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It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

blog.vghaisas.com

151–160 of 282 posts

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#151
Here's my experience with doorbells:

I inherited an electrical one from the previous owner. It ran on... battery. (Why would anyone do this is beyond me, but it turns out to be very common where I live.) The battery died and I needed a replacement. If I wanted to replace it with something that connects to the power cables inside the house, I'd need to drill a hole in the front wall (made of brick and mortar) and find the closest cable to connect to... And I was too lazy to do that.

On the street I live, there are mostly old houses. Some of them have a bell that exposes a handle on the outside that you need to pull in order to ring the bell inside the house. Some have a "door hammer" (is it what it's called?), a decorative, usually shaped as a ring in an animal's mouth, hammer that's attached to the middle of the door one would use to knock on a metal plate used for this attachment.

I bought an actual cast iron bell and attached it near the door above the mailbox.

What happened is that people seem to doubt so much the functionality of an obvious bell that they prefer knocking on the door to pulling the thread attached to the bell. That's what most package delivery service people do.

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#154
I got so tired of every hardware device requiring cloud services, accounts, logins, privacy policies, etc. that I started building my own. I think the tipping point was a phone app to control a Panasonic air conditioner. It could just communicate with the air conditioner over Bluetooth, after all, the air conditioner was never more than 3 meters away from me. But instead, Panasonic chose to build a cloud services platform, so you need internet access, you need to create an account with an appropriate password, agree to data processing, accept the privacy policy, accept privacy policy updates, etc.

Once you do all that, your spouse comes and asks for a way to control the air conditioning too…

This whole "you need to create an account" is a virus that needs to go away. It should be possible to control a local device without accounts, privacy policies, and other crap.

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#155
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former embedded systems engineer, my door bell is two long bits of wire, a bell, a push button and two C cells. My light switches are similarly complicated.

As a former embedded systems engineer, my door bell is two long bits of wire, a bell, a push button and two C cells. I know a guy who lives is a 1700's-era house. His is a bell, a pulley, and a string.

Which part of that system is connected to wifi? I guess kinetic energy from the bell can be enough to send a zibee message

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#156

Don't use web security cameras to stop crime. Every service wants your personal information. Every service charges a subscription. The crime will still happen. Use a physically protected motion action video recorder. No web. The burglary will happen and you will have evidence. No software upgrades. Never obsolete. YMMV

gotta get claude to write the garbage nextjs vercel app that plays the recorded video online ofc you're smart and you tell him to build a login screen but your no auth vercel edge function accepts requests from anyone. oh and you let openclaw run the show and it puts the videos in your free cloud flare blob. you show your friends and family the app you made, you offer to build them one too, everyone claps

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZigBee button, double sided scotch tape, Zigbee dongle, HomeAssistant on RPi with a speaker.

Yeah this would have been my answer, except for one catch: what do I do with the existing integrated button on the Blink doorbell?

I presume you want to keep the Blink doorbell for the camera functionality?

Then I guess 3d print a casing that just puts the ZigBee button on top of the integrated button?

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently exchanged with a police agent in Belgium who specializes in the topic. Their heuristics is opportunity of action, namely how easy it is to get in and out without being caught on the spot. They said they do not really care about being recognized, only being noticed and stopped in action. Consequently the advice is to strengthen physical security first, i.e. have a big door with proper locks and close your w…

> Their heuristics is opportunity of action My favorite burglar fact is robberies go way down when it’s raining. Thieves just don’t want the hassle of getting wet.

Business idea: start your sprinklers on burglar detection, not your alarms.

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#159
post #123
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The requirements are not over engineered. They are what they are. Wireless and configurable chime. They are fixed parameters. But my implementation of these requirements is absolutely not over engineered. I argue it is the simplest and most reliable it could be done.

“I was only following the requirements” at this point must be the Nurnberg defence of over engineering. If it quacks like a duck, doesn’t matter what you call it: it was over engineering.

Godwin's law was invoked quickly. It's not very hacker spirit to hear a story of somebody putting together a cool hardware solution to do something they wanted, and then complain that they wanted the wrong thing.

> check out my hand-embroidered curtains, it's got exactly the flower pattern I wanted

> yeah well you shouldn't want flowers on your curtains, just buy plain white ones from the store

Re: It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell

#160
post #148
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be over engineered if one could design a system providing similar functionality using less hardware and less software. I challenge you to design a wireless doorbell that has a user-configurable chime, in a way that uses less software or less hardware than mine. You couldn't. In fact, if you did market research like me you would find that 99% of similar products have vastly more complex hardware or software o…

Challenge accepted: "Similar functionality" here is the same doorbells that have existed for over a century. Done. :) If the requirements and constraints come from you, then saying "those are the requirements" doesn't settle anything. And is the same excuse people use for the over-engineered solutions you don't seem to like. It is over-engineering compared to a regular doorbell, period.

OP stated it requires a user configurable chime. This is not a regular doorbell.
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