Thinking of ordering REOLINK Video Doorbell

Not directly. You need something to relay them. Blue Iris can do it, and Camect

1 Like

There are 2 different approaches that can be used to "trap" a bell press on the Reolink.
(Maybe more, just 2 that come to mind quickly).

  1. I have a Zigbee motion sensor, positioned under the eaves trough, pointed at the front door. It fires a motion activate in Rule Machine.
  2. In a "ring doorbell" installation that I did, I have an Alexa routine flip a switch that is shared with Alexa (via the Hubitat Alexa skill app). That is used in a Rule Machine rule.

Does this actually work? I've been looking to replace my AWFUL POS Foscam DBW5 but the lack of mechanical chime support on the Reolink is a non-starter for me. I've done a fair bit of Googling and by all accounts the the Reolink doesn't appear to have an internal relay required to trigger a mechanical chime.

Works fine for me....

1 Like

Excellent. Does the resistor connect to the chime between the TRANS and FRONT terminals like the power kits that ship with other doorbells that support mechanical chimes?

it's just a 10ohm across both terminals on the doorbell. Pretty much the same way eufy and ring do it. (I think it's 10 ohm, I used the one from my eufy because I couldn't find the pack that came with my reolink.. (too excited to open lol). Then it also has the remote chime which i put in my wifes office. So we have 2 chimes. I use a 24v transformer for our main chime so I don't know if that makes a diff or not.

I reached out to Reolink support to bitch about the lack of mechanical chime support. They responded quickly and indicated a new battery powered unit with mechanical chime support is soon to be released: Reolink Products Roadmap.

That's weird because mine works (though it's electronic and not mechanical since it's only a 2 years old but same principal)

Yeah, no idea what the difference is but from all I've read, the current versions don't work with mechanical chimes. I found a hack that uses an Arduino Nano but it involves tapping into the wireless chime and it's a bit too involved to be a workable solution for me.

Roadmap aside, I'll be curious to see when the new doorbell is actually released.

Looks like the Reolink Battery Doorbell was released and finally hit Amazon

I'll probably wait until Black Friday to see if it goes on sale. In the meantime, anyone pull the plug on this model yet?

I have the white version (slightly different aspect ratio). I replaced my Google doorbell with it and so glad I did.

I integrate mine to Home Assistant and then from their into Hubitat. It exposes loads of local functions.

1 Like

The 1:1 Aspect Ratio of this new model sounds interesting and should provide a larger overall field of view. But I'm curious to see how it compares to the 3:4 AR of the previous models.

1 Like

This is the POE version. Porch is 30 ft wide...

1 Like

That's pretty good. 1:1 AR should allow for a bit more vertical visibility which wouldn't suck either.

1 Like

I guess I have the older version with WiFi connectivity. I have found the WiFi connectivity to be flaky. When the connection is on, the picture is pretty good. I have it feeding my Camect.

2 Likes

I've been watching the Black Friday and Cyber Monday pricing on the new Reolink Battery doorbell and finally pulled the plug on the doorbell and home hub combo. For anyone else considering this doorbell, it doesn't support RTSP or ONVIF by itself--support for both is provided by the Home Hub. I'm not thrilled about needing (or managing) an additional hub but it sounds like the setup works well and I can't deal with my current POS Foscam doorbell so I'm willing to give this a shot. Amazon's return period is extended until January 31st for the holidays so it gives me a good amount of time to see if this is worth keeping.

I won't have a chance to install this for a couple of weeks but will report back once it's installed and working with Blue Iris.

You can use blue iris only if you don't want another hub or use Camect. Both directly integrate into hubitat. Camect has a great AI as well. Foscam also works with camect but foscam can also output directly to a hubitat dashboard. It just can't trigger anything that way.

I'm not sure what they're hub is giving you. Also If you can do it, I highly recommend the POE version.

My "white" version reolink doorbell support both RTSP and ONVIF. I thought it was fairly standard across the whole range?

With Camect you still need a dedicated 24/7 on machine correct? I'm running BI on a small PC, wondering if there's a benefit.

From all I've read, the new battery doorbell doesn't support RTSP or ONVIF without the home hub The doorbell provides the stream to the home hub and the hub exposes RTSP and ONVIF support. It's a decidedly weird design decision on Reolink's part but the home hub also includes some potentially useful functionality including encrypted recording, offline storage, and Ethernet connectivity.

The PoE version of the older doorbell models isn't an option for me because of cable routing issues (crawlspace with no practical cable routing options), and like the WiFi version no mechanical chime support which makes both non-starters.

I'll have a month and a half to trial this thing--if it doesn't pan out it'll go back.