The last similar question was asked 5 years ago here. And in the IOT market, that can be a product-life-time.
Also, most questions are of the form “I have this and I want to hook it up to HA”. In this case, I haven’t bought anything and even the wiring is up for grabs (i.e. maybe I should put in CAT5 and get a POE smart doorbell w/o batteries (as batteries and under sized transformers appears to be the biggest smart door bell problems)).
So, what’s good?
I would really really like a smart door bell that does not need a cloud service to operate. Actually, I require that. No way I’m going to spend $hundreds$ and my time on something that can be shutdown at any moment.
I would really like an RTSP feed so that I can do what I want w/the video. I have this from my SWAN box and it has been a super feature. I can run MOTION on a RPi and generate MQTT messages to turn on lights all w/in my own network. Something like that w/a smart door bell would be great!
Batteries are fine, but I don’t mind putting in a different power supply to keep things running 24/7 dependably. I’m not even sure any smart door bell comes that way (w/o batteries and all the problems they case).
POE and no batteries is an interesting option. Then I don’t have to worry about WIFI and security of WIFI and different protocols getting broken and old equipment that can’t keep up and having to run old WIFI networks in order to stay compatible … you get the idea. The only down side to POE … it looks like all POE smart door bells are HUGE. Some requiring being “sunk” into a wall cavity the size of a 2x4 electrical box. Well, I’ve brick and that’s not happening. So, only surface mountable POE solutions please.
Of course easy/secure HA integration. I’d rather not have to retain passwords and logins in HA (i.e. keep everything w/in the home network). But that may be too much to ask. Most solutions I have see require going out of the home network just to get access to the smart door bell data/images/video. If there is an exception … please let us know!!
-thanks for any insights as to which current (2024) smart door bell integrate well w/HA!
I’m happy enough with my Reolink PoE doorbell. I have brick too and it took a hammer drill to get the cable through the wall but after that it’s all good. Don’t expect 2-way audio via HA but the Reolink app works well enough and you don’t have to do cloud subscriptions.
The contractor just finished caulking which rules out POE (he was kind enough (and efficient) to drill through the brick and splice in an extension to the existing 2 wire door bell). So, looks like I’ve lost POE. But the brick mount should look way better then trying to squeeze in a camera between the door and brick.
So 1 vote for Reolink. I understand they are generally less expensive and people have been able to get a RTSP video feed from then w/o having to go outside their home network.
FWIW, I know the path that my old 2 wires door bell cable takes to get to hole in the brick outside. And, as circuitous as it is, I’d give it a 50/50 change of breaking if I tried using it to pull CAT5 cable through that path.
I have two Dahua VTO’s (2211) connected for a couple of months now. First one is powered via poe and connected via lan, other one on 12V and on wifi. I don’t have internal unit, only connection to HA. So far it works like a charm. I receive ring, i can see video, i can’t talk though, but that wasn’t my intention anyway - if someone rings i go out and open the door. Important thing is that i get the ring (on all my tablets) and i see who’s coming.
