I am super sensitive to over engineering. For my doorbell I wanted something that lets me play a custom bell sound. You would be surprised that 99% of the solutions out there are complete over engineered stacks that depend on wifi devices, Internet access, connecting to various cloud services... So I built my own: a basic wireless button sends a radio 433 MHz signal, and my receiver is plugged inside the house and triggers an off-the-shelf playback PCB module that reads an MP3 off an SD card and plays it on a speaker wired to the module. No Wifi, no Internet, no cloud, no apps. And the rare times I want to change the sound, I update the MP3 on the SD card.
Edit: there are very, very few products on the market designed as simply as this, just an R/F signal triggering local playback. I think the only commercial doorbells designed like this I found were an out-of-stock product, and a UK device designed for 230V that would have required a bulky adapter to work for me in the US.
Current delivery and longevity still put C and D cells over AAs, that’s the main reason they are/were common in doorbells. And while 18650s would be equivalent to a C, they would require a charger most people don’t own already, as well as the usual liion safety issues. I’ve heard horrors of folks putting 18650s in to nimh chargers with sprung terminals :/
As for availability, they are certainly very obtainable where I am in UK. Shops and Amazon etc have them.
No issues here in UK. 18650s have high self-discharge rate so are useless for standby applications. AA's are, well, AA's. So you'd have to replace them more often. Not what you want to happen with a door bell.
You are super-sensitive to over-engineering, so you over-engineered your requirements and ultimately your end product, just in a different methodology and framework.
It would be over engineered if one could design a system providing similar functionality using less hardware and less software.
I challenge you to design a wireless doorbell that has a user-configurable chime, in a way that uses less software or less hardware than mine. You couldn't.
In fact, if you did market research like me you would find that 99% of similar products have vastly more complex hardware or software or services being them. They break when there is no Internet. Some work without Internet but don't work when the local Wi-Fi is non functional. They don't immediately get back online after a power outage. They need regular software updates during which the chime can't play. These are over engineered things. Not my product, because mine has none of this complexity or faults.
Challenge accepted: "Similar functionality" here is the same doorbells that have existed for over a century. Done. :)
If the requirements and constraints come from you, then saying "those are the requirements" doesn't settle anything. And is the same excuse people use for the over-engineered solutions you don't seem to like.
It is over-engineering compared to a regular doorbell, period.
Godwin's law was invoked quickly. It's not very hacker spirit to hear a story of somebody putting together a cool hardware solution to do something they wanted, and then complain that they wanted the wrong thing.
> check out my hand-embroidered curtains, it's got exactly the flower pattern I wanted
> yeah well you shouldn't want flowers on your curtains, just buy plain white ones from the store
> You would be surprised that 99% of the solutions out there are complete over engineered stacks that depend on wifi devices, Internet access, connecting to various cloud services...
Interesting context you live in. Here in east europe, 90% of devices you find on eshops are cheap chinese buttons with AAA batteries, that emit signal and another reciever device that plays sound. The sound is not customizable, but it is super cheap stuff.
I would have to go out of my way, to find cloud connected doorbell.
This is EXACTLY the problem! Try finding one that I can customize with my own chime and you will only find expensive, unreliable, over engineered stuff.
In the past 5 or so years, there's also been the rise of the ones where the button uses the piezoelectric effect to generate the power for the radio so that the button doesn't even need any batteries. Just extremely basic and cheap.
Exactly, if you already have such a setup in place it's basically ordering a button online, e.g. https://sonoff.tech/en-eu/products/sonoff-zigbee-wireless-sw... then next day slapping it over your existing setup or sticking it on the wall then deciding what you actually want to do with it, e.g. phones notifications, sound on as feedback for mailman, logging events, etc then adjusting conditions e.g different sounds after sunset, dedicated audio if away but expect parcels, etc.
But honestly, even if you have nothing, if you know a bit what you are doing with IoT with HomeAssistant if you buy the right hardware (i.e. verified as working by others, e.g. the Sonoff ones typically) it's at most an afternoon of tinkering for a setup that will reliably work for years.
If you find one that meets your requirements that is an option.
Granted maybe your requirements are ridiculous. But I also had cases where I DIYed a solution because the commercially available solutions all either didn't fulfil the requirements and/or had anti-features that ruled out their use. I haven't had any regret so far with these solutions, with some of these being active for over a decade.
There may be over engineering, but replacing a bought solution that needs to connect to the internet and someone else's computer to ring a bell with a simple 433MHz sender and a MP4-player module isn't that. Do you know what is required for a device to even connect to a WiFi? That alone is more complex than the whole system the user built here.
I fail to see the relation between a video doorbell and stopping a burglar. Burglars wear masks.
Also, a doorbell ringing on the outside of the door is not only silly but in case of an apartment complex highly annoying for your neighbors.
And make sure your neighbors like being monitored through your five services.
Personally I have a button outside my front door. It is connected with a copper wire to the other side of the door to a small device that sends out an audible notification. No cloud required.
Physical stuff (window bars and a security door) is much, much more effective for that logic.
Burglars know they’ll probably be on CCTV somewhere anyway but nobody in their right mind is trying to smash through a security door or saw through some window bars when there’s a house up the street that doesn’t have them.
Obviously there are downsides (cost, aesthetics) but those solutions actually work, I’m skeptical that a fancy subscription doorbell makes much difference
I recently exchanged with a police agent in Belgium who specializes in the topic. Their heuristics is opportunity of action, namely how easy it is to get in and out without being caught on the spot. They said they do not really care about being recognized, only being noticed and stopped in action. Consequently the advice is to strengthen physical security first, i.e. have a big door with proper locks and close your windows. Everything else, including cameras, only comes after. Imagine you have 7min to get in and out, everything that slows you down means higher chance of getting stopped and thus considering another target instead.
Burglars also know that they can pretty much pose and smile for the camera before covering it with tape and then breaking into the house, and the probability of consequences is very near zero. Unless they happen to break into the house of a well-connected politician or such.
Seem silly, but just try going to the police with crisp hi-res video of a burglarly and try to get them interested. I know people who have done it and all have failed. "We don't have time for this", "Value is not high enough to pursue", "Just call your insurance, not us".
From everything I've seen (which was a lot for a couple years due to my job) there were two types of burglars:
One type didn't care about any security system, even alarms. They would smash and grab as fast as they could and get out. They didn't have a plan other than to grab the first things that looked valuable. It might cost more to fix the building than to replace what they found.
The other type was trying to play it smart. As soon as they noticed the cameras or indications of a security system they'd leave. Lots of videos where a person was detected, looks up at the cameras, and then slips away to go find another house.
A lot of people start turning off alerts or never set them up properly, so they don't notice the second type of video unless they go looking.
Take a walk around the neighbourhood, plenty of houses still don't have any video surveillance.
There's no shortage of footage of people casing a place spotting the camera then wondering away. The smart ones look like they're any other lost delivery driver complete with package in hand. Thanks to the rise of gig work nobody has uniforms anymore. No that it really matters, plenty of stolen uniforms in play too.
Anecdata is not helpful. Actually statistically significant numbers that are not presented by a home security firm. Everything else is just somebody trying to sell you stuff.
You don't need to be extremely bright to realize that it's easier to burglar a home with no alarm system and cameras than one with. And if your neighbor doesn't have cameras, but you do, many home burglars are going to be smart enough to know that it's better to not be seen on camera. I'm sure there are some who have too low IQ/too high to realize that getting caught on camera is a bad idea, but at least it's gonna work on some.
People who break into houses are going for a few obvious high-dollar items. They're not searching for a server closet they don't know exists. They're looking for laptops, pharmaceuticals, jewelry. High dollar, portable items. not a strange-looking device hidden in a closet. And obviously you can put it in a rack that requires a key to open. They won't bother.
I used to have local teenagers messing around on my property and it completely stopped after putting up some lights and cameras. It stops most casual crime.
Do you think teenagers are going to illegally hang out on someone else's private property for years at a time? Their interests and habits are as ephemeral as the wing.
People steal things from stores which have had cctv for decades. I have no idea why people think these goofy webcams have any effect other than invading the privacy of your neighbors.
I literally just said it solved my problem. Most casual crime is opportunistic, and cameras and lights add uncertainty to the opportunity. Most people aren't willing to chance the camera for an opportunistic score.
I’m not sure how it’s so hard for people replying to you, to understand, cameras are a deterrent. Crime is often opportunistic. I grew up in 80s Miami, the common tactic was knock on your front door to see if anyone’s home, when no one answers, they’d kick in the backdoor.
Cameras deter crime. Not ALL crime. Criminals aren’t stupid and will simply go burgle someone that isn’t recording.
> knock on your front door to see if anyone’s home, when no one answers, they’d kick in the backdoor.
So now your front camera has somebody with an unidentifiable hoodie knocking and your back camera has somebody with an unidentifiable hoodie kick in the backdoor. How did the camera help exactly? Is the police really going to find somebody with this almost-invisible stain of dirt on the sleeve of the hoodie? Or are they rather going to say "oh well we'll keep an eye out" and that's the last you hear? My experience is the latter. Now you lost the worth of what they took plus all the money spent on your camera gear and the time setting it up.
Or are you saying doesn't matter, the deterrent is enough? Well then put up a fake camera for a fraction of the price. Works offline too.
> Most casual crime is opportunistic, and cameras and lights add uncertainty to the opportunity. Most people aren't willing to chance the camera for an opportunistic score.
People have been stealing things from stores which have had cctv for decades. Your premises are manifestly false.
The reason why people steal from stores is because there are rarely consequences unless you get caught in the act. Most stores won't file a report over a can of tuna, it'll get chalked up to losses and prices will go up on tuna cans to cover the loss, as it's low friction.
Someone's private property getting trespassed/burgled will have a much higher chance of resulting in legal consequences.
Sure, theft still happens, but I don't see why home theft wouldn't be reduced by the presence of CCTV or other video surveillance.
CCTV doesn't work well when people feel like nobody is going to bother to check its footage (e.g. pocketing a $2 drink from a big-box department store). But when it comes to homes, there are much higher chances of captured footage being used and examined, so it may cause opportunistic burglars to look at other houses instead.
The claim is never that it stops all crime. The claim is it stop some crime. That's like saying we don't need doctors because they can't cure everybody all the time.
I, too, am very sensitive about cameras invading the privacy of neighbors. But to be fair, it is perfectly possible that the cameras in question don't view anything outside of the property in question.
> People steal things from stores which have had cctv for decades.
The crime there (shoplifting) doesn't begin until they leave.
In the case of a burglary, the crime begins when they enter.
Seems to be a pretty important distinction when discussing whether knowing a person is physically present on your property alerts you to a crime in progress.
I am constantly amazed that people rely on anyone else's compute infrastructure for things like doorbells, cameras, locks, switches, or sensors (network infrastructure is, at the moment, a seemingly acceptable integration for isolated communication.) There is inevitable over-pricing and capture by these companies; it's in their nature.
Add to this the security and downtime risks, and the equation really doesn't look good. Equipment that is tied to someone else's cloud is an astonishingly bad idea, but everyone has their own immediate (or even long-term) reasons for ignoring advice. "You get what you deserve."
I’ve recently been looking into what older gen IoT devices I can buy used for cheap and are also hackable (some existing progress has been done before me is my bar).
My first adventure was with an Amazon Echo Dot 2, I picked up two off Facebook marketplace for $5 each and managed to vibe code my way into a working implementation of LibreEcho (which does not currently support the echo dot). I’ve got that wired into my home local AI brain so it can do tasks like add grocery items to shared notes, or download movies or TV shows (jellyseer+flexget+jellyfin+etc).
My next plan is to do a doorbell. I want it fully local only and I know there are providers who offer this brand new for $$$ but I love the idea of picking up cheap IoT devices and hacking them instead. My current candidate is EZVIZ DB1C but I haven’t bought it yet and definitely open to suggestions!
Amazon had these little Dash buttons about 10 years ago. The goal was you would click one, and it would re-order that product from Amazon. Many were branded.
Basically just a wifi button. I hacked one so I could, in my brain fog, record the moment i started and finished feeding my infant by sending a ping to a server via a simple click.
There's a bunch up on eBay. Could probably 3M tape one beside your door.
Easy solution, esp if it's shielded from rain.
Don't use web security cameras to stop crime.
Every service wants your personal information.
Every service charges a subscription.
The crime will still happen.
Use a physically protected motion action video recorder. No web.
The burglary will happen and you will have evidence.
No software upgrades. Never obsolete.
gotta get claude to write the garbage nextjs vercel app that plays the recorded video online ofc you're smart and you tell him to build a login screen but your no auth vercel edge function accepts requests from anyone. oh and you let openclaw run the show and it puts the videos in your free cloud flare blob. you show your friends and family the app you made, you offer to build them one too, everyone claps
1. You over-engineered this, so you don't get to complain that it's over-engineered.
2. Buglary risk reducing when you install a camera is a myth. A very convenient myth though for those selling you any of the components in your over-engineered thing.
This seems way overkill. I understand that that the OP didn't want to pay a subscription, but a really quick google showed that Blink makes a $30 product that solves this exact problem (not being able to hear the doorbell inside), the Blink Chime, which plugs into an outlet and then connects to 2.4Ghz, not requiring a subscription.
I guess $30 for what is effectively a glorified chime for your door is a bit much, but considering the time it probably took to put together this (kind of over-engineered) and the (presumably) monthly cost of the VPS, it makes more sense.
Also, I feel like something like MQTT or another message broker could simplify this significantly, making the whole VPS /state endpoint unnecessary, without exposing your home mini pc to the internet, since the mini pc would connect to the MQTT (I think HA actually has a built in mqtt integration? although you'll still need to make something to process the message once the MQTT gets it) and the SmartThings API would also (assuming the processing after the SmartThings API is hit is customizable in some form)
Yeah, a Blink chime is definitely a solution. But after feeling like I got a great deal on a cheap doorbell, I didn't want to buy yet another thing from them. I also thought it would have been easy to play audio on the Google home and so I started tinkering and then got carried away.
MQTT was an option, but it actually felt like overkill to add an MQTT server on my VPS than just a tiny Express server. (But who am I to talk about overkill here.)
So... you already owned Google Home minis... why not buy Google's Nest doorbell, which rings every Google Home device out of the box with none of the absurdity? If you have a Google 4k TV Streamer, it even pops up on your TV when someone rings the doorbell...
That said, the author might also consider installing an actual doorbell, which is a device their home should have had decades ago. You'll also want something to provide power to the Nest, so this is almost free.
I thought it was finally time to write up the story of my absurd home doorbell implementation, especially because the upcoming Samsung SmartThings API pricing means things will have to change soon.
I have a similar problem, except I needed to ring the actual doorbell. Currently I'm using a HomeKit-compatible video doorbell that communicates over proprietary radio to its wifi gateway that triggers a HomeKit automation (which presumably runs on my Apple TV as the hub) to turn a Shelly relay on for one second to do the same thing as pressing the doorbell button. I think this all ends up just using my internal network, but who knows. Thank goodness the Shelly relay can get a wifi signal while stuffed into that electrical box in the basement ceiling.
(The actual doorbell button is still there too, so it's a crapshoot which one somebody decides to use in the first place. And yes, many video doorbells have a "chime adapter" to take care of this, but our house's doorbell wiring made them run in fear.)
We have a Ring doorbell that hooks into the actual chime that the old doorbell used, so it still preserves the old doorbell's functionality[1]. I can understand not wanting to buy into the Ring ecosystem (we started using them before they were bought by Amazon), but maybe there are cheaper doorbells that also do that? All we had to do to make the old chime work with the Ring doorbell was install an extra widget that came with the Ring doorbell inside the chime; the Ring doorbell's instructions explained how to do it. It just needed a screwdriver and a few minutes' work.
[1] More precisely, we did until we moved to a manufactured home that did not even have a doorbell installed, after which I had to do some jiggering (now we have a Ring chime that the doorbell can talk to over the house's LAN). But the setup I describe above worked fine for a number of years in the house we were in before.
I'll have to check the latency of my 'smart' doorbell now. I have occasionally heard the doorbell, taken the obligatory time to find the key to unlock the door to find that it was just a package delivery, but enough time had passed that the courier was nowhere to be seen.
(Yours wasn't a latency issue though, what kind of latency do you get with your 5-cloud services chain?)
Also, interesting about the SmartThings API access moving to a subscription model: https://hackaday.com/2026/07/28/samsungs-smartthings-api-ter... (this link is in the article - the cost is only for third party usage, not if you're directly using the SmartThings app).
I built my own motion activated stairwell lights using an ESP32 and Home Assistant. Works pretty well.
So then I decided to set up some LED strip lights for my office with really nice wireless buttons from IKEA.
I confirmed that the buttons and the lights both were zigbee compatible, but I missed that one supported only Thread and the other only Matter. So now I have two identical antennas, each handling a different protocol.
I can't imagine how much energy is wasted on what should be, a trivial thing that might run on a 9v battery for 10 years, or, like I had in a house I owned, a door bell that uses no battery at all...just a rope and a bell.
Maybe I'm just too primitive but I let dogs handle it. I homestead in a remote Indian village and many stray dogs I look after instinctively take care of my property. There are false positives sometimes but that's okay. I like it when they alert me for potential small intrusions around my house, like snakes, monitor lizards etc.
I’ve used a Ring doorbell for over a decade and have never been able to get it to work with a physical doorbell. In two different house, with additional power dongle and after replacing transformers, every time I have it trigger the mechanical doorbell power drops enough to brown out the Ring leaving it in an unusable state until I power cycle it (which means disconnecting the transformer in the garage, at the bell, or behind the ring; all of which require disassembling something). I’ve searched for solutions and have come up empty, but have a similar problem to the linked article. My phone is typically on silent and I ignore the notification due to notification fatigue.
I like just about everything about the device, but I just want to have a normal door chime again.
We have a Ring door bell (well, 2 of them plus 2 cameras) and also 2 chimes. Those chimes do one thing: they ring inside the house, one on each floor, when the door bells ring. Seems expensive and over complicated and it is. But it works quite well and has been very useful on many occasions.
I got so tired of every hardware device requiring cloud services, accounts, logins, privacy policies, etc. that I started building my own. I think the tipping point was a phone app to control a Panasonic air conditioner. It could just communicate with the air conditioner over Bluetooth, after all, the air conditioner was never more than 3 meters away from me. But instead, Panasonic chose to build a cloud services platform, so you need internet access, you need to create an account with an appropriate password, agree to data processing, accept the privacy policy, accept privacy policy updates, etc.
Once you do all that, your spouse comes and asks for a way to control the air conditioning too…
This whole "you need to create an account" is a virus that needs to go away. It should be possible to control a local device without accounts, privacy policies, and other crap.
I have got a cheap candy-land made doorbell that's operated via piezo crystal switch (non-battery, non-power-line) and 433MHz freq. It has some melodies and volume built-in,
The design is simple and easy to hack (and build something else). There are rather cheap light switches that operate on the same principle and can be used.
But this way, you can handle door spam by greylisting the bell and playing it only when it is pressed by a motivated enough person; say, 5 times or more. For an average of 1 cloud service per press.
The interesting thing here is that Samsung thinks they are going to get people to pay for API access to their smart devices, when "app access" is free. We are now past the point where LLMs can automate the apps. You don't even need to write the code, the LLM will do it for you.
As a recent owner of a Samsung fridge, I'm really curious to know what the plan is here. The probability of me paying a monthly for my refrigerator is exactly zero.
It's crazy these things don't have much interopability with third parties.
Is it so difficult to expose a MQTT thing or some other random HTTP server, default off but configurable in some developer settings, that could be used to control the device/read state? It would certainly make the minority that is us power users happy.
There are plenty of devices that support a lot of integrations.
However, those companies don’t make the kind of perpetual revenue that bring in capital, and the companies that make the devices that don’t make you pay for their service end up not lasting as long as those that do.
Sadly, it seems that the prudent business decision is to lock your customers into your ecosystem.
Not exactly home gamer stuff, but there are devices like the Axis cameras which can push to a configured mqtt.
Generally ONVIF is the protocol one should be looking for in a camera, it indicates that the edge device can play ball with a central server (Frigate, Blue Iris, etc). Profile M specifies the metadata into external mqtt:
I was going to ask, because any latency means picking up packages at a random pick-up point.
My office is in the other end of the house, and most package delivery service press the doorbell and starts working away instantly. While that's also a bit extreme, I can't expect them to stand around for more than ~30 seconds.
Our situation isn't quite that extreme, but sometimes "modern" tech is just ridiculous. For home automation, every manufacturer has their own protocol. "Matter" has just confirmed what XKCD has to say: https://xkcd.com/927/
Add to that: every manufacturer wants to run their own servers and their own cloud service. I don't want my data strewn throughout the internet. For most devices, there is zero reason they couldn't work entirely within the LAN. Plus, we all know that half of those services will die in a few years, forcing us to replace perfectly good devices.
I inherited an electrical one from the previous owner. It ran on... battery. (Why would anyone do this is beyond me, but it turns out to be very common where I live.) The battery died and I needed a replacement. If I wanted to replace it with something that connects to the power cables inside the house, I'd need to drill a hole in the front wall (made of brick and mortar) and find the closest cable to connect to... And I was too lazy to do that.
On the street I live, there are mostly old houses. Some of them have a bell that exposes a handle on the outside that you need to pull in order to ring the bell inside the house. Some have a "door hammer" (is it what it's called?), a decorative, usually shaped as a ring in an animal's mouth, hammer that's attached to the middle of the door one would use to knock on a metal plate used for this attachment.
I bought an actual cast iron bell and attached it near the door above the mailbox.
What happened is that people seem to doubt so much the functionality of an obvious bell that they prefer knocking on the door to pulling the thread attached to the bell. That's what most package delivery service people do.
Dude would be much easier to make a custom doorbell with a microcontroller with wifi (Pico or ESP32). With ESP32-CAM even have a video feed / screenshots.
Today it's never been easier to make custom stuff -- 3dprinting and even PCB manufacturing can be done as a service, no need to buy. Although I would use a dev board microcontroller for $7, so no need for PCB.
And doorbell case also doesn't have to be 3d printed, can make it from wood or metal, if you prefer.
It’s not, that’s called a duct tape solution, which is the opposite of engineering, that’s poor design and bad practice, there are so many failure points and moving parts that it’s eminent it will fail. The engineering design should be reliable, simple, and efficient. Instead of that cluster chaos you made, you could have had a relay wired inside the bell that simultaneously trigger a normal and simple electric-based bell, so it works for you and the other person.
Now rip it back out again and replace it with a better, local solution.
___
Fwiw, I did buy some dahua thing for this, for which I now run an asterisk that hangs up on every call and switches a USB relay to ring the actual bell.
I wonder is there a market for portable EMP guns to disable crap like that? I mean, it's pretty trivial to make one out of shocker, some foil and a ditched microwave oven and it will kill most any electronics on sight.
Edit: there are very, very few products on the market designed as simply as this, just an R/F signal triggering local playback. I think the only commercial doorbells designed like this I found were an out-of-stock product, and a UK device designed for 230V that would have required a bulky adapter to work for me in the US.
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