2K RTSP Video Doorbell on offer at Amazon UK

Wasn’t sure where to put this really… but just a heads up for anyone looking out for a video doorbell - Amazon UK currently have the Meco J5 2K doorbell with a 50% off voucher bringing it down to £39.99!
It has ONVIF support and seems to be pretty decent quality for the money - its a hard wired (power only) bell, with 2.4GHz wifi for video and 433mhz for the bell ringer.

Mine arrived yesterday and I’ve got to say i’m quite impressed for the money - only set it up in the cloudedge app at the moment, but should be possible to hook to HA with little effort due to the ONVIF support.
I’ve requested a copy of the latest firmware from Meco support to see if there is anything that can be done to modify it at all :slight_smile:

(edit - Helps if I include a link for anyone interested :stuck_out_tongue: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08GLZN8RC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Thanks for this tip but the voucher seems not be available anymore. :slightly_frowning_face:

Oh that’s a shame, but not surprising as it seemed like a bargain at 39.99.
Looks like it’s a different seller on Amazon now, so I guess all the stock for the discounted one has gone.

It’s worth noting I’m 99% sure the iogeek and Geree models on Amazon are exactly the same doorbell… pretty sure I saw the cheapest at something like £44.99 when I looked before. So may be worth a check.

Just in case anyone is wondering about getting one of these doorbells… I spent the last day or so capturing the traffic from the CloudEdge app in an Android emulator and checking the behaviour.
I also managed to capture the firmware update URL and downloaded the upgrade package to my PC.
After binwalking the firmware and extracting the contents I found that it’s based on a common hardware platform manufactured by ‘PPStrong’.

After some searching around I found there is a github repo detailing some hacks for PPStrong based doorbells - and using some of the notes there I’ve now managed to get telnet access to the doorbell and am looking to get MQTT notifications to HA when the button is pushed.
There are also some mods that can be made to fully disconnect the doorbell from the cloud (though at the expense of 2way audio - but video and doorbell notifications are possible).
Luckily built in tools on the bell already have MQTT capabilities so hopefully button presses should be straight forward.

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To wrap this up for anyone interested, I’ve now got the doorbell working with MQTT to HA and implemented the auto discovery so once it connects to MQTT 2x binary sensors are created in HA, one for motion detection and one for the button.
This coupled with the video feed straight to HA allows for a cloudless setup if desired.

Great progress Swifty, I’ve ordered one from Amazon based on this, arriving tomorrow.

Glad you the info helped. If you check the GitHub link above there is an issue ticket I opened for the meco when trying to figure out the password, most of the findings are documented there.

However I’m going to try and find a bit of time over the next few days to write up everything properly and post the scripts etc

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I finally got around to zipping up the files for the doorbell and posted a small guide up on github - it’s here; Meco J5 Plus - Finding the password · Issue #35 · guino/BazzDoorbell · GitHub

Hopefully it will help someone in the future if they try to integrate this doorbell to HA :slight_smile:

This is now available for £47.99 on Prime Day!

I’ve just bought one.

For US users:

$70 USD

In-case anyone ever does the hack to their doorbell, here is my experience updating the firmware (I’d already done the hack, and then re-installed the cloudedge app to update the firmware yesterday).

  • If you have the hack applied to the doorbell, simply edit the contents of the SD card to remove ppsapp-custom and the ‘home’ folder in the root of the SD card.
  • Reboot the doorbell and make sure it starts OK.
  • Apply the firmware update as normal via the cloudedge app
  • Once the firmware update completes, the doorbell should restart, check the doorbell functions OK in the cloudedge app
  • Remove the SD and check the contents, you should have a ‘home’ folder again - inside this you’ll find ppsapp, this needs to be copied to the root of the SD card and renamed to ppsapp-custom
  • Insert in the doorbell and restart it, and now you should have MQTT messages again!

*Disclaimer :stuck_out_tongue: - This is what worked for me, but I guess it could change depending on which firmware version you go to/from.
When I didn’t replace the ppsapp with the newer version (ie. left the one from the older firmware on the SD card) the doorbell just got into a boot loop.

Hi @swifty

Thanks for your excellent guide!

I’m almost there, but I can’t get telnet to work - the port is apparently still closed!

Did you run into this issue at all? I can’t for the life of me work out what has gone wrong.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Strange - No I didn’t have any issue with getting telnet going.

Have you gone through all of ‘My S90PPStrong has MTDNUM=5, can I bypass that? · Issue #13 · guino/BazzDoorbell · GitHub’?

You could check the contents of the SD card in a PC and see if /home/app/ppsapp is present, if so the initial script from the hack has worked OK.

Also note that you need to continue with the steps (starting at step 8) at No programmer, No UART, No problem! · Issue #2 · guino/BazzDoorbell · GitHub (this is referenced at the end of issue #13)
Noting the section where you download busybox separately from https://github.com/guino/BazzDoorbell/blob/82c5c353c6b0b80016c4c17d7685a50e80dfb93d/mmc/busybox?raw=true - this should be on the root of the SD card too.

Got it! I had thought I had updated the busybox file, but I hadn’t!

Telnet working now, but the MQTT doesn’t seem to be working. I’ll keep trying, making sure I’m doing it right.

Can I just check - when all completed do you get alerts on your phone as well as MQTT?

Thanks

Glad you got it going :smiley:

Yes the cloudedge notifications on the app still function as normal as well as the mqtt messages being sent.

You could double check the mqtt variables at the start of the logparser script, maybe one is incorrect.

Another thing could be the messages it’s looking for are different on your firmware version. Do you know what version your doorbell is running? You should be able to find it in the cloudedge app.

Got it working!

But as I use this with Frigate, I decided that I didn’t need the hack, as the camera has Onvif built in, and any person detected is recorded by Frigate.

For anyone else reading this, the camera works great and the hack works too, I would recommend it!

Where can I buy one of these?

Unavailable.
UK, Europe?

This one appears similar.
No guarantees it’s the same device with the same firmware, however. :frowning: