So I had the idea this morning, after being locked out and the kids not hearing me knocking, that I should set up a smart doorbell so HA can then send notifications to the kids’ computers telling them someone’s at the door. Easy - get a basic cheap as chips doorbell button, wire it to an ESP and flash ESP Home, and set up HA automations to handle the notifications.
Discussing it with the girlfriend, it came up that she’d like the kids to be able to see who’s there. OK… Camera doorbell, like all the cool kids have now. Include a link to the web interface in the popup for the kids. Easy. Well… Less easy. Because now I need a camera.
Does anyone know of any models of doorbell camera that can be flashed with ESP Home? Does being a Tuya model (or brand that is known to be Tuya driven) increase the chances that it’s likely to work?
Oh, and I’m in Australia. Ideally I’d like to walk into Bunnings and grab something. I know I could buy an ESPCam board and camera and 3D print a case… But I’d prefer something that looks professional.
Can I ask what your reasons are for the esphome requirement? You may be able to reach the same goals without esphome. If you want fully local, you can have that with off the shelf firmware too, and with a much smarter doorbell.
If you prefer the esp route, check the ESP32-CAM, it has the camera built-in, you can print a case & wire a button up to it. I would be concerned about shielding it from the weather though.
you can connect your existing doorbell to esp device. just connect it as binary sensor.
You’ll need to disconnect the existing 24VAC circuit. Really you can get an esp32 relay connect the 24VAC to the relay and connect the doorbell button to esp32. push bell >> relay on 1second and binary sensor ON. That would be handled on esp32. HA can see the binary sensor and just notify when binary sensor ON.
Regarding, image I would just add a POE camera that covers the front door. Battery camera works but in that case just get the Reolink.
OR
Reolink has POE doorbell and battery/wifi doorbell that are popular with HA users.
Never used either but Reolink makes decent products and are HA certified (or something similar)
Ring and others make doorbells but I’m not a fan for various reasons.
Bunnings. $50. Grid Connect Orion camera. SC002HA. Tuya based - no reflashing needed. Works right out of the tin. Has motion detection - maybe use that for your doorbell. Supports two-way audio (great for Halloween spooky sounds). The kids will have fun with the tilt and swivel till they get bored. Has infrared night mode. Make aure to get a robust USB-A phone charger for 5v power, and remember, like most other Tuya devices, it connects on 2.4Ghz WiFi. Setting a fixed IP address on your router DHCP allocations recommended.
Ring uses AWS, and we know how that went the other day, when half the internet suddenly didn’t work!
Handy hint: If you want the kids to come running to open the door for you, set them up on a secondary router connected to a power switch you can turn off remotely using HomeAssistant, and change your primary router password and never tell them what it is. Works wonders for getting them to come to dinner, FAST! Also bed time curfew. No more “wait till I finish this game” stuff.
Good luck with it. Post your yaml etc when you get it working, for others to benefit.
I generally distrust commercial smart devices at the software level. Too much reliance on external systems, and generally they fail if the internet fails, which is silly for a device physically attached to the house.
We don’t have wiring like that in Australia. Most people use cheap wireless doorbells, or none at all. Ring and similar supply battery powered units in Australia.
I could hook into a battery powered wired doorbell fairly easily though, I suppose.
That’s the alternative route I was thinking. Stick a camera up in the corner above the door where I can drill a hole for wiring fairly easily and power it off mains.
Then use a common cheap simple wired doorbell, and shove an ESP inside the house powered off a USB adapter much like the Frenck design mentioned in another post.
Fully offline, or do you have to configure it with the app first? Does it crap out if the internet is blocked?
I’m tempted to just go buy one of the cheap Orion camera doorbells and disassemble it to see what’s inside. I’m guessing probably one of the Beken SoCs and a random chinese camera chip. The reviews suggest they don’t run off the battery too long though, so I sort of held off.
OK, so I ended up going to Bunnings and buying the cheapest Orion smart doorbell they had (DC10HA) so I could experiment… So far I haven’t done anything with software but just looked at the hardware.
Conveniently, the battery cover (3x AA) is also the entire unit cover, and the circuit board is exposed without opening anything that would void the warranty. Board is held in by 4 screws, which were too tempting and I took it out. Here’s the photos…
SoC is a Beken BK7252. This seems to be supported by ESPHome if I decide to go that way.
Camera is a GC0328, which is not supported by ESPHome. It’s pretty garbage on paper, so I can’t imagine it’ll be much good in real life anyway. Stock Tuya firmware only uses it to take a single still image according to the instructions, so not super useful anyway. I’ll almost certainly be adding an IP camera elsewhere (or getting a better brand doorbell camera).
There is a PSRAM chip - AP Memory 1604M-3SQR - which is 16M-bit (2MB). I’m guessing this is used for the camera image data.
There’s also a generic looking PIR sensor, the main doorbell button and some LEDs. I would guess these are all connected to GPIOs as just basic binary ins and outs.
Indoor chime unit is triggered over 433MHz. I haven’t opened that yet. It does talk about “pairing” in the manual, so I assume they use at least a basic level of code matching, which means I probably can’t use this part with ESPHome unless the indoor chime unit happens to have a microcontroller I can reprogram too. Or maybe rig it up with one of the spare ESP01 modules I’ve got in my parts drawer.
The board appears to be designed to be semi-generic… Camera connector is wide despite only using a handful of pins. There’s a bunch of unpopulated places for ICs. And there’s a rectangle area marked out that could be intended for a LiPo pack to be taped on. I’m not sure if this is also used in other Orion doorbells or possibly even other Tuya doorbells.
I intend to try connecting it to Local Tuya and/or Tuya Local before doing anything dramatic like ESPHome-ing it. But I have doubts this will work because both say they don’t really support battery powered devices.
Here’s the photos…
