Driveway Car Alert with Frigate Zones
Get a phone alert only when a car actually pulls into your driveway — not for every car passing on the street.
Frigate's object detection already knows what a car is. Zones add the 'where': you draw your driveway on the camera image, and alerts only fire when a car enters that area. No license-plate reading is needed.
Record only your own property, follow local laws on camera placement and never record audio of others without consent. PoE cameras need a PoE switch or a certified PoE injector.
Mission steps
Set up Frigate
Complete the Frigate mission so a camera aimed at your driveway is recording.
Aim at your property
Point the camera at your own driveway. Use motion masks to black out the street, sidewalk and neighbors' homes.
Draw the zone
In Frigate's web UI, open the camera's mask and zone editor, draw the driveway and copy the coordinates into the config.
Require the zone
Set review alerts to require the driveway zone so passing cars become only background detections.
Notify your phone
Install the Frigate integration in Home Assistant and use a notification blueprint or automation filtered to the driveway zone.
Code
cameras:
driveway:
ffmpeg:
inputs:
- path: rtsp://USER:PASS@192.168.1.60:554/stream1
roles: [detect, record]
detect:
width: 1280
height: 720
objects:
track: [car, person]
motion:
mask:
- 0,0,1,0,1,0.35,0,0.35 # street and houses across the road
zones:
driveway:
coordinates: 0.10,0.95,0.90,0.95,0.80,0.45,0.25,0.45
objects: [car]
inertia: 3
review:
alerts:
required_zones: [driveway]Tip: test every script on the bench before installing it in a moving machine.
Questions
Does it work at night?
With IR night vision, detection still works but is less accurate. A motion-activated porch light helps a lot.