Frigate SMTP Notifications

Sends email notifications when Frigate NVR detects an object.

Setup

This guide assumes you have Home Assistant and Frigate already set up. If you don't, you can follow this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWNquH3tNxc (not my video). This guide also assumes you have access to your Home Assistant integration from outside your local network.

Setup Gmail SMTP server:

1. Go to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords
2. Create a new password with a memorable name like "python" or "smtp"
3. Copy and paste your password into config.json - "password": "app password goes here",
4. Change your-email@gmail.com in config.json to your email.

Snapshots:

Modify config.json: "frigate_url": "https://your.homeassistantdomain.com",

Setup MQTT:

Modify config.json: Change the IP, username, and password to match the user you have made for Home Assistant (or you can make a separate user for this script)

Configure the script to run on startup (DEBIAN/LINUX ONLY)

1. Install tmux
2. Create a script that starts the tmux session and runs python: /home/user/startup.sh:

#!/bin/bash

# Start a new tmux session named 'emails'
tmux new-session -d -s emails

# Send commands to the 'emails' session
tmux send-keys -t emails 'cd /opt/Frigate-SMTP' C-m
tmux send-keys -t emails 'python3 main.py' C-m

sudo chmod +x /home/user/startup.sh

3. Create a systemctl service:

/etc/systemd/system/frigate-smtp.service:

[Unit]
Description=Frigate SMTP Service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/opt/Frigate-SMTP/startup.sh
WorkingDirectory=/opt/Frigate-SMTP
Restart=on-failure
User=root

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl enable frigate-smtp.service sudo systemctl start frigate-smtp.service

4. Verify it works: sudo systemctl status frigate-smtp.service OR tmux attach -t emails (remember to exit safely by pressing CTRL+B then D)