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.
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2026
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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
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.
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.
Double them up, add an esp into the dingdong box, detecting the sound sent to the speaker or probe somewhere else in the circuit, or even use a small mic if you don't want to pull it apart.
Or it's probably a 433 mhz signal from the button, sniff that and basically you can have your own receiver
there's someone who's done the 433 mhz approach here https://community.home-assistant.io/t/433mhz-wireless-doorbell-monitor-on-an-esp/818738
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.
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
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.
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My doorbell is a button that completes a circuit. Still works.
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.
Yes but I’m sure you need at least 5 different Volts for it to work.
Only 1. Standard 70s tech.
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.
You know we can roll back the internet a bit.. Let's keep the speed and the unlimited traffic but drop the "always on" and give people "mobile internet hours" for their phone? :P
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Or you could just get a dog and never miss someone at the door again.
This was great at first, but ten years in their hearing has gone. They'll sleep through me yelling at the top of my lungs now.
Has the dogs cloud service gone offline?
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.
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In related topics, I'm still peeved that my freezer, unlike my camera, needs to do a full back-and-forth trip (in this case to Samsung's SmartThings servers) just to notify my Home Assistant server that the door was left open.
Why would you even buy that? Nothing seems more dumb than a smart fridge.
Again, I was unaware my freezer even had online capabilities until after I had it installed at home and read the manual.
I didn't see that part. But then you hooked it up anyways?
Yeah, thinking there would be a way to configure it for local networking (like I did with my cameras)
@NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip was trying to ask, why did you put it on the network at all, if you have agreed to it being stupid
Because I was curious and I self-host my own Home Assistant, so, as a bonus of sorts.
Can't it just beep?
It does, and as a matter of fact I was unaware that it had automation support until after I read the manual. But I like to keep statistics on my devices, and I'm not exactly happy about losing them when Samsung or SmartThings decide to pull the plug. Hopefully I manage to patch some alternate firmware somehow by then.
No, it should definitely not need to talk to Samsung to share basic information with your homeassistant
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At least it CAN notify. I've got a zigbee door sensor glued to the side of the freezer and the door!
My fridge is tilted back a very small amount so the door closes on it's own.
This is technology I can get behind. How many tokens does a closure take on average?
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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. At least you know it's working.
Reolink for the win in my opinion.
Of course a nice brass bell as indicated would work too.
Don't they have relays for chimes?
Use the chime relay as a trigger for a real doorbell or ESP32 with a speaker.
Lot less dominos...
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