Recommendation for Video Doorbell

NovaAlpha on 16/06/2024 - 21:05
Last edited 16/06/2024 - 21:17

Hi all,

I'm looking to add a video doorbell to some of my properties. I'm not quite sure why I haven't done this already, since all of my properties have been equipped with security outdoor and indoor cameras for years. A video doorbell seems like a no brainer and yet somehow it just never occurred to me, oh well.

Here's a list of things I'm looking for:

  • Needs to be at least 1080p, don't want some budget Chinese 480p suggestions.
  • No subscriptions. I don't want to pay a monthly fee just to use some basic feature.
  • Needs to provide live stream on PC, without much delay or issues. I don't need to view the live stream constantly, as it's of course not CCTV. I just need to check it very quickly when there's a notification of a parcel being delivered or something, so I can see what's happening at my front door and quickly interact with the courier guy if required.
  • Has to be battery-powered, not wired.

Those are the main criteria. Obviously, the more features the doorbell has, the better, but I mainly care about the ones I listed above.

The doorbell has to be battery-powered because some of my properties don't have an existing doorbell integrated and so there's no pre-existing circuit or anything to hook into. I don't want to go through the hassle of making this a more complex job than it needs to be. I just want to quickly DIY and mount this within 10 mins and done.

I've looked at Wyze, Arlo, Nest, Ring and Eufy and here's what I've learned:

  • Arlo seems to be pretty crappy in general. Reviews on Reddit, PBTech and Arlo's forum shows that the users aren't happy with its performance and how laggy it is. Doesn't matter if you try to use live stream on your phone or on PC (via their website), there's a noticeable 5~8 seconds delay when connecting to it, and doing any task seems to have delays too. Other than that, the live stream feature is free.

  • I've already owned a couple of Wyze cams and while they do provide a live stream page for your cameras, it requires Wyze Cam Plus subscription and that's PER camera per month. I'm not keen to buy a Wyze doorbell and then having to add a monthly subscription just to use the live stream . I've also read many comments about Wyze's integration into Alexa Echo Show being very crappy and unreliable. The Alexa Wyze skill has a lot of poor reviews too and users have advised to use a tablet and run TinyCam or Wyze app directly to view the live feed. But I'm not too keen to do that. I know there are ways to convert your WyzeCam to use RTSP firmware, but I cbf dealing with that. I just want a quick easily solution.

  • Nest seems to have the best bang for value. It provides 3 hours of free cloud storage and offers person, parcel and pet detection for free. While I don't really need them, it's nice to have. It also allows you to access your cameras and doorbell via their webpage. But apparently, the battery life is a known issue and many users have had to get their unit replaced. The live stream feature is free.

  • Ring seems OK. Live stream feature is free and apparently takes only 1s to connect. Apparently there used to be a dedicated Windows app to view live stream, but they deprecated it and now require users to go to their webpage and view it from there. Most other features are subscription based. The important thing is that most comments I've read about Ring seems to be quite consistent, where the users are happy with the performance.

  • Eufy provides live stream on PC for free, but requires you to generate a temporary pin code and it can only last 24 hours maximum, before needing to generate another one. Don't want to go through this exercise every time.

You might be asking, why do you need to view the live stream on PC? Well it's because I don't want too many devices around me. I'm trying a to stay minimalistic as much as possible. On my desk, I have 6 monitors, a port replicator/dock, a 245W GaN charger, Amazon Echo, Google Nest Mini, professional microphone with boom arm, a WH-1000XM5 on a headphone mount and a Bose QC on another mount, as well as an old Bose QC 35 ii lying around. I have 2 phones on my desk and several other spare phones in a mini drawer sitting on top of my desk, a Nuphy keyboard and a custom 12-key mini-keyboard next to it, a CO2 monitor, 2 tablets and 2 portable 16' monitors, bluetooth speakers, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Valve Steam Deck, console controllers, Elgato Stream Deck, and many MANY other things. And that's just what's on my desk. In my bag, I have a bunch of things that I carry to work.

Anyway, the point is that I'm trying to minimize the number of devices in my life. If I have to use an Amazon Echo Show or a tablet dedicated to showing a live feed of my front door, that's just a bit overkill.

You might also be asking, why don't you set up Home Assistant on a monitor and get something like an Ubiquiti or whatever? Well yeah I could, but it's somewhat costly and time consuming. I'm trying to do this for a few properties and want to easiest solution that won't take up much of my valuable time. Not to mention that I have a habit of getting my hands dirty and needing to upgrade this or that constantly, and things may sometimes run into issues and I don't want to have to go around fixing things, I'm busy enough as it is.

I'm considering getting either the Nest or the Ring doorbell, because I can simply have their live stream webpage open on my laptop. I don't need to set up the live stream to a separate monitor/tablet/device, as I can just use my laptop (which is the device I use the most anyway). I can just have the live stream page running as a PWA. I don't have to worry about port forwarding or any networking/security setup, as the live feed is all handled directly by the vendors on their servers, and all I need to do is browse to their page, login with my account and voila. Since I own both Amazon Echo and Google Nest Mini and Amazon Echo Show, it means that both Ring and Nest doorbells can use those devices as chime. I can get both Ring and Nest doorbells pretty cheap at about $100 or so.

One issue with battery-powered devices is that well, they need to recharge every now and then. However, Ring has a quick and easy way to hot-swap the batteries and so I could just get some spare batteries and swap them when required. There's also a 3rd party power charger that you you buy and it works for Nest, Arlo and Ring products apparently. And there's a solar charging option for Ring as well if I want to go down that path.

As all my properties are equipped with Swann, Wyze and Eufy indoor and outdoor cameras, I don't really care about 24/7 recording and all those other features. I'm basically covered and I have automatic backups saved to my OneDrive developer account with 25TB, which I got for free lol. So I'm basically only be needing the doorbell for just tracking parcel delivery notifications, or quickly viewing any unwanted guests at my front door. I do have outdoor cams that can track these already, but I don't like having to deal with their apps (e.g. opening Wyze or Eufy app) just to see the notifications, and I don't like to switch between my phone and my laptop constantly.

I'm not keen on using phone apps for viewing live stream. Yes I know I can easily remote onto my phone from my PC using screen mirroring, using scrcpy etc. I know I can run Android apps using WSA on Windows, or using emulators. I just CBF dealing with any of these things. I just want something that's quick and easy, where I can view a webpage, I'll be logged in automatically and I can start viewing the live stream, and it'll always be a consistent experience.

General Discussion

Comments

    • NovaAlpha on 16/06/2024 - 23:23
      -1

      Uhh, have you seen the reviews in that link? It's pretty poor.

      And it seems to rely on using app on your phone. How does this address any of the issues I've raised?

      I did find this, which I could do:
      https://github.com/DeltaTangoLima/orion_sc008ha

      but again, I don't have the time. That's the whole reason I'm not setting this up using Home Assistant, because I have to do this for a few properties and I just want something quick and easy that ticks all the boxes.

  • Deephardfunky on 16/06/2024 - 21:27

    I have one if these it does everything i need it to with the only cost being the initial purchase price.

  • ace310 on 17/06/2024 - 09:28

    I have Eufy e340 dual cam. It has good integration with alexa and it will open video as soon as someone presses the bell. It can also notify if someone is at the door.

    I understand you don't want home assistant and are only looking for battery powered so options are limited.

    It has some integration especially it does have some sensors exposed like Motion detected, Package tracking, ringing etc. You can also control it including changing the alarm modes etc. I haven't bothered with any automations with it as Alexa & phone notifications are enough for me. Maybe you can look at the github to get the addon running somewhere on docker. By the way running homeassistant on a VM takes few minutes as I can see you are technically inclined to get this sorted.

    Battery lasts around 1.5months for me with around 10-15 activations/per day. My daughter keeps ringing whenever she comes/goes so.

    Edit: Home Assistant is free and can get Cloudflare tunnel which is free as well except you will need a public hostname to expose HA outside the network.

    As far as I know there is no known battery powered door bell which can provide you live feed as that will drain the battery in few hours to a day.

    • NovaAlpha on 17/06/2024 - 10:41

      Thanks. It's not necessarily that I don't want HA, it's that I can't be bothered managing it for multiple properties. I'm using it for my main house and I've set it up for another property before, but sometimes things break and you need to go around and fix it and I just don't have the time. One property has it running on a Raspberry Pi 4, while another runs on a Docker container in Kubernetes. But with more things I need to keep alive and manage and monitor, the more stress and responsibilities I have to deal with. Whereas if I can offload some of this to the vendors to manage, I can simply just login and get access to the live stream.

      And yeah, you'd have to expose either the RTSP out to the public internet so you can view it live, or expose HA. Again, all these things I've done in the past, but not looking to do this for multiple properties…

      And battery powered door bells do provide live feed. Arlo, Ring and Nest do at least, not sure about Eufy as I only use their security cams and don't own any doorbells. But yeah they will drain the battery very quickly if I use it literally as a CCTV. I only plan on using it for maybe 30s a day to quickly check in and check out, so I'd expect it to last a good month or so before charging, but I don't really have any idea what the actual battery usage will be like. I've checked with Nest and Google support and they don't have stats on this either.

      • ace310 on 17/06/2024 - 10:54

        Eufy doesn't support RTSP for battery powered devices. I am surprised Arlo, Ring & Nest do provide it. Are you sure it works if they are on battery power? As far as I know RTSP works only on wired connection. Just double check.

        Another 2 which are recommended and doesn't have subscriptions(in a way) are TP-link Tapo and I think Reolink.

        • NovaAlpha on 17/06/2024 - 13:49

          Yeah nah. I'm pretty sure Arlo, Ring and Nest don't provide RTSP straight out of the box, unless you load a custom firmware or serial console to them and modify some strings. I was just saying that they provide live stream capability via either phone app or web portal. When you mentioned "live feed", I thought that was what you were referring to.

          Technically RTSP is a live feed and the Arlo/Nest/Ring web portal would probably be using that in the background. But yeah, RTSP isn't exposed to end users to hook into for most battery-powered devices.

          I haven't played around with Tapo cams yet, although I do have 2 brand-new unopened boxes (but they're just indoor cams). Reolink I've had bad experiences with in the past in terms of support and performance lag, but maybe they're decent now.

          • ace310 on 17/06/2024 - 14:05

            @NovaAlpha: Yes. I know what RTSP is. And all will have some sort of live feed, but they are all mostly encrypted unless you modify the firmware as you say. Again, how much it can be done and how reliable it could be no idea. On one side you say, you don't have time maintaining this cams and install it quickly. And on other side you are going to install custom firmware doesn't make sense to me. Anyways, it's your choice what you do. But if changing the characteristics, you will have to do lot of testing & supporting it if something goes wrong or camera company patches some loop hole which custom firmware is using.

            • NovaAlpha on 17/06/2024 - 14:27

              @ace310: I never said I'll be modifying the cameras and installing custom firmware…? I could if I want to, but I don't and I don't have the time either.

  • ace310 on 17/06/2024 - 09:58

    You said you already have Security cameras. Are they facing your front door and wired? You can run Frigate or some sort of Person tracking software with the help of rstp live feed and you can figure out who is coming in.

    • NovaAlpha on 17/06/2024 - 10:49

      Some of them are facing the front door, yes. One of my properties has a Swann 4K outdoor cam and so I can access the live feed using the Swann app, and I didn't need to expose anything to be able to access this from outside my LAN. Other properties have WyzeCam v3 and Eufy S330 and various other Eufy cams and they already come with Person tracking. But again, to view the live stream on these, I'd have to do a lot more work. Managing Frigate, paying for a public domain name, managing HA on Docker, making sure the ports and services I'm exposing to the public internet is behind a proper firewall, etc etc. And multiply this work 4x and that's just a lot of pain and time required.

      And the other reason why I need a doorbell is literally because some of these properties have no doorbell, so the only way people can hear guests at the front door is if they knock loud enough. So I'd need a dedicated doorbell anyway, just that the feature set doesn't need to be that extensive.

      • ace310 on 17/06/2024 - 10:57
        +1

        If you get Cloudflare tunnel, no need for open ports and don't need proper firewall either(It's good to have, but it is already protected). Yes, bit of work but I will do it the right way.

        Agree on the doorbell requirement.

        • NovaAlpha on 17/06/2024 - 11:35

          I think I've played around with it in the past when it first came out, but haven't had a chance to look at it more. Will check it out when I get a chance, thanks for the suggestions. Also need to spend a bit of time setting up Scrypted as well - https://www.scrypted.app/. Just too many things to work on lol.

          • ace310 on 17/06/2024 - 11:44

            @NovaAlpha: Cloudflare tunnel is the easiest to setup. Not much to configure once you know the concept and correct commands if using CLI.
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvIdFs3M5ic

            For HA, it's very simple. installing cloudflared addon, enter the domain name for HA in config and start. It will have authentication link in the logs for you to sign in. Once done it will create the tunnel in Cloudflare and everything is set. No ports/firewalls anything.

            If you want you can setup access rules/auth providers in CF and good to go.

            I have CF tunnel on my Unraid box as well and it's very easy to setup with different services pointing to it. Also have google auth(with few users allowed) for all services exposed so I don't have to worry about anything including access. Security is also end-to-end, so don't worry about firewalls as well.

            I have frigate/scrypted on my list of todo's. But currently busy with other integrations.

            • NovaAlpha on 17/06/2024 - 11:48

              @ace310: Cool, thanks for that. Good to know CF tunnel works with Unraid, as I use that too.

              • ace310 on 17/06/2024 - 11:54

                @NovaAlpha: CF works with anything. Windows, Mac, docker etc.

  • mvanwijk on 17/06/2024 - 10:10
    +1

    Not a doorbell, but have been using the Ring floodlight cam (Which i found unused in box in a thrift store!) - the monthly sub is kind of annoying (I want more than just live view) but it has a great UI, and connection/response speed is great - imagine it'd be the same for doorbell. Primary use is through the iOS app (although it does send a snapshot to my apple watch too which is nice).

  • Grandma on 17/06/2024 - 16:25

    Just a weird comment, you say 'minimal' but have the noel leeming stockroom on your desk haha

    Eufy provides live stream on PC for free, but requires you to generate a temporary pin code and it can only last 24 hours maximum, before needing to generate another one. Don't want to go through this exercise every time.

    You can set it up in windows (although harder now that android subsystem is going away). When I was an installer some braindead salesman sold a bunch of eufy cameras to no-phone oldies with only a desktop and that was the best I could muster

    • NovaAlpha on 17/06/2024 - 17:16

      Well, I didn't say I currently have a minimalistic setup. I'm trying to get to that point.

      I didn't know WSA is going away until now, what a shame. It beats running Android emulators imo.

      When you say you can set it up in Windows, I presume using emulators? Or are you referring to native Windows apps? Either way, you'd still have to generate the pin code, unless you have a way around it.

      • Grandma on 17/06/2024 - 19:52

        I can't remember honestly. Im pretty sure it was just the android app and not the webview or anything like that

        • NovaAlpha on 17/06/2024 - 22:57

          That still requires emulation on Windows then. May as well just use scrcpy to connect to a spare cheap Android phone and the performance will be much higher. Either way, I want a native solution.

  • snofil on 19/06/2024 - 11:21

    Check out Reolink.

    • NovaAlpha on 19/06/2024 - 14:37

      They don't seem to sell battery-powered doorbells.

      • snofil on 20/06/2024 - 20:09

        Yeah true, they need power or POE.

        • NovaAlpha on 20/06/2024 - 20:12

          Apparently lots of false positives as well:
          https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/12akyjl/reol…

          • snofil on 20/06/2024 - 20:18

            @NovaAlpha: That reddit thread talks about motion detection and Home Assistant, he's probably got it configured wrong, best to avoid the basic motion detection. They have AI person detection which is generally pretty good, and sensitivity can be adjusted. I don't have the doorbell but have a few PoE cameras, they work well.

            • NovaAlpha on 20/06/2024 - 20:19

              @snofil: Does it provide any cloud storage for free? Like a 7 day or 3 day rolling storage? I couldn't find much detail on their free services.

              And do they offer live stream on PC via their website, like it does with Ring or Nest? Or would you have to use RTSP/RTMP

              • snofil on 20/06/2024 - 21:17
                +1

                @NovaAlpha: SD card recording and SFTP/NAS optional, no cloud. Can stream to PC by connecting to ip address, obv easier on internal network. Support ONVIF, I believe RTSP. On the iphone/android apps can see feeds live remotely.

  • NovaAlpha on 20/06/2024 - 20:15

    So my Ring Doorbell Plus arrived and I'm quite happy with it to be honest. The live stream on the app and on the website loads up really fast and it seems to be doing everything well. The chime rings my Amazon Echos around the house (need Alexa skill integration) and the mount was easy to install. Battery is easily swappable, so I can get spares ($30 each on TM) and charge them easily. So far, really liking it. Will see how the Nest Doorbell compares when I receive it.

    But yeah, I'm just using it mainly for live stream checking every now and then and mainly to act as a doorbell and do a quick motion event capture. My other cameras will cover the other things that would otherwise require a subscription with Ring.

  • beatthatflight on 30/07/2024 - 15:44

    Can…can I have a photo of your desk setup? It sounds awesome :P

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