Why our Smart Video Doorbell will not be able to support HomeKit Secure Video | Hacker News Reader

Why our Smart Video Doorbell will not be able to support HomeKit Secure Video

get.netatmo.com

59 pointsjacobp10048 comments

Gone for me. Archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20221018214742/https://get.netat...

Thank you to whoever saw this and thought to archive it!

Yet another reason why closed ecosystems aren't great. If I had control over my phone and software, I could set my Apple devices to connect to this device anyways via whatever integration, and just not record 30FPS video from my front door, since I don't fucking care about that. I don't use this product, but it sounds like the team at this company does a good job of keeping costs down to the minimum while squeezing everything they can from their product, and now Apple is preventing an integration that would be useful to both Apple and Netatmo users because of stupid-ass reasons (really? you need 30fps from your doorbell even when no one is there yet?).

> really? you need 30fps from your doorbell even when no one is there yet?

I think the reasoning may be that with Apple you pay extra to know that something will work well out the box without any issues (yeah yeah, I mean the theory). People don't know what FPS is or anything about internals. They connect the device and the video is not smooth. Looks like something is wrong. It is a good approach not to explain to your users that what they see is actually right, but instead find a solution which doesn't make them feel that way.

You don't need to integrate with Apple, there are plenty of solutions. If you do, then there's a reason you use Apple. I think it's mostly that they make choices for users so users don't have to (and it's actually valuable when done right).

Every instance is specific and has its constraints, but there are plenty of high resolution and fps IP cameras sitting in the sun and doing just fine. Most seem to have at least 2-3x power usage. 2W seems really great. Gopros work somehow. So maybe they thermal design could use some improvements.

Using doorbell as a quick check what's happening out there is also a fair use case which shouldn't require somebody standing next to the camera.

Yea, a good point that perhaps this device isn't what Apple is targeting or intended to take part in this API, but as a user I don't care: I should be able to do what the heck I want with my hardware/software. I know that isn't the case at all, and it makes me sad. I could go to Android and have a bit more freedom, but then Google will be a monkey on my back looking at all my content.

You can, Apple isn’t stopping them from releasing an app in iOS.

From looking at the HomeKit accessory protocol documentation under stream management, 30fps is only the minimum "recommended" frame rate for streaming. The minimum supported is actually 24fps.

I don't know if this lower supported minimum would make much difference in heat though. Maybe Netatmo should be using a chipset that has a lower thermal draw.

Here's what a teardown of their doorbell looks like https://fccid.io/N3A-NDB01/Internal-Photos/Internal-Photo-pd...

If only there was a way that they could release an app for the iPhone and other Apple devices without HomeKit integration.

And one of the benefits of HomeKit integration is that Apple gives you a certain amount of video storage. The “closed ecosystem” has nothing to do with your ability to use the app. You just can’t integrate with HomeKit. If you are concerned with automation, if their app supports it, you can still use the automation.

They can release an app, no problem.

I know. It’s others who are overblowing the situation. They can also provide hooks to work with iOS automation framework.

My Amcrest AD410 doorbell encodes 2K (2560x1920) video at 15fps 24/7, and my previous Nest camera did 1600x1200 at 30fps 24/7. I guess it is more a limitation of their specific product than of the category in general.

As resolution goes up, frame rate goes down. Most IP cams let you choose where on the resolution vs fps divide you want to be.

I'm curious about your setup. I've got a Nest doorbell camera and would love to stop sending my video to Google. Do you get notified when there's someone outside your door? Or a notification that someone rang your bell? What app do you use on your phone? What about intercom functionality, is there a way to replicate that?

I have it set up with the Amcrest app, so I still get notifications, I can do two-way audio, etc. The motion / person detection is happening on-device, as it is not sending a stream to Amcrest. I don’t subscribe to their cloud storage plan, but I do have a micro SD card in the device, so it stores clips of detected motion and people that play back in the app as if I did. The feed to my NVR is secondary to all of that.

Their app is not as polished as the Nest app, but it is sufficient. From what I understand though, after Nest moved everything under Google, their app isn’t as good anymore either.

2k is 2048 × 1080

You’re right, I was going based on their description. It’s actually higher than 2K.

https://amcrest.com/4mp-wifi-camera-doorbell-ad410.html

I wonder if it would work to capture at 2 FPS but duplicate each frame 15 times to get the 30 FPS that HomeKit wants? I'd expect that would use a lot less power and generate a lot less heat than capturing 30 FPS.

What I guess it would come down to is whether or not HomeKit's local processing to determine if a person, animal, or car is in the scene actually needs to see movement over short enough timescales that you actually need 30 FPS.

Apple & Google capricious integration policies are often user hostile.

Seems like it would be much better to let people decide what quality they want from their doorbell rather than mandating it as part of the integration.

I don't want to store 1080p 30fps video all the time and have it consume the entire 50gb that I buy with iCloud.

HKSV doesn't use any storage, but I'm not sure if that's available in the cheapest plan. I use scrypted to push all my UniFi cameras into HomeKit for free recordings and identification of people/packages.

Looks like it's unlimited only on the higher plan -

For $0.99 per month, iCloud+ will offer 50GB of iCloud storage and support for recording video from one HomeKit Secure Video camera. For $2.99 per month, iCloud+ will offer 200GB of storage and support for up to five HomeKit Secure Video cameras. For $9.99 per month, you get 2TB of iCloud storage and support for unlimited HomeKit Secure Video cameras.

Does scrypted require a HomeKit hub to support saving to HKSV? I have that set up on my amcrest doorbell but haven’t figured out how to get the notifications and HKSV to work.

I'm not too sure of any exact requirements, I've got like 7 devices that qualify as HomeKit hubs in my HomeKit house so I can't easily test that for you. Can you see the camera in HomeKit, it's just not doing the recording and notifications?

Yes that is right. There’s also a message saying I need one when trying to enable HKSV, but scrypted documentation doesn’t call out the need for one.

Can someone make an inexpensive PoE Doorbell? — IP camera FullHD or better, PoE, 2 way audio, with a button.

With the popularity of NVRs, there's a niche market for those unsatisfied.

I’m sure they could, but how many people have Ethernet at their doorbell? We recently built a new home, so I had the opportunity to hardwire all of our cameras, except the doorbells. There just weren’t great options that I could find. Luckily the Amcrest doorbells I chose have been rock solid. They support rtsp, so my NVR records them just like the rest of the cameras.

That's the point I'm trying to make. The popularity of having NVR systems with multiple cameras, rather than just a Doorbell makes it viable to think people would want this option over a supercharged Doorbell — The idea to process object detection at the doorbell is kind of ludicrous.

There's Ring Video Doorbell Elite, so the market isn't completely bare. Yes, it's Amazon and pricey, but it does exist.

"but how many people have Ethernet at their doorbell?"

With PoE and a UPS too.

Your front door by definition is on an outer edge of your house. You can run conduit externally or whatever internally. It isn't beyond the wit of man to deploy wiring. If you need your "smart" doorbell to always work then you will get ethernet to it and ideally PoE too to power it. A UPS will keep it alive when the power is out.

I also recommend that it is able to trigger a non smart chime too so if all "smart" stuff is unavailable, you still get notified.

When my home (Doorbird) doorbell is pressed: Separate battery backed chime goes off, Sonos speakers say "Ding dong, there is somebody at the door", TVs get a notification, our mobile phone apps twitter.

It is still possible to miss a doorbell press but quite hard. I do all my IoT stuff like that if possible - important stuff still works without the hub/internet/Home Assistant.

Did you pay ~USD$400 for a Doorbird doorbell ?

I used to use a doorbird, and for the same reasons as you, but I found the speaker and mic quality to be bad enough that I couldn’t live with it.

Usually I would try and talk to people over it and they wouldn’t even hear that I was talking. If I turned the volume up so that they notice, the over modulation was so bad that they couldn’t understand me.

I ended up just going with a Ring even though it goes against my cloud stance. At least it works.

PoE doorbells exist, but are rare.

The issue is that the proper size wire to provide power to a doorbell is larger than a Cat 5 cable. So if you run Cat 5 to your doorbell, you can't actually use it as a simple doorbell. (Cat 5 is 24 gauge, but you need 16 gauge for a doorbell.)

If you are building a house and you want to leave options for the home owner what do you do? PoE Cat 5? Or standard doorbell wire?

The market seems to have decided that you do a standard 16V AC 1A power to the doorbell, and then WiFi for the data.

See: https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041807292-Sele...

I believe that standard comes from the adaptation of conventional doorbells installations. In my opinion, what I see trending, is people wiring their houses for NVR systems with Cat5/6. In this scenario, a simplistic and cheap doorbell hardware, that connects to a PoE NVR and delegates all the object detection there, sounds far more valuable than a supercharged doorbell.

As you said, they exists but are rare (and expensive). It seems to me there is a niche market that nobody is recognizing and taking advantage of.

Personally I put in a standard doorbell wire, and then a Cat 5 wire above the door for a camera.

I suspect you could run PoE over 16 gauge cable, maybe not at gigabit, but good enough.

Or you could run something like this: https://www.cablesforless.com/bundled-cable-cat5e-and-4c-16a...

That product is just two cables stuck together. Instead you could just simply run both types of cable to the doorbell, especially since they'll probably go to different places.

I googled a bit and it seems you might be able to run low speed Ethernet over untwisted wires if they are not long.

10BASE-T1{S,L} [0] are "only" 10 Mbps but they also need only a single pair of wires (with the latter working up to 1 km).

They aren't exactly in widespread usage yet, though.

(ETA: And apparently there are even 100 and 1000 Mbps variants now too [0] -- with lower maximum distances, of course.)

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_over_twisted_pair#S...

A doorbell is only 2 wires -- if you pull Cat5 for future proofing, could you bind 2 or 4 of the 8 available wires to safely pull the current? Obviously, the other end can't be plugged into a network switch till it's properly wired up.

I don't have enough electrical know-how to figure out if this works...

Edit: Based on a table I found; 24 gauge wire has a resistance of about 25 ohms per foot, where as 16 gauge has a resistance of 4 ohms per foot. So; assuming each wire is a parallel resistor, 2 pairs(4 wires) would be about 6.25 ohms -- so it could heat up a bit more than proper wires. so .... maybe as long as someone doesn't hold the button down for too long?

*per 1000ft, not per foot

16 gauge is rated for 17A; 24 gauge is rated for 3A. Given that, as you say, the rated current for the doorbell is 1A, I don't understand why 16 gauge is necessary; if you're concerned about shorts, consider that 16A/16V would more likely burn out the transformer before doing anything to the wires because the power density is larger there. Just to be safe, I'd put 3A fuse inline and use Cat5 without reservations.

The economics of hardware unfortunately do not allow "niche" and "low-cost" to go together. The market for PoE doorbells is very small as it is, so the unit-cost will be high, which makes the market too small for anyone to serve, except probably DIY.

With the amount of PoE IP cameras out there, I find it hard to believe adding a button would take much R&D.

A good chunk of the IP cameras have user-exposed pins that can send events when the circuit is closed, as well as detect if a circuit is open (NC/NO circuits). IIRC they are intended to detect if a door is open or closed.

I'm not sure if they are polling those contacts fast enough for 'normal' doorbell use, but it's there ...

Trivial things such as injection mold costs (to make a cheap, cost-effective case) mean that low-cost manufacturers avoid adding a button like a plague - we're seeing the exact same layout used by multiple products and in some cases even multiple manufacturers, we're seeing "unused buttons" just as to be able to use the exact same plastic parts instead of having to make a new mold for a new, slightly different part.

Cheap plastic shit is cheap only if you can make lots of them, because the variable cost is low - but as soon as you're talking about small quantities of niche products, the fixed costs dominate as soon as you try to do anything custom physically.

https://reolink.com/au/product/reolink-video-doorbell/

Not available yet but I believe they're aiming for this year. I have other Reolink cameras + NVR and it's pretty solid and doesn't rely on cloud at all

Nice find. It seems they were available since september and they are already out of stock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4NQePbj4dM

Unifi Protect Cameras + Scrypted to bring the cameras into Homekit + HKSV.

If you believe there’s a viable market, why not make it yourself and sell it instead of asking someone else to do it?

Your on Hacker News after all.

I really rate Netatmo's products and attitude after having lived with their outdoor cameras for several years, and was waiting and waiting for this product. This is a real shame, especially for something that has taken years to create.

TLDR we made a bad product. Hundreds of car dashcams have no problem loop recording 24/7 while glued to the frond window sitting directly in hot sun.

On the other hand I dont feel one bit comfortable streaming any video of my home to "someone elses computer" without end to end encryption.

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