I have seen working examples that require no wiring at all. If you have a mechanical bell that uses a solenoid, you can try to just use a 433 or zwave door sensor attached near the solenoid. I you are lucky, the solenoid will trigger the reed switch inside the door sensor when the bell is going off
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I love all these ingenious solutions proposed here… I could have actually kept my old style door bell…
Anyway, I was lucky enough that my neighbour could wire in a dry contact output for me on the (telephone-style) receiver when the doorbell is pressed. (It did not deliver a consistent response to each press to use it directly.)
I have not gotten round to take the project further, so are there anyone here that has the code/steps on how to get a dry contact via the Raspberry pi GPIO available into HA?
Thanks
Ps. Sorry to high-jack the thread…
Hmmm… that sounds really interesting and should be fairly easy to test and setup. Might even be more reliable than a vibration sensor. Will test this.
I like the idea, but to take it a little further I’d like to be able to disable the bell at certain times, when the kids sleep for example, but still receive notification when it was triggered.
I just finished doing this, fully with z-wave. There are guides out there to do this with a battery powered device but I didn’t want to go that route, my solution is using a hardwired always on zwave device. I have a pending write up on it but feel free to pm me and I’ll share what I did
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Great, can’t wait as we’ll be moving soon and I want to implement that in the new flat.
Sent you a PM!
I have a Nexa 433mhz doorbell that im trying to integrate with HA.
When i did use Vera i just added it like a switch, then i could make a notification.
Any ide how I could do this with HA? I did try to add it as a switch, but it did not work.
Can you send me, thanks
Hey @ssowy
Not sure if this would be of interest to you, but I did the same thing to my house about 1.5 years ago using MySensors on my hardwired two door chime. I had to basically re-wire part of the system, but I was able to use most of the existing cable that was already in the walls. It’s a change that isn’t hard to put back so, as long as you are not planning to move in a hurry this should work fine.
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By the way, I did finish this project. I basically used an ESP8266 wired to a vibration sensor. The vibration sensor is attached to the ringer (basically the plates that vibrate to make the sound.) When the vibration sensor triggers, it signals the ESP8266 to connect to the wifi and to push a notification. I did not have to integrate it with HASS though, I just used linked it up via the Maker IFTTT channel for the push. I just have to fix it so that I don’t need to use tape to attach it on the wall/ringer.
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There are wayyy too many ways to skin a cat! Well done!
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Basically this could be mounted outside in the fron door (I have a garden), in a traditional doorbell, and send a binary_sensor when somebody rings, correct?
my problem with that would be:
- WiFi coverage
- WiFi reliability
- Lag
I would use zwave, or even RF433, No state is needed I think for this application RF433 is enough (and actually better).
What could be a good (simple) solution for RF433 dumb doorbell ring alert?
This is an old thread but the lack of doorbell choices is still a fact for home assistant.
I’m currently using Xiaomi wireless switch, programmed ti triger a ring on Xiaomi gateway.
Also, it is configured to send me notification on my phone via Telegram when someone rings.
It is 100% wireless solution, rock solid and one of the cheapest combinations on the market
Fun topic! If I would get 1€ for everytime someone asks “What is it good for?” the system would have payed for itself already!
I also use a Zigbee button from Xiaomi (~5€) which I opened to solder wires to the button base contacts.
Then attached the wires to the dumb doorbell… so i thought.
However, common doorbells (at least in Germany) use AC power (8-12V) for some reason. So I put a 12V AC relais in the circuit to accomodate for that. The outputs of that relay are then wired to the Xiaomi button contacts and will trigger the notification.
An even cheaper solution (without any gateway and fancy RF stuff) would be to use an Amazon Dash Button instead of the Xiaomi button. Same wiring as described above. So total costs ~10€. Sometimes the Dash buttons are even available for 1-2€ so with some market timing you could get even lower than 10€.
It also yields a much cleaner look than attaching circuit boards or raspberries 
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I recommend and use a xiaomi door/window sensor.
Interesting… could you elaborate on that a bit?
I explained the teardown of a door/window sensor here: Xiaomi Gateway Integration - #1575 by syssi
Instead a wall switch I connected my door bell. A small circuit handles the AC power and toggles the GPIO.
This is what I ended up using and it works great. I’m not sure about powering the Sonoff SV from the doorbell transformer since mine was 16vAC and that’s outside the operating range for the SV. I had unused wires on the Cat 5e cable running from the doorbell transformer to the mechanical chime, so I plugged in a 5V phone charger and connected it to two of the unused wires by the doorbell transformer and then connected the 5v to the sonoff sv inside the mechanical chime. I connected the 16vAC to the relay and the wires from the doorbell as a push button. I had to use the PulseTime function in Tasmota so the doorbell would turn on and then off, but it’s working great and there is no noticeable delay from button push to doorbell chime.
I was also able to power an IP camera for the front door using a similar method, Even with the 5v and 16vac on the cat 5e cable I still had extra wires to run 12v from the doorbell transformer all the way to the doorbell. I then added an extra length of wire behind the wall from the camera to the doorbell and tied it to the 12v source. No wires visible and I have all the functionality of a video doorbell, but it’s fully integrated into HA and locally controlled.
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