Need Advice for Smart Doorbell Automation

Hardware
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I was thinking of starting a smart doorbell project. I know there are a number of smart doorbell projects and “instructables” out there, however, I could not find one that is specific to my idea.

I currently have a google home that opens the door by through emulated hue + rpi_gpio + pushing the rf door opener remote. ( I would have preferred to use the rpi_rf platform but unfortunately, I could not get the rf codes due to chipset compatibility issues with rf sniffing.

Now, I would love to incorporate a smart doorbell (probably with RPi Zero W with pi cam) in my front door where it would switch a television input to where a raspberry pi is connected that receives the video feed from the pi zero. This is so that when someone would press the doorbell, the said TV would flash who’s at the front door for 5 seconds and return to previous input of TV.

I was thinking this could be done with a harmony hub, the raspberry pi zero, raspberry pi connected to the TV and of course Home Assistant being the brain that brings all of these hardware and idea together.

I would like to ask for any ideas if I am going in the right path or there could be a better way to approach this project.

Thanks in advance for the ideas!

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Hey Rob… Thanks for the reply.

This is an awesome start. However, how could I apply video streaming/recording instead of still images taken by the pi camera? What software should I use? Thanks.

And do you think my idea about having the harmony hub switch the TV input to where the raspberry pi receiving the video feasible?

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Hi Charles, the pi camera module documentation describes video streaming to a browser and that worked well for me in the past.

I don’t know if HASS supports video streams, but perhaps it could be done as an ipanel?

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See 4.10 I think

https://picamera.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.13/recipes2.html#web-streaming

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Thanks for the info Rob! Will be replicating your project as soon as I have everything ready! Thanks again!

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