homeassistant

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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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HA Doorbell (self.homeassistant)

submitted 4 days ago by synestine to c/[email protected]

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Until recently I had been using an EZVIZ DB1C doorbell. I researched before I got it, and it worked immediately when bought. Then the company started playing dirty pool. Over the next two firmware updates (WIth nothing in the notes beyond "bugfixes and imrprovements") they stripped out the ability to use a local RTSP stream then they stripped out the ability to use their Windows-only software to even re-enable any functionality. Then they jerked me around for over a month before they finally copped to what the company had done.

And of course there's no way back to a working firmware.

I know people have mentioned Reolink and Amcrest before, but those models are no longer available.

Is there anything in the way of wired, mechanical-bell compatible doorbell cameras that work with HomeAssistant?

I'm so sick of companies that sell you one thing, then strip out the functionality that made it useful, shoving you into their cloud/app shit or leaving you stranded on whatever firmware the thing came with.

GRR

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Is dumb doorbell + separate CCTV camera a valid alternative? Even my fairly basic Reolink camera has a much better image quality than any doorbell camera I've seen, and HA can pull an image from it and push it to my phone in only a few tenths of a second whenever someone pushes the doorbell.

[–] synestine 2 points 1 day ago

That is effectively what I had with my EZVIZ doorbell-cam. The image quality was actually really good compared to my basic cameras (2k, 180-degree FoV, daylight and infrared modes). The reason I went this way is that it's damn near impossible to run any sort of wires to the front porch location (Very long story, involving bore-scopes, drills, failure and drywall repairs) which is why I went this way, even with some people being weirded out by the camera on the doorbell.

I may have to go this route if I can't find a doorbell-cam that doesn't suck and is still available for purchase, but that will take months and several tests of the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor).