So simply put my Arlo Video Doorbell just died. It won't power on or do anything so i am looking for a replacement. It was the very first iteration of the doorbell from Arlo and with their recent antics with forcing subscriptions and such I am looking at other options. For the time being I went out and bought a new button to simply mount on the outside. So now at least my dumb wired doorbell is still working.
I see 3 potential paths
Replace the whole setup with something like Reolink Video Doorbell POE or wifi. This would involve finding some way to modify the current door bell setup to provide power to the AC Adapter and the provided chime device. I wouldn't expect this to be to bad, but not sure about integration though it appears there are options.
Find another Video doorbell that interact with the current physical bell setup and transformer similar to arlo. Hopefully it would work with Hubitat.
Use external cameras for front door and put a relay or some device in between the doorbell and the bell/transformer to capture the button press. Not optimal, but functional
One last thing is I have a Aeotec Siren 6 which could function as a doorbell as well if i can just capture the button press to trigger the sound to play.
What are people doing currently for this ask. I asked a thread about the Reolink Camera and it was very positive, I just don't want to jump one direction without considering the options.
I think the Reolink option is nice, but would effectively mean I would pull the existing physical chime and transformer to convert it to a outlet. Then use that duplex plug to power both the camera and the provided chime device.
One last thing to consider is that he major use of the Arlo video doorbell was to respond with prerecorded messages to solicitors, and for package detection. So having package detection would be a big plus to any option.
Yea.. Unfortunately, Unifi is a hard sell as it's cost of entry. Nothing I have is Unifi right now so it would mean other investments that aren't exactly cheap. The Reo Link Video Doorbell is less then $100 while a lot of other options are less then $200. To get started in Unifi would be a few hundred i would expect to get the gear needed to build out to even start to consider the Doorbell.
Doesn't mean I don't like the idea of a unifi network. It is just the rest of the network stuff i have works fine so it is a hard to just replace it all.
That said I have good wifi that is a mesh network with ethernet backhaul so wifi devices are certainly an option.
I replaced my Arlo with the Eufy doorbell. I have it integrated with HE though it's Alexa integration, so that may or not be an option for you.
I have been fairly happy with it. No subscription and it ties to my homes indoor chime and is powered by the house transformer. I think all the new ones use a battery and charge the battery from the transformer.
This is the route I went a few years ago. Very happy with my UniFi network and UniFi Protect cameras and doorbell. Not exactly 'inexpensive', but I like that it is all local and no subscription fees like I had with my Ring Doorbell.
OK so With all this positive feedback of Unifi i figured i would dig in a little and see what it would take to get started. Here is what i came up with i would need to implement Unifi.
Cloud Gateway Ultra 129
U7Pro 189
Lite 8 POE 109
Lite 16 poe 199
Doorbell POE kit 379
Maybe I could eliminate one of the switches, but that is over 1k If i figred that right. The thing is i would need to replace a 3 puck Google wifi Meshsetup and 2 8 port switches + the doorbell. Is there any way to make that more reasonable.
The reason i didn't look at the Gloud Gateway Express was that as i understand it there is a very limiting unifi device limit on that unit.
If you don't want to overhaul your full network, you can definitely just opt to get any gateway or one of the standalone NVRs and only use them for running Unifi Protect.
The reason to overhaul everything is more about Google Wifi Mesh then it is about the Unifi. Google Wifi Mesh won't allow all of it's nodes to be in AP mode. It expects one to be the main control unit and router. So by eliminating it as the main gateway router All of google wilfi would need to be pulled. This does mean I could probably do something differently with the switches. If i use the POE Powered doorbell kitI would need a new switch to provide the POE power. The non POE Kit could be used though and i could just keep my existing switches.
I just put it in Viso to get a visual and found that i could probably do without other swtiche either way. One would be enough with maybe a flex switch powered over POE. That helps reduce the cost a good bit.
Is there a subscription cost to Unifi Protect? Do you have to have a Unifi NVR?
That's what I mean. You don't have to replace your router with the gateway device. You can use it strictly as a network client running the Unifi Protect application
No sub cost. I don't currently but it's a contender. I have Nest Cams all over the place. Landed on them because, at the time, I didn't have ethernet already ran and didn't want to deal with running it and they were one of the few subscriptions that weren't done "per camera".
My intent is to run all the cabling when it starts warming back up and replace them with mostly PoE. The doorbell cam will likely be something WiFi based that I can power from the standard doorbell transformer. Don't want to have to deal with removing it to recharge batteries nor getting ethernet into the door frame.
ok i see what you are saying. So which devices would support that. Would the Cloud Gateway Ultra i mentioned above support that or would i need to get something like the CloudKey+ for NVR functionality.
Totally agree about batteries. That is something i certainly don't want to deal with.
1 more option to consider, use an acceleration sensor (smartthings multi) on the actual bell of your doorbell. I use this with a ring doorbell (until it dies), and i dont miss a ding.
If you buy the Reolink it comes with a Chime that you plug into power. The video doorbell automatically synchs with the chime.
Reolink doesn't make a battery powered video doorbell - it's either poe or wifi.
Make sure that you have enough power at the doorbell from an existing doorbell.
The cost of entry is a bit high, no question. But when I think about all the money I spent on routers, crappy Ring cameras and doorbells (I've used probably every version they came out with), and other stuff that ended up in the trash bin, I consider the Ubiquity setup I have now to be a solid investment that I won't need to replace for a long time.
You could use the Dream Router and the doorbell as a cheaper alternative. I have a Dream Router at our little vacation house, with a couple of Ubiquity POE cameras and it's been rock solid. Only drawback with the DR is you can only store videos on the internal memory or on a microSD card, there's no way to connect a hard drive. So if you want continuous recording, you can't store much. If you only want to record events, it's fine. It's a nice Wifi 6 router with the same interface and options as its bigger siblings, and if you use a doorbell you can still add one more POE device so you could add an additional AP.
