Frigate + Home Assistant: 5 Must-Have Blueprints for 2025
Unlock the true power of your smart home security. Discover 5 essential Home Assistant blueprints for Frigate in 2025 to get smart notifications, automations, and more.
Alex Dawson
A home automation enthusiast and writer specializing in Home Assistant and DIY security.
Frigate + Home Assistant: 5 Must-Have Blueprints for 2025
You’ve set up your cameras. You’ve installed Frigate and watched in amazement as it flawlessly identifies people, cars, and even the neighborhood cat. You have a powerful, local AI-driven NVR running. Now what? The real magic isn't just seeing what's happening; it's acting on it. This is where the beautiful partnership between Frigate and Home Assistant truly shines.
While you could spend weeks crafting complex YAML automations, the Home Assistant community has gifted us with a powerful shortcut: Blueprints. These pre-built automation templates are the key to unlocking Frigate's full potential with just a few clicks. Forget the trial and error. We've sifted through the options to bring you the five must-have Frigate blueprints you'll want to install for a smarter, more responsive home in 2025.
A Quick Refresher: What Are Frigate & Blueprints, Anyway?
For those new to the game, let's quickly level-set. Frigate is an open-source Network Video Recorder (NVR) with a killer feature: real-time AI object detection. It uses Google Coral TPUs to analyze camera feeds locally, identifying objects with incredible speed and accuracy. This means your smart home knows the difference between a person at your door, a car in your driveway, or a raccoon raiding your trash cans—all without sending a single frame to the cloud.
Home Assistant Blueprints, on the other hand, are reusable automation templates. Think of them as a fill-in-the-blanks recipe for complex actions. A community member perfects an automation, packages it as a blueprint, and you can then import it and simply select your devices (your camera, your light, your speaker) to get the same powerful result. They make advanced automation accessible to everyone.
The 5 Must-Have Frigate Blueprints for 2025
Ready to level up? These five blueprints take Frigate’s raw detection data and turn it into meaningful, automated actions that will redefine what you expect from your security cameras.
1. The Ultimate Rich Notification
This isn't just an alert; it's a full intelligence briefing delivered straight to your phone. A simple "motion detected" message is a relic of the past. The definitive Frigate notification blueprint provides all the context you need in a single glance.
When an event occurs, it sends a notification packed with useful information, typically including:
- A thumbnail or snapshot of the detected object.
- The name of the camera and the specific zone (e.g., "Person detected at Front Door").
- Actionable buttons, allowing you to view a clip of the event, open the live camera feed, or even silence alerts for an hour.
Why it's a must-have: It gives you the power to assess a situation instantly. Is it a delivery driver or an uninvited guest? You can tell immediately, without fumbling through apps. This is the foundational blueprint everyone using Frigate should install first.
2. The Smart Welcome Light
This blueprint elegantly blurs the line between security and convenience. We’ve all juggled groceries while fumbling for our keys in the dark. This automation puts an end to that.
The logic is simple but effective: when Frigate detects a person object in a specific zone, like your driveway or front_porch, after sunset, it automatically turns on your porch and entryway lights. The lights stay on for a few minutes and then fade out.
Why it's a must-have: It's a proactive comfort. Better yet, many versions of this blueprint allow you to add a condition that it only runs when your home's status is "away." So, it acts as a warm welcome when you arrive, but also as a potential deterrent by lighting up for anyone else who approaches your door after dark.
3. The "Get Off My Lawn!" Announcer
Sometimes, the best security is active deterrence. This blueprint turns your smart speaker into an automated security guard, intervening before a situation escalates.
Here’s the scenario: it’s 2 AM. Frigate detects a person in your backyard zone. Instead of just silently recording, this blueprint waits to see if they are lingering. If the person remains in the zone for more than a set time (say, 20 seconds), the automation triggers a Text-to-Speech (TTS) announcement through a designated outdoor or indoor speaker: "You are in a restricted area. This property is under video surveillance."
Why it's a must-have: It transforms your system from a passive observer into an active participant in your home's security. For someone snooping around, an unexpected voice is often a more powerful deterrent than a camera they may not have noticed. It's customizable by time of day, zone, and message, giving you full control.
4. The Confirmed Package Delivery Monitor
We’ve all received that "Your package has been delivered" email, only to find an empty porch. This blueprint uses a more intelligent, multi-step sequence to provide high-confidence delivery alerts.
Its genius lies in tracking a chain of events:
- Step 1: A
personis detected in theporchzone. - Step 2: The
personobject is no longer detected in the zone. - Step 3: A
packageorboxobject is now detected and stationary within that sameporchzone.
Only when this full sequence is completed does the automation send an alert: "Package delivery confirmed on the front porch," complete with a snapshot of the box itself.
Why it's a must-have: It cuts through the noise of inaccurate carrier notifications and gives you true peace of mind that your delivery is safely waiting for you. It's a perfect example of how Frigate's object detection can be used for more than just generic security.
5. The Daily Activity Digest
Are you suffering from notification fatigue? Not every event requires an immediate, buzzing alert. For lower-priority zones or general awareness, the Daily Activity Digest is the perfect solution.
Instead of pinging you for every car that drives by or every time the mail carrier visits, this blueprint quietly logs events throughout the day. Then, at a time you choose (like 8:00 PM), it sends you a single, consolidated report.
The notification might look something like this: "Evening Digest: 5 person events on Driveway, 2 car events in Garage, and 1 cat spotted in Backyard."
Why it's a must-have: It allows you to stay informed about the rhythm of your property without being constantly interrupted. You can tune out the noise while still having a passive, high-level overview of the day's activity, letting you focus your instant alerts on only the most critical events.
Getting Started: Finding and Using Blueprints
Inspired? Getting these automations running is surprisingly simple. You can find these blueprints and hundreds more on the Home Assistant Community Forum and on GitHub.
The process is straightforward:
- In Home Assistant, navigate to Settings > Automations & Scenes.
- Select the Blueprints tab and click the Import Blueprint button.
- Paste the URL of the blueprint you want to use.
- Once imported, click Create Automation, and you'll be presented with a simple form. Fill in your Frigate camera, object types, and any other entities the blueprint requires, and save.
Conclusion: More Than Just Security
Frigate provides the eyes, Home Assistant provides the brain, and Blueprints are the nerves that connect them in brilliant ways. By moving beyond simple recording and embracing these automated actions, you transform your camera system from a passive tool into an active, intelligent part of your smart home ecosystem.
These five blueprints are a fantastic starting point, offering a blend of security, convenience, and peace of mind. They are a testament to the power of a collaborative community and the endless possibilities when you have full control over your home's data. So go ahead, import a blueprint, and watch your smart home get a whole lot smarter.
What are your favorite Frigate automations or blueprint ideas? Share them in the comments below!