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.
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 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.)
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.
I looked at that at first but man you can’t beat $5. I was looking at a build which was $200 in parts just to get started. It’s also no simple task to build a mic array that is separated from speakers and having a decent speaker cavity etc. my skills with speaker chamber design and 3D printing are no where near my programming skills.
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.
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:
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.
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.
the only robberies that get 'attribution' are cases where the criminals get caught. i.e. low hanging fruit and thus these statistics skew to opportunistic events.
however, unplanned opportunistic crime makes for good promotional sales of window bars and strong locks. just like safes with electronic keypads.
very few such devices will stop a premeditated theft... and what is the rate of recovery for stolen goods in most jurisdictions?
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 am constantly amazed that people rely on anyone else's compute..."
We live in a bubble. Reading stuff here means you understand things about computing barely 0.1% of the world population understands the possible consequences. Of that 0.1%, plenty do understand the consequences and still choose the convenience.
For these companies, they just need to convince everyone else, for whom they have no possible conception, understanding, or even words to imagine the Orwellian Rube-Goldberg-like machine that is modern day SaaS.
It isn't so much "get what you deserve", so much as society writ large is getting what it deserves for unregulated advertising slop and re-sale of consumer data.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
I use adapters for AA cells. It's just a plastic tube the size of a C cell that you snap an AA into. I have to replace them more often but I use rechargeable AA cells so waste is not an issue.
Seriously. Everyone that id want to actually press the button just pounds on the door. The door to door people in particular have figured out they can’t be easily told off.
I haven’t had a delivery person knock in quite a long time. Package deliveries haven’t knocked in close to 20 years. I’ve even noticed DoorDash drivers don’t even knock anymore, they awkwardly stand in front of the porch and try texting. I now open the door as they are walking up to the porch to avoid that. I don’t know if it’s a policy or some kind of shared anxiety, but I find it really weird.
I had one food delivery driver call me while standing in the middle of the street. Seemed like he was afraid to approach and knock or ring. So strange.
Some people get really weird if you approach their house in a way they don't like. I imagine if that happens a few times to you as a delivery driver, you might be more cautious.
I know people like this, but would assume if they ordered a delivery that the person would be expected and not a cause of alarm. If someone can’t handle a person coming to their door, they shouldn’t be allowed to use delivery services.
I would want my light switches to be off when I click a special button at my bed, so when I want to bed I "turn off everything, and make sure garage is closed". Unfortunately two wires don't work there.
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.
> 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.
Almost any smart product these days starts with a couple of basic assumptions:
- All consumers own smartphones and like using them
- Consumers have no idea how their home networking works
- Consumers could not move a file from their computer to an SD card (or something similar)
So, everything is done by the app: you install the app, the smart device broadcasts a wifi network. This allows you to use your phone to give the smart device your wifi password. Then the remote servers handle everything else.
There's nothing in between. You're either an actual engineer, as mrb describes, or you're just beholden to cloud services that are terrible and also are guaranteed to disappear in 0-3 years.
There are some intermediates but they're often not that well supported. I have a door bell with a traditional app but it also exposes a normal IP camera stream and has a community (I assume) home assistant integration that lets me perform actions when one of the doorbells not connected directly to a chime trigger.
I think as a hacker/engineer type you’re more aware of what’s possible and because of that you expect more from things in your life. The flip side of that is that it makes features most people would never think of feel like table stakes and combined with the ability to build your own solution - IMO leads to over engineering.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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[ 0.80 ms ] story [ 11.3 ms ] threadSuggestions welcome!
[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.
But yes, there were definitely other ways to solve this problem.
(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).
Imagine paying a Korean company five bucks a months so you can get a notification on your phone that your fridge needs a new water filter.
People really need to touch grass.
(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.)
This is absurdity.
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!
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.
A zigbee button/doorbell would work well, but then we'd have two buttons on the front door unless we hid the Blink's integrated button somehow.
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.
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:
https://www.onvif.org/profiles/profile-m/
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.
Sounds like a feature more than a bug.
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.
With a video doorbell you can get notifications when a person enters your property. You can notify police or neighbors if it’s a stranger
If they are going through the trouble its because they know there is something of value in there and a camera is not going to stop them.
A camera is only going to dissuade crimes of opportunity, its basically just fancy lock.
False, opportunity theft is the most common form.
Better doors/windows/locks help the most, and help against both opportunistic and targeted.
the only robberies that get 'attribution' are cases where the criminals get caught. i.e. low hanging fruit and thus these statistics skew to opportunistic events.
however, unplanned opportunistic crime makes for good promotional sales of window bars and strong locks. just like safes with electronic keypads.
very few such devices will stop a premeditated theft... and what is the rate of recovery for stolen goods in most jurisdictions?
Around here, they wear hoodies and keep their hood up to obscure their face.
Wear a mask and the victim is home: they know you are about to rob them and can prepare. Run away before the police come
Don't wear a mask and victim is home: make up a fake reason you pressed the doorbell, or up the ante to a home invasion and risk getting shot.
Don't wear a mask and the victim is not home: proceed with burglary but face is recorded for police.
Wear a mask and victim is not home: profit.
It's not as simple as covering up. Plus you still risk leaving finger prints and DNA
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 couldn't find a front door camera I liked so I ended up building my own from parts.
Having worked for "the cloud" for years, I tell everyone I know, there is no cloud, there is only other people's hard drives.
We live in a bubble. Reading stuff here means you understand things about computing barely 0.1% of the world population understands the possible consequences. Of that 0.1%, plenty do understand the consequences and still choose the convenience.
For these companies, they just need to convince everyone else, for whom they have no possible conception, understanding, or even words to imagine the Orwellian Rube-Goldberg-like machine that is modern day SaaS.
It isn't so much "get what you deserve", so much as society writ large is getting what it deserves for unregulated advertising slop and re-sale of consumer data.
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.
"look at what i can do with the assistance of an LLM"
shows an rube goldberg construction sure it works. but geez support and security is a nightmare.
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.
next round of outdoor cams and doorbells are going to be wholly selfhosted.
if they live for another 9 months I'll have the budget for it.
But my implementation of these requirements is absolutely not over engineered. I argue it is the simplest and most reliable it could be done.
But... why?
My light switches are similarly complicated.
As for availability, they are certainly very obtainable where I am in UK. Shops and Amazon etc have them.
I know a guy who lives is a 1700's-era house. His is a bell, a pulley, and a string.
The problem is they've probably gone to the wrong house before and met an owner who got defensive.
Then I guess 3d print a casing that just puts the ZigBee button on top of the integrated button?
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.
Now we're in "under-engineering" territory.
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.
Or buy 5, and decide which tone you like most.
- All consumers own smartphones and like using them
- Consumers have no idea how their home networking works
- Consumers could not move a file from their computer to an SD card (or something similar)
So, everything is done by the app: you install the app, the smart device broadcasts a wifi network. This allows you to use your phone to give the smart device your wifi password. Then the remote servers handle everything else.
There's nothing in between. You're either an actual engineer, as mrb describes, or you're just beholden to cloud services that are terrible and also are guaranteed to disappear in 0-3 years.
I like just about everything about the device, but I just want to have a normal door chime again.
https://philip.greenspun.com/humor/eecs-difference-explained
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)
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.)
Up next: How many cloud services does it take to turn on the lights?
Here's a hint: https://imgur.com/a/light-bulb-moment-hIKUI48
But hey, it could be worse. For instance, you could be trying to send an e-mail: https://github.com/0x4447/0x4447_product_s3_email#what-will-...
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.
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.