> what do people typically use to power the cameras? A single PoE switch, or multiple PoE injectors?
It basically doesn't matter at all - I have a mixture of both in my home, multiple PoE switches and multiple PoE injectors for things like cameras, wireless APs etc. Use whatever fits needs/budget/location, you don't have to go nuts buying a single high end PoE switch. There's often good deals to be had on used PoE switches on ebay etc too if really budget conscious.
The only real advantage of going with a single or fewer PoE switches is you have less things to put on a UPS, if you require the system to still work when power goes down. A UPS that can run say 4 cameras, the PoE switch and a system running Frigate for more than a few hours can get pretty expensive too, in my experience - most cheap UPSes are designed to get you enough power to save some files and shutdown a PC in a matter of minutes, not hours.
Cheap intel box with a Coral runs Frigate fantastically, and if a tower build plenty of room for internal storage drives.
Yeah, consumer UPSs tend to scale their inverter capacity along with their battery capacity, which means if you're shopping for huge capacity for long runtime, you end up paying extra for a huge inverter you don't need.
I've gone the other route, with a simple power supply that charges an ever-evolving fleet of whatever cheap 12-volt batteries aren't doing anything else, which then feeds DC-DC converters for the various loads. For stuff that's natively 12-volt like my wifi router and cable modem, I just run those directly off the battery rail.
This setup is quiet, efficient, and presently runs the modem, router, service pi, and my RIPE Atlas probe, for somewhere upwards of 20 hours, for something like $150. If I added a 12v-to-48v converter and a small PoE switch feeding a few cameras, it would probably cut the runtime in half, but I could just throw more battery at it for pennies on the watt-hour.
It basically doesn't matter at all - I have a mixture of both in my home, multiple PoE switches and multiple PoE injectors for things like cameras, wireless APs etc. Use whatever fits needs/budget/location, you don't have to go nuts buying a single high end PoE switch. There's often good deals to be had on used PoE switches on ebay etc too if really budget conscious.
The only real advantage of going with a single or fewer PoE switches is you have less things to put on a UPS, if you require the system to still work when power goes down. A UPS that can run say 4 cameras, the PoE switch and a system running Frigate for more than a few hours can get pretty expensive too, in my experience - most cheap UPSes are designed to get you enough power to save some files and shutdown a PC in a matter of minutes, not hours.
Cheap intel box with a Coral runs Frigate fantastically, and if a tower build plenty of room for internal storage drives.