I just have two wires stuck out there. You have to twist the wires together to get it to ring, and you receive a little low voltage shock, so it makes you think whether or not you really need to ring the doorbell.
He is out of line, but he does have a point. A camera could still be useful for varying the voltage. I've heard, that Jehovas Witnesses could use a little more of a shock to get their life together
Reolink works well with Home Assistant. I have it working here, and have been quite pleased with it. No subscriptions required.
Does it give you the option for 2 way audio through home assistantm And how are your experiences with wifi connection stability?
I have had a bad experience with HA + reolink
First one, audio stopped after a winter storm, only static playing constantly
You can set them up with 2 way audio with HA, but it's an endeavor, not a one click it works thing
I highly recommend you look up ubiquity, get a ubiquity protect router and bite the bullet cost wise because they work flawlessly
Or better, just get home cameras and keep a dumb doorbell
I would go full IP. Solutions like Reolink or unifi exist that do not need the cloud.
Only challenge would be getting ethernet to the door.
But there are 2 wire to ethernet even with poe from unifi. https://eu.store.ui.com/eu/en/category/accessories-poe-power/products/uacc-retrofit-poe-2wire
Not sure if they work well, never uses them but i would try that.
EDIT: Typo
Edit: on re-reading, I think you typo'd not -> now
~~Unifi doesn't need cloud, the storage is local.~~ But unless youre already in the unifi ecosystem, their doorbells are expensive, as you also need poe switch and a cloud key (which is a poorly named local NVR).
Yes its expensive but also good gear mostly (never used the door bell myself).
PoE switch is not necessary, PoE injectors can be had for couple of bucks used.
I've had three cloudkey harddisks die on me, so I'm a little jaded.
Never considered poe injectors because once get get a couple you may as well just have a switch. But if you can get them cheap then sure.
but also good gear mostly
I used to believe this. Then I flashed openwrt on my two ubiquiti access points and they are actually more stable and faster.
Ubiquiti is great at marketing.
Switches, Security gear, nvr, central local management etc. not really something others can or do offer.
Ia it the best probably not but its still good well functioning equipment, for what it offers.
Just because something else works better, does not mean that it works not good.
Ia it the best probably not but its still good well functioning equipment, for what it offers.
Sure, for "power users", maybe a small business, it's fine. It's just not very sophisticated under the hood. The point of Ubiquiti is the "easy" part.
The point is, the anecdotal evidence that you mentioned has nothing to say about other points you are making.
Just because product X runs better in a use case with software Y, does not mean product X is bad.
I do not want to come across like a ubiquity fan boy, since i only use it very targeted privately but the stuff is good, it's supported and a plug and play solution without the cloud. Exactly what fits the bill for what it's asked for here.
It is run in operation by thousands of businesses. Does it have problems, sure, like every other brand.
Have run openWRT myself on one of the latest lite APs, was good. Have not noticed a significant difference in the usage between both.
Do the reolink door bells also provide their feature openly to othet systems like Home Assistent? I don't wanna use their proprietary app. And do you have experience with the connection stability on Wifi? I don't want the connection to randomly cut out. I can go with ethernet (as we get new cables on our door either way), but Reolink doesn't seem to have an ethernet option.
First, I personally have not used it (but a security cam). But i have done some research.
Reolink Integration has Platinum Status on Home Assistant.
If you can set up Frigate then there seems to be 2 Way Voice Communication possible via the Home Assistant App.
There are a couple of Videos that show the process.
Reolink has at least one PoE Doorbell.
Ah, that looks good. And they are affordable. Definitely comes on the top of my list. Thanks you very much for your help
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| AP | WiFi Access Point |
| HA | Home Assistant automation software |
| ~ | High Availability |
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| NVR | Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV) |
| PoE | Power over Ethernet |
| Unifi | Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand |
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.
[Thread #330 for this comm, first seen 3rd Jun 2026, 11:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I would go with separate devices. You can add a button with two set of terminals to trigger both the traditional chime and IOT thingy on the same time. Personally I don't see the appeal on video/audio with a doorbell, but I'd guess there's some raspberry pi project around to achieve what you want. SIP just for a single house doorbell at a first glance sounds like a massive overkill, camera with a two-way audio, possibly integrated to home assistant, works equally well without the overhead of running a whole IP telephone system with it.
I agree, that full SIP is overkill. Though I don't want to go the DIY hardware route. I already tried that and had constant disconnects. So I want to buy a system, that just runs, but also provide possibilities to do more in a self hosted solution.
I'm not sure how much time I want to invest in this. Maybe I will just go with an easy, less capable solution instead.
I built a DIY with a 12v chime, a 12v dry contact ZigBee relay, a 12v generator, one ZigBee button and a Tenda two way audio pts external camera .
The 12v (AC) is required by my gate lock. The two way audio depends on a proprietary app (didn't bother too hard to make it works with Home assistant yet).
Using home assistant I can open the gate and check the camera. To actually talk back I need to open the proprietary app
The proprietary app is something I don't like. Would be great to find something, that is open enough to work with other systems
I would need to mess with stuff and protocols, it should be possibile to get Rid of the proprietary app and maybe once I will have time to do it ..
Yeah, time, the all limiting factor. I have a big pile of project I want to do, if I only had more time...
We should self host time?
Aren't we already doing that? I for sure didn't take the time to write paperless-ngx myself
You are not wrong.... Sme here for immich and many others....
I haven't finished setting it up yet, so I can't offer an opinion yet, but the way I've gone is a doorbell with electric lock control- mine does 2 locks, and you can set the 2nd lock to be a doorbell instead. The 'doorbell' output is a contact closure, which I just wired to a standard doorbell chime. Network down means I still have a doorbell.
What door bell do you have? Many have the relays, though they also need to be configurable between door opening (on entry permission) and button press
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