#Having second thoughts on a smart doorbell

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

night tundra
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I ripped of a perfectly fine two-way "dumb" doorbell to install a PoE camera doorbell. Not sure why. It adds so much points of failure (networking, home assistant, automation for the notification) that I'm wondering if I should just rollback. I'm losing the two-way audio because it seems wayyy too complicated and I'm losing the central command panel if I don't install a wall display. Even if I do, I expect the UX to be worse than dumb buttons (screen lag, touch buttons, camera stream lag, etc). And for my gf it means installing wireguard and HA app on her phone because I don't expose HA on the web.

Should I got for a dumb 2-wire video doorbell instead? Seems way more stable in the long run

brazen crystal
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2 way audio is not supported in ha 😉 but you could use the doorbell app for that

night tundra
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yeah i learned it too late lol

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supported through frigate & go2rtc though

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overall it seems like an even worse UX (to have 2 apps), i was just wondering if someone has had a nice experience with smart doorbell

sinful knot
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Not sure what it's worth, but here's my two bits: Anyone who's watched Jurassic Park should know that critical systems should always have a manual override. Now, just how critical you consider a doorbell is up to you of course - I get about two visitors a year and the parcel couriers never use them anyways, so for me it would not be.

On the topic of video integration in HA, I'm a bit disillusioned. That's not HA's fault by the way. It's just that video is still much too clunky, laggy and data-intensive for a seamless integration, even with modern networking. So if you want to have the best of both worlds, here's what I'd propose:

1, don't rely on the flashy new ring/blink/reolink systems, they tend to sacrifice reliability for price and flexibility. Get a dedicated old-fashioned IP-based video doorbell system instead.

2, run a dedicated line from the camera to the screen for maximup erformance and reliability instead of relying on your existing network infrastructure. If you have reason to, add a dedicated switch to get the data into your network. That is to say, if your network is a tree, dont't mount the camera and the screen on different branches, but right out therre on the same twig.

3, consider keeping your video infrastructure in a dedicated VLAN with good QoS or a routed subnet, either of which will keep much of the network prattle routinely going on in a highly-populated network away from the critical lines

night tundra
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i'm all with you on 1)

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every bit of change i've made to my house, it can work without HA if needed

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that said, the reolink doorbell does have a "dumb" chime connected via 915MHz

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so even if the network is down it should work, but i'm still losing 2-way audio

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and as for the use case, well i think my gf mentionned it one time and i just jumped on the opportunity to have a new project 😂

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but tbh i'm not comfortable either having a camera pointing on the street (kinda illegal in my country) nor adding points of failure and downgrading the overall UX

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those thoughts came along the way (and of course after benchmarking / buying / ripping off / running a cat6)

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the only thing that push me toward finishing the project is the money involved (doorbell, poe switch, cabling, etc)

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well i guess i answered myself 😔

magic kettle
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you don't really need to have a separate switch massively as long as it's not the cheap isp router haha

sinful knot
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It'll probably end up costing me the better part of 2000 cu to replace all the Echos, but it's a clear path forward

night tundra
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yeah i'll always be able to reuse the cat6 in the future if necessary. i learnt some stuff on the way. i'll try to reuse the reolink doorbell to monitor my cats&dog while i'm away

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it's juste a camera with a button, in the end

sinful knot
magic kettle
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rb5009 is definitely overkill I'd say kekwrage

sinful knot
magic kettle
magic kettle
sinful knot
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I've got a few things that will probably never work without a cloud connection, but I'm trying to go as local as possible myself.

magic kettle
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made an addon of my own to do some plane tracking things lol