New to Home Assistant, havent done any soldering ever or any esp32 stuff, and I’m looking to make a very dumb apartment buzzer smart with as little physical modification as possible.
I currently have all my devices setup via Tuya and imported in home assistant. I havent started doing zigbee or anything like that.
I have a very old apartment buzzer that has three buttons, a talk a listen and a door open. Its connected through a closed system to the front pannel on the front door of the building.
When someone at the front door pushes my apartment number it buzzeses my pannel.
I freelance and run a home-based business so I typically have a lot of packages per week ordered through Amazon. A lot of the time im not home and want the ability to let Amazon in so packages can be left at my door.
I already have a switch bot set up that works remotely and will push the button when I trigger it in tuya, home Assistant, or google home and it will unlock the door.
The thing i need help with is i want to take this to the next level and get the ability to have some sort of notification pushed to my phone when the buzzer goes off so i can open the door remotely.
As I said previously I rent and have zero experience in soldering.
I’ve googled this and seen a few solutions but they all involved soldering.
I had the idea of trying a vibration sensor but looking on amazon they all appear to be zigbee and not able to run without a hub…
It looks pretty basic inside with just 4 terminals. They probably don’t line up in the same order as the example in the picture right hand side but it would be easy to work out which terminal with a multi-meter. Not much suggestion if it’s AC or DC.
I tried ordering a tuya vibration sensor as that seems the easiest off Amazon , turned out it was a non smart vibration sensor that just makes a noise when shaken.
I can take a multimeter to the inside no problem.
What would be the easiest equipment to hook up to that wire to get a notification that could be reversed when I leave?
Again I apologize for my ignorance this is my first time venturing into a non preulbuilt solution
The most important thing is your safety. Messing with high voltage mains is DANGEROUS. The simplest and safest way would be a binary sensor that picks up loud noises. It uses a KY-038module. These are very cheap and very easy to connect in ESPhome on an esp32 or esp8266. No soldering and easy to install and remove. You would just position the microphone next to the intercom speaker.
binary_sensor:
- platform: gpio
pin: 2 or whatever pin you can use on your esp device
name: "Sound level"
filters:
- delayed_off: 35ms
So when it picks up a sound it sends the binary sensor to on and you make an automation to alert you to the loud noise. It can be set off by other things nearby especially door slamming, but this wont be a problem if you are out. As part of the automation you would have it notify you by something like Telegram it has triggered and you can then open the door or you could have it automatically open the door.
Alternatively would be to connect an voltage sensor like a INA219 in series with the tone in line if it were DC or an optocoupler across the tone in and audio common if it’s AC. You would have to check if it’s AC/DC and voltages. To get the voltage you might need some one to press the buzzer outside to see what voltages you get.
