A front-door camera may see dozens of people who are simply passing. Frigate can keep tracking them while reserving an alert for a person who enters a chosen part of the picture. Its zone and required-zone settings connect object recognition to the place you care about.[3]
This documentation-based guide, checked on 19 October 2026, assumes an existing Frigate installation with a working camera, person detection and Review footage. We have not tested it on a physical camera.
Begin by confirming that a person is already detected in the camera view. Alert labels select which tracked objects deserve the alert category; changing those labels does not enable a missing object detector. In the current interface, object tracking is configured under Settings → Camera configuration → Objects for the selected camera.[2]
Draw the entrance area
- Open Settings → Camera configuration → Masks / Zones and select the entrance camera. In Zones, choose the plus icon.
- Click points around the entrance area on the camera image. Click the first point again to close the polygon.
- Name the zone doorstep, provided that is not also a camera name. Under Objects, add person. Save the zone.
The important point is at the bottom centre of the person’s bounding box. Frigate uses that location to decide whether the person is in a zone. A shoulder overlapping the drawn area is insufficient. Place the boundary where the person’s ground position should count as arrival.[3]
Next open Settings → Camera configuration → Review for the same camera. Expand Alerts config and select person as the alert label. Set Required zones to doorstep. An empty Required zones field allows qualifying alerts anywhere in the image.[2][1]
Check the behaviour with separate walks
Enable Zones in the camera’s Debug view. The boundary becomes thicker when an object enters. This lets you compare the rule with what the picture appears to show.[1]
- Walk through the background without approaching the entrance. Look for a tracked person, then check whether that activity remained outside the alert category.
- Approach the entrance and step clearly inside the drawn area. Check the zone indicator and the resulting Review category.
- Approach near the boundary from the usual direction. Watch where the bottom of the detection box actually falls, then adjust the polygon if it misses the ground area you intended.
Run these checks at separate times. A Review item represents a period of activity and can contain several objects; it is not a separate clip for every person. A visitor entering the zone while someone else passes behind them can legitimately appear in the same alert item.[2]
If tracking disappears before someone arrives, inspect existing masks. Motion masks suppress motion triggers in an area, while object-filter masks discard particular detections by location. Heavy masking can interfere with tracking. For this task, the person needs to remain trackable on the approach so the zone can classify their arrival.[3]
Leave the separate Detections configuration unrestricted if you still want ordinary passing activity there. Frigate normally categorises tracked activity that does not qualify as an alert as a detection. The result to check is a more selective alert list, with the doorway providing the reason that an item deserves attention.[2]