Convert an existing wired doorbell into a smart doorbell using ESPHome • Hacker News Board

Re: Convert an existing wired doorbell into a smart doorbell using ESPHome

#71

Post by alright2565 » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 12:59 AM UTC

alias_neo wrote: post #69

alright2565 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article said that Engineer PA-24 is good since it has cylindrical dies! I haven't tried it since I wanted to do the full crimp in one motion. Maybe that desire was irrational.

I'm not entirely sure which one I have, since I seem to have misplaced it, It's a PA-2X, where I'm not sure what the X is. By "cylindrical dies" is it referring to the shape of the inside of one-side of the die? What's the alternative? I do recall that the design of the one I have, has little protrusions on one side of the die to encourage the wings to wrap under, so that they form a sort of m shape, with the ends of…

This is mini-pv, but dupont is the same concept: https://i.imgur.com/bV1zUkm.jpeg

It's designed for an oval crimp around the insulation & a m-crimp on the wire. The typical cheap crimpers have two sizes of m-crimp, which is fine for a lot of JST connectors for example, but not this.

Re: Convert an existing wired doorbell into a smart doorbell using ESPHome

#72

Post by alias_neo » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 5:38 AM UTC

alright2565 wrote: post #71

alias_neo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not entirely sure which one I have, since I seem to have misplaced it, It's a PA-2X, where I'm not sure what the X is. By "cylindrical dies" is it referring to the shape of the inside of one-side of the die? What's the alternative? I do recall that the design of the one I have, has little protrusions on one side of the die to encourage the wings to wrap under, so that they form a sort of m shape, with the ends of…

This is mini-pv, but dupont is the same concept: https://i.imgur.com/bV1zUkm.jpeg It's designed for an oval crimp around the insulation & a m-crimp on the wire. The typical cheap crimpers have two sizes of m-crimp, which is fine for a lot of JST connectors for example, but not this.

Ah, thanks for the explanation, that makes perfect sense.

I've not seen an m-crimp on both sides yet, sounds like it wouldn't work very well at all unless you had two wings on the connector itself to m-crimp the ends of, which I've also never seen!

Re: Convert an existing wired doorbell into a smart doorbell using ESPHome

#73

Post by alias_neo » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 5:46 AM UTC

whazor wrote: post #70

alias_neo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell me some more about that? I currently use ESPHome for a bunch of devices, but the automations they use are all driven through Home Assistant. Is there a way to link devices directly over the WiFi with ESPHome? EDIT: I think I understand what you meant now; not specifically ESPHome, but the nature of the deployment in the OP takes the "smarts" out of the critical path, allowing it to fall back to being an…

I meant in particular with ESPHome you can program automations that work if WiFi is down. Like, if button is pressed, toggle relay for 3 seconds. Furthermore, you can have wireless communication between ESPNodes: https://esphome.io/cookbook/http_request_sensor

Interesting. They seem to warn against using the server for much as it's resource hungry and potentially unreliable, but that appears to be focused on the task of serving data; a simple webhook type use should be safer.

It'd be pretty amazing if ESPHome supported something like ZeroMQ[0], so you could talk between nodes in anything up-to full-mesh at a socket-level and not need to worry about the availability of a server to manage the traffic.

[0] https://zeromq.org/

Re: Convert an existing wired doorbell into a smart doorbell using ESPHome

#74

Post by dangus » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 3:48 PM UTC

bkuhns wrote: post #31

dangus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that aspect about this project as well. On the other hand, it's quite easy to see how following these directions to the T will take an enthusiast multiple hours to setup. Many existing smart doorbells do actually use the existing wiring and chime of the doorbell. An example is the Google Nest Doorbell. So in terms of "wasting what you already have" what you're wasting by going with a typical consumer product i…

Sure, the existing consumer smart doorbells serve exactly that need. But this project can be handy for someone, like me, who already has a camera pointed at their porch but not a smart doorbell. So, with this project, I could add an automation to push a picture from the front porch camera to my phone when someone rings the doorbell, for example.

Great example, that makes a lot of sense.

Re: Convert an existing wired doorbell into a smart doorbell using ESPHome

#75

Post by BizarroLand » Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 10:28 PM UTC

btbuildem wrote: post #42

A bit disappointing, having to add a 5V charger (and find a wall socket to plug it into) when the doorbell circuit already provides 24V.

24v AC, typically, so you would need a rectifier to bring it down to DC then a buck converter to drop to 5v. Definitely doable especially at the low voltages present, but in many cases more of a hassle than finding a USB wall wart and plugging it in.