Convert an existing wired doorbell into a smart doorbell using ESPHome

I wouldn't recommend crimping your own hookup wires as a hobbiest, especially not dupont. The unofficial tools for dupont mostly all suck, and the official tools are $400+[1].

[1]: https://www.mattmillman.com/info/crimpconnectors/dupont-and-...

For my own crimping of dupont, I'm using the Iwiss SN-025 which works OK, but even then I've mostly switched to Mini-PV because I was tired of the dupont receptacles wearing out after 5 cycles.

The pictured SN-28B is definitely not good for dupont, which has a totally round cable holding ring. Amazon/Aliexpress sellers don't know anything about what they are selling.

The only real advantage of this seems to be the ability to disable the chime during quiet hours. Otherwise it seems like a much more failure-prone doorbell (more components means more things to break).

Why not go the other way entirely? Disable the chime, install a door knocker, and never worry about replacing outdated tech, dried capacitors, shorts or anything else for the rest of one’s life.

I think personally, I'd go with a simple Zigbee or Z-Wave push-button if (when) I were to re-do my doorbell setup.

I use Home Assistant, with hundreds of devices in my home at this point. I spent so long looking for the right video doorbell and chime that I ultimately ended up with something both costly and somewhat unreliable.

I use the Amcrest AD410 with a custom component that polls it (issue 1), with all of the cloud and online stuff blocked in my network, and an Aeotec Siren / Doorbell 6. The Aeotec siren is utter trash and I'm now on my third one; two units had the audio hardware fail, and a silent door bell is pretty useless.

The one I have now hasn't failed yet, but it can be extremely unreliable and get lock-ups requiring me to open it and short out or de-solder the battery connector to get it to behave again if someone presses the doorbell too quick.

The button part has never been the hard part; the siren is; given there seems to be so little, high quality, smart siren hardware available I'd probably build one half of this setup; bell/siren + ESP and use a Z-Wave or Zigbee button to "push" the action of pressing the bell and have HA "ring" it.

Aside: Since the door chime is so unreliable, I have HA set up to announce the door on speakers, and lights to blink in various places when a press is detected too.

I'd then finally replace the multi-purpose video doorbell with a dedicated IP camera and this simple button; As I live in the UK, RMAing my first AD410 was a hassle (had to send it back to the US when it failed), and I was without a doorbell for weeks.

Since my front door is south-facing, the combination of direct sunlight, then cold cycles, coupled with heavy-handed delivery people smashing the button day in day out, basically crumbled the (matt black) casing to dust within 4 months of fitting it. It uses pogo pins to deliver power from the rear of the casing to the electronics so the compromised integrity of the casing resulted in it power cycling constantly.

There are just too many unreliable and expensive parts to what is a simple yet essential function of being a door bell, and the lesson I've learned is that the video functionality is best _not_ integrated. I _do_ still want a smart door bell though for its many benefits.

I did something similar, but as I didn’t have access to mains in an easy way (read: close enough to the doorbell) to power the ESP I built a small PSU that took the very unregulated 8VAC from the doorbell transformer into 5VDC (using a rectifier, LM7805 for regulation and some capacitors to smooth everything out). Everything was small enough so I could hide it in the actual doorbell as well!

Am I missing something? Neither schematics nor my limited understanding of physics explains why you need to, nor how it is possible to, bend one of the pins to disconnect GPIO0 (chip-row, 3rd from the left) from the reset pin (edge-row, 2nd from the left)...

Is it me? Have I been misusing my 8266s all this time?

Otherwise, good article, nice idea, great conclusion!

I did a very similar hack a while ago, but in my case, I have a Ubiquiti video door bell, and I was having issues with it sometimes rebooting when it tried to ring the chime (after a specific software update, but only when it was cold out. I still have no idea if this a hardware or software problem, but I got tired of trying to diagnose).

Anyway, I also realized my chime wasn't audible in some parts of the house, so what I did instead was disable the hardwired chime completely, then get a fairly cheap wireless doorbell with 3 plug-in receivers scattered around the house. An esp8266 module (Wemos D1) is wired directly to the doorbell button, supplying 3.3V to ring it.

I use Home Assistant to send the signal from the Unifi doorbell to the esp8266. The biggest downside is the need to have Home Assistant, Unifi Protect and Wifi all running for my doorbell to work, but at the same time, I have a lot of automations that stop without those, the doorbell is not that high on my list of critical priorities. People can knock.

Kind of wish I had this when I had a baby that slept during the day: it would be trivial to schedule the chime not to ring at certain times of day.

I did a write-up: https://imgur.com/gallery/wifi-doorbell-chime-QTYYQs4

Beware that the relay may flap on boot with this exact setup.

https://github.com/IOT-MCU/ESP-01S-Relay-v1.0/issues/1

https://github.com/IOT-MCU/ESP-01S-Relay-v4.0/issues/1

https://rabbithole.wwwdotorg.org/2017/03/28/esp8266-gpio.htm...

Not specifically a recommendation for doorbells, but if all you need is a relay with an ESP inside that you can flash to ESPHome et al., Sonoff or Shelly products are pretty neat ready-made options that incorporate a power supply from mains (and sometimes have some DC powering support too), a relay and a case.

Some models have an option of measuring temperature and/or power consumption as well.

very cool, but too bulky for what it is. for just 4$ you can have this one https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806558695914.html

> I’m not planning on doing articles or videos on my ventilation setup. Mainly because well… it is just an on/off switch?

The irony of the author responding to another request on his site with the sentence "well… it is just an on/off switch".

Have somebody used a shelly 1 or so for this? I wonder how complicated this is because I look for a simple (maybe more expensive) but open and hackable solution

Nice project - so many projects don't take advantage of what you already have.

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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.