It seems there are a lot of smart doorbells around. And, also, it seems that many of these doorbells should not even be called as “smart” because of all the issues they have.
I am searching for doorbells that work with Home Assistant and also complies with the specs below:
Wi-fi or LAN Ethernet
Integrates into Home Assistant
Exposes the Call Button press with no delays
Allows to see the camera via Home Assistant
Integrates to NAS devices such as Synology Surveillance Station
PIR motion sensor
Android app the works well with no delays
Call feature: when someone “calls” it appears in the cell phone as if someone was calling and then, if you pick up the call, all the other devices connected to the same doorbell stop ringing (because another person just picked up the call)
I did a lot of research here in the community and also on other places. And (yes!) there are many topics about doorbells. But all the discussions I have found are related to specific features (mostly about a good integration with Home Assistant). That’s not what I wanted. I wanted to discuss about other features such as NAS integration, app features etc. not only the integration in Home Assistant.
It looks products from Dahua will be the closest to my needs. I have seen this video from
Intermit Tech in the past. I couldn’t find any info about motion detection (PIR vs video motion detector). At the same time it will probably work with a NAS, since it uses ONVIF/RTSP.
The thing is… I am always a little bit reticent about Dahua. Nowadays, I have an Amcrest AD110 and, as you may know, it is based on another doorbell from Dahua. I bought this one after watching a video from digiblurDIY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHH0S2j6uBU). He was SUPER recommending this doorbell. But in the end, AD110 simply doesn’t work! It is full of bugs, issues, delays… One of the bad things is that if you connect this “guy” to Home Assistant + all the cell phones/tablets + NAS, it will get so slow/delayed that it won’t serve the purpose anymore. This doorbell annoys me a lot and, if you look at its specifications, it will cover almost all my needs. So, I guess it would also be nice to hear from people who uses those devices in their homes.
I was wondering if anyone here have experiences with other doorbells from Dahua also…
I recently took the plunge and bought an Amcrest AD110. It seems quite close to your requirements albeit not exact (and I won’t know about the stop ringing aspect you’re referring to until I’ve tried it). I’ll post here to report on my findings once I get it some weeks from now. The Amcrest and Dahua products are apparently the same on the inside. I also considered building my own but didn’t feel up for the effort. I also looked into Hikvision due to the HA support (community and integrations). I wasn’t willing to fork out >$300 for a doorbell and avoiding cloud-based products was a priority.
I am curious to know your thoughts about this product.
It seems most of the issues I have (delays…) are related to the Amcrest Smart Home App. I am still trying to find a way to communicate to this doorbell without using the app / cloud.
Interesting… I relied on this comparison page’s info. I sure hope the info is good. Holding thumbs…
Btw, if you’re willing to pay, DoorBird seems like the best out there (couldn’t remember their name earlier but the link above reminded me). Just hellish expensive but may well be worth it.
I just decided to make my own…
bought a cheap cam from china and hooked it up by motioneye.
Interfaced existing doorbel/ringer by esphome and combined the two…
costs …aprox €30,-
PS: Cam comes with 2 way audio, for which i still use the original app…but i don’t mind that
Well… I guess my only issue with what’s written in this page is that I didn’t find another way to use the “2-way” audio feature without having to use the Amcrest cloud based app.
I have to come back and say that I have managed to fully integrate this doorbell with Synology Surveillance Station.
Now I have two way audio properly set up, a cloudless doorbell and no delays! I guess I have to agree that despites all the issues, if you manage to configure it as local only, this is a great doorbell.
There might be some news in the future since they launched a new product:
Instead of using Blue Iris I am using Synology Surveillance Station. It has an option to add a new camera and then you can just choose AMCREST AD110 for automatic configurations. It works like a charm!
I don’t think 2-way audio in HA is possible. You can get 1-way audio using the custom WebRTC card but nothing more. That works, because the stream isn’t going via HA. HA merely provides the configured URL to the browser which then opens the stream directly.
