Amcrest Doorbel AD110: Expose Call Button

Hardware
42

Nope, I have the AD410. I’ve never updated firmware. I’ve actually had it isolated from the Internet from day 1.

I just listened to * events and amongst the massive influx of events in that few seconds, I got camera.front_doorbell_main, camera.front_doorbell_sub_1, camera.front_doorbell_sub_2, and camera.front_doorbell_sub_3. But no button press. Those came from the Dahua integration, presumably because my hand went over the camera when I pressed the button.

EDIT: button presses are showing up in the Amcrest app. Not sure where to go from here. The Dahua integration was doing everything I needed it to, and now it’s not.

43

I don’t have any idea what happened to the custom Dahua integration, but yeah - I see the issues have been really piling up there.

Meanwhile - as you have just found, the Amcrest integration is properly exposing the doorbell event. So all you have to do is set up an automation to trigger on the event instead of using the binary sensor equivalent. If you prefer to use a binary sensor, you have the option to create one manually, but it’s not really necessary.

Just refer to this example from a few posts up… Amcrest Doorbel AD110: Expose Call Button - #32 by GaryOkie

44

Oh… well, no, what I meant by my comment is that although there’s an amcrest listener, and although the Dahua integration is putting events on the bus… I’m getting nothing from the Amcrest integration. I tried listening and I don’t see that the Amcrest integration is exposing anything.

I can create a binary sensor easily. I just don’t know how to get the button press.

45

Apologies for my misinterpretation. What does your developer/Events panel show?

“amcrest” should be at the top of the list of listeners.

When I enter amcrest and click the start listening button, I immediately see various events occurring.

image

EDIT: nevermind, I see you already stated that you do now see an amcrest listener. So the question remains why you aren’t getting any events with the amcrest integration. Heck, I don’t know!

46

Yeah, and when I listen to amcrest I get nothing.

The only amcrest entity I have is camera.amcrest_camera, and it’s unavailable. I wonder if it’s the integration that’s not configured correctly. I would think it would give me an authentication error or something to tell me it’s not configured:

amcrest:
  - host: !secret amcrest_ip
    username: !secret amcrest_username
    password: !secret amcrest_password
    name: Front Doorbell
    stream_source: rtsp
    binary_sensors:
      - motion_detected
47

Well, that’s interesting… Of course no events will be returned from an unavailable camera entity. Furthermore, your entity should be camera.front_doorbell. I don’t where camera.amcrest_camera originated - maybe a carryover from custom Dahua?

I agree that you should have seen some sort of error in your logs.
Try adding these to your logs config and restarting:

    amcrest.http:  debug
    homeassistant.components.amcrest: debug
    homeassistant.components.camera: debug

Your YAML config looks fine, although I would not use the motion_detected binary sensor. It trips on any pixel changes in the motion detection zone, and does not honor human detection.

48

Oh, you’re assuming I checked the logs… :rofl:

I have a login error. I can’t imagine what it is. I’m using the same password as for the Dahua integration and for Synology’s Surveillance Station. But that’s why my integration isn’t configuring.

49

Doublecheck that the user id is admin and the password in the secrets file matches the one you used for the Dahua integration. To confirm what is stored by the Dahua integration, edit /config/.storage/core.config_entries - it’s under the Dahua domain.

50

I’m having some real issues with the Amcrest authentication. That’s what started all of this. There’s an account password and a device password. And when I change one, my Surveillance Station can’t access the camera, at all. No matter what I try. I’ve just simplified the password to remove special characters, and now Surveillance Station can’t get to the camera with the updated password. I’ll keep trying.

I got your note just a bit too late; I just deleted the Dahua integration. I’ll re-add that and the Amcrest integration with the new password info…

…and you’re not going to believe this. Now the Dahua integration has 19 entities instead of 16. The doorbell is recognized as a doorbell (AD410). So I can go back to not needing the Amcrest integration. The only difference, from the camera config standpoint, is the Amcrest account password is (again) the same as the camera device password in the app. It’s a different password than it used to be, but five minutes ago is the first time since I started this that they’ve been the same.

The only remaining issue: I can’t access the camera through Synology. With the exact same password (copy-pasted, I’m staring at it), I can’t authenticate the camera.

EDIT: I just entered the old password into Synology. 100% has been changed out in the Amcrest app everywhere… and it authenticates. What, the, ****.

EDIT 2: Is this some failure of the passwords to sync due to the fact that I have the device cut off from the Internet? That’s the only thing I can think of.

LAST F&$%ing EDIT I SWEAR: I’m staring at live feeds from HA and from Synology from the same camera authenticated with different passwords.

51

It sounds like there was some initial confusion between the Amcrest/SmartHome Account credentials and the AD410 credentials.

Hmm, having the Internet blocked could very possibly confuse the app when trying to sync up with the doorbell.

Have no idea how authentications are possible with different credentials.

52

Well, if nothing else, maybe my pain will serve to help someone that runs into something similar later. Thanks for hanging with me on this. I’m comfortable saying none of this was related to HA or either integration, and all of it was related to Amcrest and its handling of passwords.

1 Like
53

I have said it before and can’t repeat it enough. We all buy this doorbell for the rtsp stream but boy, is it crap!

Bugs in the doorbells firmware, bugs in the app… My neighbour’s cat triggers “human detected” notifications.

There are never updates of the firmware, so I’m sure Amcrest has abandoned it. When you contact them, all they say is to reset it and try again.

Meanwhile my friend with his Ring doorbell is laughing his ass off, he doesn’t care for rtsp of course.

If anyone’s looking for a business idea… There is a big need for a really good doorbell.

1 Like
54

Well after not hearing the door bell for about a week and no one saying anything (just knocking) I have discovered that the physical button just isn’t doing anything anymore.

I think it is time to toss the AD110 in the trash and given Amcrests terrible image quality / bit rate vs other door bells I think I am moving on to something else.

55

The button isn’t even ringing the internal chime? Or just not doing anything with Home Assistant events? If the latter, the problem could be due to installing the latest firmware which broke events. Or if you’re using the custom Dahua integration, it is having some issues with events as well.

But whatever the problem, it’s clearly time to move on to something that meets your needs better.

56

Not even the outdoor chime built into the device that normally works no matter what when you press the button.

I downloaded the latest firmware (not available in auto update) did a manual update with the amcrest IP config tool, did a full factory reset etc.

Camera still works.

And oddly a few hours later the doorbell did work once… My guess is that something is going bad hardware wise inside the door bell.

EDIT: !!!

The issue was that I was using go2rtc to access the RTSP stream and it supports two way audio which apparently completely disables the call button on amcrest cameras.

If you setup go2trc directly or via frigate .12 make sure to add #backchannel=0 to the end of the URL

1 Like
57

Glad you discovered the issue! Same issue can happen with the AD410 when enabling 2-way audio . This dead button issue was first discovered back in September… Go2rtc project - help thread - #127 by calisro

I’ve only recently switched to using go2rtc with the webrtc card and haven’t seriously looked at using the Frigate card yet - which blew me away with all its features and settings.

58

Same here! any solution to your problem?!

59

Mine has been working pretty regularly for the last couple of years. I can’t recall the fix, sorry–I’m sure it at least required a reinstall of the integration.