And that’s the story of how I upgraded my flat’s front door experience from depending on 0 cloud services to 5 cloud services.
Fin.
What should really be the case is that the ring doorbell has a contact switch that works like a regular doorbell. When the doorbell is pressed it triggers the exact same thing a plain old doorbell used to do. Now all the other electronic and cloud functions are neat features and if they go down it’s no big deal.
Apologies if someone is offended by the following. It’s not meant as an offense, but a professional opinion about design and Implementation.
This is a really good example of absolutely not keeping it simple and utilizing so many dependencies you’d need to monitor to be sure your solution works that the overall design is just plain bad.
If you ever implement something and get caught in so many things, take a step back and think about how your goal could be achieved in a much simpler way or even if your requirements are that important in the first place.
Anyhow. 5c from a tech guy.
Here’s a simpler solution:
Wire an electric dinger to a power source via a momentary off-on switch, and have the button activate it when pushed.
It was already solved, it needed not be over-engineered to hell and back.
Customers problem in a few years, not mine – is the mindset of these companies. They do it this way, because hooking up to cloud service X is cheaper to impement.
Yes. Sadly you often don’t get any choice. Especially if you are not an IT pro. The whole digital landscape for users is a disaster. With separate silos, incompatible formats, information loss and slow, manual effort with no overview. This is caused by big business land grabs and the total lack of information standards. A shameful state of IT to have in 2026.
but he could probably have just installed frigate as a home assistant addon
same reactions on hackernews
My doorbell is a button that completes a circuit. Still works.
Yes but I’m sure you need at least 5 different Volts for it to work.
Only 1. Standard 70s tech.
OP’s purpose was video security, not doorbells. People pushing the button instead of knocking was an unintentional consequence.
Your 70s doorbell is not helpful.
My doorbell is a sign that says “Knock”, because my 70’s doorbell is broken. It requires 0 cloud services to fix the problem of people pressing an unhelpful button.
[EDIT] To people downvoting this, did you read the article? Specifically, this part:
“Before we had the doorbell, people just knocked on the front door. But now, people would notice the doorbell and ring it instead. This would send a notification to our phones, and then it would also helpfully play a sound on the doorbell itself… outside the door… which we could not hear.”
He then goes on a tech bodgeathon to fix the button, instead of just placing a sing that says “Knock” to go back to the thing that worked before.
deleted by creator
Thankfully, it takes still zero cloud services to make my breakfast, ride my bike, and open my door.
And you can bet on that I’ll keep it that way.
My doorbell is a raspberry pi that uses webhooks to send me messages on my privately hosted chat server and also rings a physical bell built in 1900. Do I win for the most simple high tech doorbell?
So you can ring your doorbell if you’re in vacation on the other side of the globe?
Yep, with curl because I have OliveTin setup to accept requests to ring the bell from other pis or myself if I feel the need via the web GUI.
But why?
Oh that’s a silly question. Why not?
The honest answer is in the US all doorbells are powered by simple 24VAC transformers that burn 6–7 watts just being powered up, forever, for decades. This annoyed me plus I wanted a fun bell so I wired up a pi to use a modern, efficient 24VDC power supy to ring the bell and it gets turned on by the pi only when its needed so now my idle wattage is more like 0.25W.
So instead of the video doorbell, use a simple camera. Then people knock on the door and you still have security footage without all the nonsense.
There are downsides to consider…
- Most people aren’t really phased by doorbell cameras…but everyone feels a security camera pointed at them
- The angle is generally worse for this purpose
- Unlike a doorbell, there is likely no existing data line or even power
- No way to sugarcoat it, security cameras kind of looks like shit. The best you can hope for is one that doesn’t stick out too bad
There’s options for decent-looking doorbell cameras without all the fuss. I use Amcrest, I know a lot of others use Reolink
deleted by creator
doorbell camera next to a security camera photograph.
The psychological effect of a security camera (do I really need to clarify bullet and dome cameras?) is different than a doorbell camera.
I was tempted to run PoE to the other side of the wall where my server is. A doorbell that could do it all locally on my server.
Then I thought “fuck it” and bolted an antique brass bell there instead.
i would have just used the home assistant integration for blink and then have it also play the sounds.
Cloud polling Integration at least. I hope
I have a wireless doorbell with a speaker that plugs in to an outlet.
I’d much like to replace it with a zigbee-button, but I’ve had issues finding a foolproof (wife-approved) zigbee thing to make the ding-dong-noise.
Reolink for the win in my opinion.
Of course a nice brass bell as indicated would work too.
