August View Doorbell Cam First Impressions

[pete3500]

I've had an August Smart Lock Pro for the last 5 it so months, and have been by and large pretty happy with it. When I purchased it, I also bought an early generation August Doorbell Camera which was designed to be hardwired. That unit was never installed for a number of reasons, most of which related to the odd square shape and how/where to mount it.

Lucky for me, enough people complained about it and August went to work on the design for a slimmed down, more traditionally shaped rectangle version. They also eliminated the need to run any wires by powering this model with a rechargeable battery, as well as including a wireless plugin chime unit which sounds when a signal is recieved OTA.

First, before anything, find the wood screws that are included for mounting, and throw them in the trash. Be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, though, and hang onto the two tiny machine screws, as you will need them. Why companies put so much into R&D, manufacturing precision, and system reliability, just to skimp out on garbage hardware always amazes me.

After that, immediately figure out how to, and then remove the battery from the unit so you can get it on the charger. Mine was in need of a little over an hour of charging before it was topped off.

If you have no August devices already in operation, this might not be the case for you. But for me, getting the August View up and running smoothly with my August Pro Lock and August Hub was very easy, much easier than my previous August product experience.

Things that caught me off guard (not necessarily bad or good) included:

1. Chime plays at the doorbell button which the person pressing it will hear. (Volume and selectable)
2. The chime volume for the doorbell button device is set in single digit increments from 1 to 100, while the chime unit inside the house has three (low, medium, & high)
3. The image is built with an extreme fish eye distortion
4. The selection of 4-5 choices of chimes is pretty bad. Hopefully they enable mp3 or wav files to be uploaded and used.
5. After the first day, barely 12 hours, my battery indicator showed 73%.
6. Successfully connecting to the camera using the app while away from my house had been spotty at best, requiring I reboot the doorbell remotely multiple times.

I'll reserve full judgment until some updates are sent to address the early hiccups.

Pete

[CrisD]

Can you please post some pics and screenshots?

[signal15]

Does it require a monthly charge for video storage?

All of these devices that charge a few bucks a month add up quickly. I've avoided getting a video doorbell because I refuse to pay monthly for it.

[zarthan]

You get 24 hours storage for free. If you want longer it is a monthly subscription.
I have the second generation doorbell. I don't think they improved the second over the first generation and I think they just abandoned that whole line of thinking and likely fixing anything in the first 2. I have little hope for the third generation.

[pete3500]

Yeah, if you want more than 24hrs, I thick is $4.00/ month. But you can download videos through the app if you want to keep one. Plus it's only a matter of time before someone hacks the thing so you can stream it to a local NAS.

I have one issue to add, one which I'll be reporting to the company for them to hopefully fix in an update in the future. During the day when a motion detection event trigger a recording, the first 4-6 seconds of the video is taken with the camera's iris wide open. Then entire screen is white washed and you can't see anything until it finally adjusts to a proper setting.

[signal15]

I've been thinking about making a pi zero based doorbell, that automatically sets up an s3 bucket using my Amazon creds and storing it there. Yes, I would have to pay the AWS fees, but they would be way less than what the doorbell companies are charging. And, I would maintain full control of my data.

The only problem is finding the time to work on it.

[pete3500]

Dude, if you do that, could you share the magic? I love me some Rpi, but I can't code to save my life!

[zarthan]

One would think that a video doorbell would be easy enough to build with a Pi zero W and camera. A quick G search and I don't see anything obvious?????

[signal15]

Well, don't forget that you need android/iOS apps as well.

[zarthan]

Mostly I would be interested in creating a local doorbell that sent an email image rather than having the capability to answer the door remotely. I have that capability with my current August doorbell and I have only really used remote answer once in the last year. I mostly want to know that a package has been delivered.