification with a thumbnail of the detected object. The notification will update with better images as the event progresses.

Check the automation trace if something fails: Settings → Automations → your automation → three dots → Traces.

Optional: Frigate Card for Clip Viewing

By default, tapping a notification opens the raw clip URL. For a cleaner experience within the HA app, install the Frigate Lovelace Card.

Install via HACS

Search for Frigate Card in HACS (by dermotduffy). Install and restart HA.

Source: dermotduffy/frigate-hass-card

Create a Camera Dashboard

Add a view to your dashboard (e.g., path: /lovelace/cameras) with the Frigate Card:

type: custom:frigate-card
cameras:
  - camera_entity: camera.cam_03
    live_provider: go2rtc
menu:
  buttons:
    clips:
      enabled: true
    snapshots:
      enabled: true
    timeline:
      enabled: true

Set the Blueprint Tap Action

In your automation, set Tap Action URL to:

/lovelace/cameras

Tapping the notification now opens the HA app directly to the camera dashboard.

Remote Access Considerations

Push notification delivery always works regardless of network — notifications route through Google/Apple push services. The issue is loading images and clips when away from home, since those are served from your HA instance.

Local only (default): Use your internal HA URL as base_url. Notifications arrive everywhere, but images/clips only load on home WiFi.

Cloudflare Tunnel (no Access): Use your tunnel URL as base_url. Images and clips load from anywhere. Do not use Cloudflare Access — the HA Companion App does not support authenticating reverse proxies and will fail with "Invalid login session" errors.

Cloudflare Tunnel with Access: Not compatible with the HA Companion App. The app's background processes (sensors, websocket, notification image fetching) cannot handle the Access authentication layer.

Troubleshooting

MQTT Disconnects

Repeated MQTT disconnected errors in Frigate logs — check for:

• Client ID collision: If two MQTT clients use the same client_id, the broker kicks one off each time the other connects. Check Mosquitto logs for "already connected" messages.
• Cross-VLAN firewall rules: If Frigate and Mosquitto are on different subnets, ensure your firewall allows persistent TCP connections on port 1883 (not just initial connection but sustained keepalive).

• Network connectivity: Test from the Frigate container:

  docker exec frigate bash -c \
    'echo > /dev/tcp/<broker-ip>/1883 && echo "OK" || echo "FAIL"'
  

502 Bad Gateway on Clip/Snapshot

• TLS not disabled: Frigate defaults to a self-signed cert on 8971. Add tls: enabled: false to your Frigate config.
• Notification proxy not enabled: Enable Advanced Mode in HA, then check the proxy setting under the Frigate integration configuration.

Notifications Arrive but No Image

• Verify base_url is reachable from your phone.
• Confirm the notification proxy is enabled (Step 3).
• Check that record and snapshots are both enabled in Frigate.

Automation Never Triggers

• Confirm MQTT is connected on both sides (Frigate logs + HA MQTT integration).
• Verify the camera entity name in the blueprint matches the Frigate camera name. The integration auto-creates camera.cam_03 from Frigate's cam_03.
• Ensure detection is enabled for the camera (detect: enabled: true).

References

• Frigate HA Notifications Guide
• Frigate HA Integration Docs
• Frigate TLS Configuration
• SgtBatten Blueprint — GitHub
• SgtBatten Blueprint — HA Community
• Frigate Lovelace Card — GitHub