Doorbell project (flic, Homekit, Pushover, Hue)

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1

Thought I’d share my DIY doorbell I’ve set up with HomeAssistant in the middle. We’ve recently built a garden office, so getting notified when the doorbell was rung required some smarts as we can’t hear the standard chime. (excuse the amateur diagram…)
doorbell

So it starts with the cute little flic bluetooth buttons communicating with the pi using the flic addon.
A little automation takes the button-press as a trigger and executes a script as an action.
The script firstly turns on a ‘virtual’ switch in HASS. This switch is exposed to Apple Homekit. An automation setup in iOS Home app then plays audio (chime) on my Homepod. After 5 seconds the script turns the virtual switch off again, ready for the next press.
Secondly the script flashes several of my Hue lights.
Thirdly the script uses the pushover integration to send a notification to both mine and my partner’s phone, which in turn notifies our smart watches.

So one button press gives us visual, audible and touch notifications, all within about 2 seconds - enough time to sprint down the garden to catch the delivery driver :slight_smile:

2

Hi @mattcd216 can you please share your configuration to get the “virtual switch” to chime a homepod? I can get the virtual switch showing in Home App, but there’s no option to “chime” the Homepod, just play music which doesn’t work very well as a doorbell.

3

You’re almost there - if you search Apple Music for sound effects or similar you’ll find plenty of albums with doorbell chimes, knock-knock, etc.

4

Thanks - I actually had an “input_sensor” instead of a “binary_sensor” configured which caused the “chime” functionality of the homepod to be hidden. Changing this fixed it.

The Apple Music alternative is unfortunately not good for a doorbell. 1) it’s slow, about 5-10 seconds from button pressed to music playing and 2) I couldn’t figure out how to make it play just one song (or doorbell FX sound) - it wanted to play it on repeat!

5

Interesting @CousinLarry Apple Music works ok for me - one play only and plays within 2 seconds.

Where have you specified binary_sensor? The only way I could think of making the Homepod play audio was through an iOS Home app automation, so I created a virtual doorbell switch in HomeAssistant that would show in the Home app to trigger the automation. Here’s my HA virtual switch config:

switch:
  - platform: template
    switches:
      doorbell:
        turn_on:
          service: switch.turn_on
          target:
            entity_id: switch.doorbell
        turn_off:
          service: switch.turn_off
          target:
            entity_id: switch.doorbell