Doorbell Chime Revisited. Wired Doorbell

Devices & Integrations
1

Okay, so I have a wired front doorbell and a typical analog chime (magnetic). I’ve currently converted it to be smart by following the very well-read thread on here about doorbells. My solution is the one with the dry sensor and a magnetic sensor. It works VERY well.

However, it’s also something I wouldn’t mind improving upon. I just watched a Youtube video on using a DOME (used to be Zooz?) chime to replicate the chime sound whenever an exterior door opens. Nice! I’ll be moving my wired security system over to Konnected when that hopefully ships to backers in February.

That got me thinking of two possible options to improve my current doorbell setup:

  1. The wall the doorbell is wired into is accessible from above and I wonder if I might be better off getting to the two wires to the ringer and simply running the pair into where the Konnected panel will be. That, if I’m thinking about this correctly, should just be seen another open/close sensor and then I can do whatever I want with it.

  2. I could take the dry sensor now, gut it, put it next to a standard relay and a transformer and end up with a nice fully powered, non-battery sensor and then just use it to trigger the Dome chime device.

If Amazon ever gets off their backsides to allow us to use Echo devices as push speakers we’d be even better off, but I wonder if they will ever allow that to happen. Time will tell.

Bottom line is that the current setup still has a few drawbacks. It requires a battery which needs to be changed out now and again when power is readily available. It also uses an analog chime that isn’t exactly all that flexible and isn’t heard easily in many rooms, especially if any guests are already about. FWIW, I’m not an EE, but did study that decades ago and my son is a freshly degreed EE/CS grad so all of this is easily created once understood.

The only down side I can think to going fully digital is that, when it comes time to sell the house, this approach would mean that the new owners wouldn’t have a standard doorbell. That seems extremely minor to me. It wouldn’t be hard to explain that they’ll need a hub to control it all and anyone likely to buy it at that year will very likely be even more into smart tech.

2

Wired doorbells have 10-24VAC running to them. The doorbell button completes the circuit thus making the ringer ring. So unfortunately you won’t be able to hook up these wires to your Konnected Alarm.

3

Michael,

I was intending to neuter the ringer itself. If I understand the ringer portion it’s nothing more than an open circuit until the the button is depressed if it’s cut away from the power. So the thinking was, route the two wires that head to the ringer to the Konnected device as a Normally Open sensor. Not sure how security systems deal with normally open devices yet, but that’s part of the discovery.

4

Okay, so I have a wired front doorbell and a typical analog chime (magnetic). I’ve currently converted it to be smart by following the very well-read thread on here about doorbells. My solution is the one with the dry sensor and a magnetic sensor. It works VERY well.

What thread is that?