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Comment by eadmund | Hacker News Reader

The only real advantage of this seems to be the ability to disable the chime during quiet hours. Otherwise it seems like a much more failure-prone doorbell (more components means more things to break).

Why not go the other way entirely? Disable the chime, install a door knocker, and never worry about replacing outdated tech, dried capacitors, shorts or anything else for the rest of one’s life.

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You can know if someone rings your doorbell when you aren't there is one tangible advantage. Or you can add a remote bell if you're often working in a basement, shed etc. If you don't want to deal with maintenance then don't, but some people like to play with stuff like this. The author of this article is one of the maintainers of ESPhome and one of the biggest contributors to Home Assistant, so he definitely is the tinkering sort of person.

I have a [local only, no cloud] doorbell with a camera that does person detection. It's one of my favorite devices and well worth it to me, especially since my delivery person basically never bothers to actually ring the doorbell.

> I have a [local only, no cloud] doorbell with a camera that does person detection.

Would you maybe share with us how you built it/which parts you used?

Amcrest AD110 doorbell connected over wifi to a recycled HP mini-PC (can be had cheaply on Amazon) running Frigate (https://frigate.video/) with a Google Coral accelerator installed in one of the internal slots. The Amcrest doorbell does have a cloud video connection if you want, but I firewalled it off from the internet and use the local RTSP streaming over to Frigate. Frigate talks to my local Home Assistant install too for automation. Also built a little buzzer with an ESP8266 and a simple piezo buzzer that runs ESPHome, which Home Assistant can use to play little sounds for stuff like person at the front door, lightning strikes in the area, etc... whatever you want to. The doorbell also has a local API to expose notifications when the button is pressed, which you can link to HA with amcrest2mqtt.

The wifi connection for the doorbell isn't ideal for security purposes, but it's good enough and a lot easier than getting CAT5 to my doorbell. It is more or less 100% reliable with my home wifi setup, though again I'm not really counting on it for any sort of reliable home security.

OP is absolutely right tho that this setup requires work to put together and maintain. Configuring Frigate can be especially confusing, but there are other local options like BlueIris (paid, and Windows only which kills it for me but it is very capable). I've been in this game for many years so it's all easy to me, but getting started is definitely a learning curve. Very fun though, if it's your sort of thing. The DIY home automation community is in a bit of a golden age right now, IMO.

Thanks!

The Ubiquity doorbell also does local person and package detection in addition to standard motion detection. Indeed, it has a second camera aimed down specifically to detect packages: https://ui.com/us/en/camera-security/special-devices

You also need a Protect NVR to record video, manage the camera and provide notifications - the Cloud Key Plus works perfectly for up to a dozen or so cameras (uses standard laptop hard drive) - but they have a variety of devices that can run Protect from the UDM Pro (also will serve as a router/firewall) to larger dedicated Protect NVRs with four or seven disks depending on how much storage you want.

It can be a bit pricy for just a doorbell camera, but if you add a couple of other cameras then the value gets significantly better. Cloud is optional other than being required for initial configuration and is used for notifications, remote access and remote administration.

From TFA: "I hope you enjoy your DIY smart doorbell! However, now the time has come for me to come clean. This article was never about the doorbell! This article is about showing you how easy, fun, and cheap DIY smart home solutions are. ESPHome & Home Assistant are just amazing tools to allow everyone to jump in and create amazing things."

> Otherwise it seems like a much more failure-prone doorbell (more components means more things to break).

You don’t want to know how many components are involved in your regular smart doorbell. It is most likely going through the cloud too.

I followed these instructions and the main advantage for us is that it can send notifications to phones and google/alexa devices. I ended up switching the software to sinric.pro, though.

I have a device that "forwards" the bell sound to a receiver because my office is too far away to hear the bell otherwise. This would solve it, your suggestion would be even worse.

You can't hear a door knocker everywhere in the house, I'd guess.

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