Latest / Big Iron Radio / Homelab Brief - Frigate Detectors: Coral vs OpenVINO vs TensorRT

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Homelab Brief - Frigate Detectors: Coral vs OpenVINO vs TensorRT · Big Iron Radio

• 0:02
  Welcome to the Homelab Brief from Big Iron.
• 0:06
  Today, picking a Frigate object detector in 2026 Coral, OpenVINO, or TensorRT.
• 0:14
  Quick note, this is an AI voice drawn from a Big Iron guide.
• 0:19
  Links below.
• 0:20
  Let's lead with the news because it changes the old advice.
• 0:24
  The Coral's value proposition broke in 2026.
• 0:28
  Not because the hardware got worse Google just stopped making it,
• 0:32
  and scalper pricing pushed a $60 part up to $130 to $220.
• 0:37
  That erased its whole cost advantage for a new purchase.
• 0:41
  Important caveat.
• 0:43
  If you already own a Coral, keep it.
• 0:45
  There's nothing wrong with the hardware.
• 0:47
  It still sips power and detects fine.
• 0:50
  This is a don't buy new guide, not a rip out what works guide.
• 0:54
  For a new build with four to eight cameras on an Intel CPU,
• 0:58
  use OpenVINO on the iGPU.
• 1:00
  It's effectively free if you were buying that box anyway.
• 1:04
  It's fast enough for realistic camera counts,
• 1:07
  and it's the least fragile thing to maintain long-term.
• 1:11
  That's the default for most people now.
• 1:13
  Scale up eight to 16-plus cameras,
• 1:16
  or you want real headroom for PTZ, zones, and semantic search,
• 1:20
  and the answer becomes TensorRT on a used discrete NVIDIA GPU.
• 1:24
  It's the fastest option by a wide margin.
• 1:29
  But TensorRT is the one detector with a real 24-slash-7 power,
• 1:34
  cost a discrete card, drawing watts around the clock.
• 1:37
  So run the electricity math before you buy.
• 1:40
  A fast detector that adds $10 a month to your power bill
• 1:43
  is a different decision than a free iGPU.
• 1:46
  The full comparisons in the show notes.
• 1:50
  That's your brief.