Hello community, Ring Inc. informed me that my Doorbell II will no longer work as of November 15. So I need a replacement. I want to achieve the same thing I had with the Ring integration and my Aqara lock: When someone rings the doorbell, a notification should be sent to my smartphone, and when I open it, I want to be able to see who is at the door and open it with the touch of a button. QUESTION: Do I need the Reolink Hub for this or not?
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No you don’t need the hub for that, it’s just the basic way of working. You need the hub to connect your doorbell to HA though.
I have a “Reolink Video Doorbell WiFi” and it connects to HA just fine with no hub.
I made the switch to Reolink this year and it’s been one of the best things I’ve done especially since I no longer have to pay monthly for a Blink subscription that keeps going up in price. Yes there was a larger upfront cost but still much better to be local. I think the hub would allow you to have at least some kind of access to Reolink cameras that aren’t directly supported by Home Assistant. Just double check the Reolink integration to make sure the camera/doorbell is supported directly, if it is then you shouldn’t need the hub. I personally like the hub, if someone steals the camera the recordings would be in house rather than on the micro card thingier inside the camera itself.
If you want recordings I’d look at Frigate instead of the hub. It is a bit of a pain to set up properly, but you’ll get great HA integration and it is a very nice piece of software. I use it with the Reolink POE video doorbell and a POE camera for the backyard. But also without hub or Frigate you have a nice HA integration that works quite well.
Thanks so far, but I forgot to mention that I mean the Battery Video Doorbell.