Smart doorbell failure #2?

Following on from my failure to detect my doorbell button being pushed, I considered a few different alternatives solutions. The first solution to spring to mind was to use a zigbee button. I discounted this option since I didn't want to remove the current doorbell and I would have to buy a sounder for the system. Also, if Home Assistant is down, so is the doorbell.

Of course, I could buy another doorbell and try to hack that. That means quite a bit of work. If it was a conventional door bell, I could probably add an esp32 to it to get it send MQTT messages. However, I have no such luck. So what is left?

Well, it turns out that sound devices vibrate when they ring. This realisation gave me another option - attach a vibration sensor and detect the ringing. I purchased a tuya vibration sensor and configured it to talk to ZHA. This was straight forward enough. Setting up a notification of the doorbell when the sensor was detected was again easy and straightforward. When I rang the doorbell, the notification came through to my phone. Success!

Well, mostly. Due to the construction of my house and mounting of the doorbell ringer, closing a door upstairs can set the ringer off. Bang on the floor a little too much, and again off it will go. However, as I live alone, these are generally acceptable to me.

So there we have it, a cheap low cost way to add your doorbell to home assistant. Am I going to stop trying to get the SDR to detect the doorbell? Nope. Am I probably going to replace the doorbell and spend far too much money? Probably. But until then, I at least have a working solution.

About the author

Tim Wilkes is a UK-based security architect with over 15 years of experience in electronics, Linux, and Unix systems administration. Since 2021, he's been designing secure systems for a telecom company while indulging his passions for programming, automation, and 3D printing. Tim shares his projects, tinkering adventures, and tech insights here - partly as a personal log, and partly in the hopes that others will find them useful.

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