Hubitat and video doorbell help

Coding experience is not needed, but you will be working with API’s to get it to work and there are a lot of hoops you’ll have to jump through like node-red, scrypted or homebridge-ring and fully kiosk browser.

I’m sure it’s possible, but a static image is easier than video and for me serves the same purpose… seeing who is at the doorbell. i also cant comment on how well it would work with video.

If you do decide to use a Ring doorbell i defo recommend checking out the rapid ring app (Ring has 2 apps) to see if it cant get you very close to what you are looking for.

If you decide to get a video doorbell that sends out a rtsp stream, then you can use the monoclecam app on a rpi to send that stream to an alexa show.

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I have Arlo cameras and they do stream to Alexa devices. I currently have a Eufy doorbell and using the Alexa integration you can create a setup to have the live stream show up on the Alexa device if the button is pressed. I have it set up on my office Show, using Echo speaks so that as soon as my front door bell detects motion the show will ask me if I want to show the stream. It worked with the Arlo doorbell I had as well. I got rid of the Arlo doorbell because the motion detection would keep staying on constant. I could reset it and it would work for about a week and then start constantly recording again. This, of coarse, stating happening about 3 months after the warranty was up.

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Didn't work for me. Would do the audio announcements but no live stream. It would always say "live stream not available". I could ask Alexa to show my front door, and that would work, but no live stream when the doorbell was pressed.

I had the same type of issue. With mine, it would randomly start alerting me to cars passing by the house even if I had it set to not alert to vehicles. In addition, the street is outside the motion area set so I have no idea why it was picking up vehicles passing by. Highly annoying to say the least. It got to the point where I grew tired of it. Arlo had no explanation, so I switched to a Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2.

One last thing. The build quality of the Arlo doorbell seems iffy. Mine started to get what appeared to be a type of delamination of the plastic above the doorbell button and around the camera. At first I though it may have been water intrusion, but it looked more like the material separating. Anyway, the device is sitting in a box now.

If you have Apple stuff another possibility is the Ring and others integrate well with Homebridge.. HE also has some bridge apps.. you can't directly access the devices in Homebridge (unless using Node-RED) but you can have virtual devices that trigger stuff in HE and vice versa.

Thinking back I don't know if I ever used the pressing of the doorbell button to start the live stream with the Arlo doorbell. I started it on any motion detected by the camera. My house sits way back from the road and I have my motion set very low. Basically I only wanted it to notify me if someone is coming up to the front door. I have other cameras for monitoring away from the house. I can't remember if the Alexa integration for Arlo included a doorbell press. It does for my Eufy but I still only use motion, I have it set the same way I had the Arlo.

Basically I use echo speaks to say "Alexa show front door camera" to the Echo Show in the office.

The Ring doorbell will stream live to the Echo show when the doorbell is pressed.

AFAIK a Ring/Echo Show combination is the only out-of-the-box way ATM to get a live feed to a display hub when the doorbell is pressed. Every other method requires you to actually tell the hub to display the feed. Also from what I've read there is still a lag before the feed is displayed. (This is why I still own an analog video doorbell which has its own screen.)

What I have also done as an alternative is to have a motion sensor trigger a browser cast of the video feed from an RTSP/MJPEG camera into my nest hub. That way the feed starts being displayed before the person even gets to the doorbell.

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How do you do that?

If you are like me, and want an out of box solution, and prefer Google Assistant over Alexa, then Google Nest Doorbell + Google Hubs in each room gets you live stream in each room when someone rings the doorbell. And if you pay for Nest Aware, you can use familiar face detection to teach your Nest camera how to recognize faces of people that you know and notify you when it sees people you don't know or announce their name of those it knows.

Neat - what's the delay in starting the stream like?

By the time I walk in front of the screen, after hearing the doorbell ringing, the stream is up and running.

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I’m aware of this but I’m interested in using a different doorbell, something without the price tag. Never seen the echo stream time but my uncle has the nest /home hub combo and very fast start time.
Both amazon and google know that the only thing going for their cameras is automatic stream otherwise people would go elsewhere.

I can’t believe there is no app/simple automation made that can accomplish this

Unfortunately it's not in the interests of manufacturers like google and amazon to create cross compatibility.

My set up is a bit complex. It uses node red (although you could probably use HE) to cast a browser page (which shows a MJPEG live stream from a camera) to a nest hub when motion is sensed. The page is cast using CATT ("cast all the things" running on a raspberry pi). It's not as fast as it used to be due to changes google made the hub firmware last year but it works well enough.

Not many cameras provide this kind of stream so I use an RTSP camera with the stream transcoded to MJPEG. Of course the side benefit of this is that I can continuously record the stream to a local server.

I'm tempted to get a nest doorbell now, but will probably wait until the 2022 version is released before deciding.

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Anyone else slightly annoyed having so many different companies/apps? I prefer to keep things in same family but then we run into issues like this

There is an effort that will create a new standard that will fix these problems. Will be released in “late 2020” and should make every device work with every platform...:slight_smile:

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:rofl:

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So youre saying I could use amazon app to check on nest product?

Bobby linked to an article reporting on a collaboration between some very big names in the Internet-of-Things category of consumer products and services. It's had different names over time, it's called Matter now.

The joke is that they announced it a while ago. It's still not ready, and even just a few weeks ago there was another announcement of a delay. That, plus it's debatable how much these big players like Amazon, Google and Apple will actually make it easy for consumers to seamlessly combine devices and services.

As @rocketwiz said, they don't actually want to make it too easy for us. Each of these huge players wants to be able to keep people relatively locked into their own ecosystem of devices and services.

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A recent ArmCrest integration for those interested:

Dahua and Amcrest integration for cameras and doorbells - :gear: Custom Apps and Drivers - Hubitat

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