In case anyone is considering installing an internet connected video doorbell, I wanted to post about my recent install of a Doorbird doorbell.
There are currently a few internet connected video doorbells available including Ring, Skybell and Doorbird. All three are paired with a companion mobile app which means that you can get notified on your phone when someone rings the doorbell, view that person in real time and then have a two-way conversation with them. You also can get snapshots of everyone that rings the doorbell (or sets off the motion sensor on it). The features/capabilities differ somewhat across all three products so you have to do your homework to figure out which one best fits your set-up.
For me, I had two key requirements:
A) Since I already had a Cat5 cable wired to my doorbell location, I really wanted a unit that had an Ethernet port and supported PoE as I wanted to have a highly reliable video connection to the doorbell (vs. Wifi) and did not want to worry about changing out batteries. Doorbird was the only unit that supported PoE so that made the decision somewhat easy.
B) I wanted to be able to somehow integrate the doorbell into my HS system so that I could set off events when the doorbell was pressed. This was a much tougher requirement as none of the doorbells explicitly supported HS or any other home automation system for that matter and, at the time, none had published a public API. The one thing that gave me hope with Doorbird is that they mentioned they had a contact closure wire (for triggering an existing doorbell) and I figured I might be able to use that to integrate into Homeseer. My hopes were dashed though when I contacted their support team and they said they did not think the contact closure wires could be wired into a home automation system. They said they would be releasing an rest API shortly, so I figured I would go ahead an order one and if the contact closure wires didn't work hopefully I could figure out an HS script to interface HS with their API when it was released.
I went ahead and purchased the unit for $300 all in (vs. $200 for Ring and Skybell) and it arrived in about a week from Germany. As you might expect from German engineers, the unit is solid and well built and came with everything you might need to install it.
Here's a picture of the installed unit:
The big and very positive discovery for me is that Doorbird's main PoE Internet connection only used 4 of the 8 Cat 5 wires. (This is not documented in any of their marketing material). This left 4 wires free and allowed me connect the 2 contact closure wires from the doorbell to the same Cat5 cable. Back at my Ethernet switch I was able to split off the contact closure wires separately from the PoE Ethernet connection and wire them directly into my Elk M1 (which in turn is connected to my HS server).
As it turns out, Doorbird released their Rest API last week, so it's probably possible to just interact with Doorbird via the API now as opposed to using the contact closure wires, but for what it's worth you can do both.
Here's a picture showing the Cat5 cable and how the contact closure wires were split off:
Net, net I now have all the core features of an internet connected video doorbell, but I also have been able to wire it into my HS setup. This has allowed me to kick off HS events when it is pressed. My events are pretty simple (turning on the front porch light if it's dark outside, ringing one of the new Aeon Labs Zwave doorbells and announcing that there's someone at the front door) but its nice to have everything wired up together. My plan is to have a number of Zwave doorbells throughout the house that will all ring when the button is pressed.
Anyway, just thought that other HS owners considering adding a video doorbell might like to hear about my experience as I can confirm that it is possible to wire at least one of them into HS and that once you do it's easy to use them in events.
I have had the doorbell installed a couple weeks now and it is working well. I have found that the ability to get remotely pinged on your phone when someone rings the doorbell is actually pretty useful although you may get some odd stares and funny questions when you phone rings like a doorbell!
There are currently a few internet connected video doorbells available including Ring, Skybell and Doorbird. All three are paired with a companion mobile app which means that you can get notified on your phone when someone rings the doorbell, view that person in real time and then have a two-way conversation with them. You also can get snapshots of everyone that rings the doorbell (or sets off the motion sensor on it). The features/capabilities differ somewhat across all three products so you have to do your homework to figure out which one best fits your set-up.
For me, I had two key requirements:
A) Since I already had a Cat5 cable wired to my doorbell location, I really wanted a unit that had an Ethernet port and supported PoE as I wanted to have a highly reliable video connection to the doorbell (vs. Wifi) and did not want to worry about changing out batteries. Doorbird was the only unit that supported PoE so that made the decision somewhat easy.
B) I wanted to be able to somehow integrate the doorbell into my HS system so that I could set off events when the doorbell was pressed. This was a much tougher requirement as none of the doorbells explicitly supported HS or any other home automation system for that matter and, at the time, none had published a public API. The one thing that gave me hope with Doorbird is that they mentioned they had a contact closure wire (for triggering an existing doorbell) and I figured I might be able to use that to integrate into Homeseer. My hopes were dashed though when I contacted their support team and they said they did not think the contact closure wires could be wired into a home automation system. They said they would be releasing an rest API shortly, so I figured I would go ahead an order one and if the contact closure wires didn't work hopefully I could figure out an HS script to interface HS with their API when it was released.
I went ahead and purchased the unit for $300 all in (vs. $200 for Ring and Skybell) and it arrived in about a week from Germany. As you might expect from German engineers, the unit is solid and well built and came with everything you might need to install it.
Here's a picture of the installed unit:
The big and very positive discovery for me is that Doorbird's main PoE Internet connection only used 4 of the 8 Cat 5 wires. (This is not documented in any of their marketing material). This left 4 wires free and allowed me connect the 2 contact closure wires from the doorbell to the same Cat5 cable. Back at my Ethernet switch I was able to split off the contact closure wires separately from the PoE Ethernet connection and wire them directly into my Elk M1 (which in turn is connected to my HS server).
As it turns out, Doorbird released their Rest API last week, so it's probably possible to just interact with Doorbird via the API now as opposed to using the contact closure wires, but for what it's worth you can do both.
Here's a picture showing the Cat5 cable and how the contact closure wires were split off:
Net, net I now have all the core features of an internet connected video doorbell, but I also have been able to wire it into my HS setup. This has allowed me to kick off HS events when it is pressed. My events are pretty simple (turning on the front porch light if it's dark outside, ringing one of the new Aeon Labs Zwave doorbells and announcing that there's someone at the front door) but its nice to have everything wired up together. My plan is to have a number of Zwave doorbells throughout the house that will all ring when the button is pressed.
Anyway, just thought that other HS owners considering adding a video doorbell might like to hear about my experience as I can confirm that it is possible to wire at least one of them into HS and that once you do it's easy to use them in events.
I have had the doorbell installed a couple weeks now and it is working well. I have found that the ability to get remotely pinged on your phone when someone rings the doorbell is actually pretty useful although you may get some odd stares and funny questions when you phone rings like a doorbell!
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