My doorbell situation is seriously lacking with a broken chime in a hard spot that can’t really even be heard when it works. On the plus side, I have hardwired doorbell buttons at each door.
So! It seems that it should be easy to find some dry contact sensors that notify ST when a button is pressed. Then ST can trigger some kind of chime, send a text, whatever. I read a bunch of threads about doorbells with all kinds of bells and whistles and so on, and I read the brief “let’s make our own doorbell” thread. I really just want to detect button press and have a device make a noise.
I saw someone used door sensors, that seems to make sense. But are there any small dry contact sensors? Also, is there a simple little device that can be told to make a noise?
Honestly the easiest thing is just to get the Aeon doorbell. It has two pieces, a button that you push and a sound player. The sound player can have up to 99 different recorded sound files, and you can upload your own and have different sounds play for different triggers or even at different times of day So it’s really useful.
For $50, it’s hard to beat the functionality.
The Amazon reviews aren’t great on it because it can be really fidgety to pair the first time. But after that it works very well. There are a couple of custom device type handlers which expose all the features.
If you just want to wire a sensor to the existing doorbell, there are several ways to do that, as already discussed in the forums. But because of weather and size considerations, you’ll generally put the sensor on the inside of the house and run the doorbell wires to it.
There’s a quick browse list under projects in the community – created wiki for “doorbells.” You can find several different examples there of how people wired an existing doorbell.
Yes, that’s one of the very cool things about it. You don’t need to use it as a doorbell at all, you can just use it as a sound player. Or you could trigger sound based on a pressure mat under the welcome mat at the door, or a camera detecting motion, or even time of day. One community member is using it as an hourly clock chime. Quite a few people are using it with core.
Here’s one very popular device type handler for it.
Yes, you could have two of them. It’s just like having two lightbulbs or two light switches, each one has its own network ID so SmartThings can tell them apart.
80 dB is loud enough to hear from the next room over, but not necessarily loud enough to hear two floors up.
For comparison, a garbage disposal or a small blender are also typically around 80 dB. (They used to say a dishwasher was 80 dB, but the current ones are much quieter.)
You would have to raise your voice to be heard over anything that was in the high 70s or above, but you probably wouldn’t have to yell until you got to the high 80s.
Thanks again @JDRoberts you’re a fountain of great info!
I have been reading the reviews on it at Amazon and there are many poor ones, but these seem to all complain that the range of the button and overall quality of the button is poor. So as you said, it sounds great for my plan (to use my existing doorbell buttons). I also saw that it can be made to play different MP3 files, so now I can have a different alert for the front door and back door.
At $50 this is too cool a device not to have, thank you!
Just FYI, what I did for the doorbell is to buy this:
I read up on it and at first it was hard to get the right driver but by the time I bought it I just used the standard ST “button controller” and then I got a chime audio mp3 and I use the notification to trigger Tasker to play it. But only when I’m not at work (based on cell id of the cell towers near my work). That’s the power of combining Tasker, android and SmartThings together. Who wants to know the doorbell rang with a chime while at work? (I do still get the notification on the top notification bar of course, just no audio)
Let me know if you want more info, I’d be happy to take some time to write it up.
This nexia thing is really convenience for me also. I was able to connect it up down by the transformer for the doorbell instead of on the wall by the actual chime. So basically infinite WAF (wife acceptance factor).
Before I got into all of this fancy ST’s stuff, I bought a Honeywell RCWL300A1006 Premium Portable Wireless Doorbell / Door Chime and Push Button with their motion detector. About $63 total on Amazon. No need to install the push button. One of my best low tech purchases.
If somebody walks to my front porch you can hear the portable chime anywhere in the house. I usually make it to the front door before they ring my standard doorbell button. The motion detector is rated for outdoors. Had these for about 3 years & have never changed the batteries.
Yea, no way to hook them up to ST’s, but I think low tech is sometimes better than high tech.
Edit: Yea, I like the low tech stuff for somethings, but do have a Ecolink motion sensor on my porch that turns on a bunch of lights & hoping to get Ring for Christmas. When you get hooked on the fancy stuff, it never ends!
2nd edit: forgot to mention. My neighbor dog learned if she came to my front door, I would know it (couldn’t reach the door bell but the chime would go off) so I could give her a needed belly rub. She passed last year, but still have my 2 grand dogs.
Or you could trigger sound based on a pressure mat under the welcome mat at the door, or a camera detecting motion, or even time of day. One community member is using it as an hourly clock chime. Quite a few people are using it with core.