I live in a small community of 14 houses, our intercom seems to malfunctioning forever. Just would like to see if I can do a small project to revamp the intercom to something wireless and free from the need to connect them to wire.
With a Ring doorbell, a within range smartthings hub and smartthings buttons do you guys think it can be configured to function like an intercom system?
Functionality include, 1 button for each individual house unit. When the button is pressed it send a notification to the owner, activate ring notification to the owner, to allow the owner’s mobile phone and/or a gadget at home to see who is at the door using the ring app from anyway.
Can the smartthings hub send a 433Mhz RF signal to open the gate? Can another button put in the individual house used to trigger this?
Not all the house are near the front gate so range may be a problem.
No, the SmartThings hub doesn’t have a radio on that frequency.
However, it may be possible for the hub to communicate via Wi-Fi to a different device that has both a Wi-Fi and a 433 MHz radio so that device can act as a bridge. Some community members have done that for some projects. It may be fairly clunky and require some technical skills, however, it just depends on the exact specifics of the various devices involved.
I don’t believe ring allows third parties to initiate their notifications. You could use smartthings to send a SmartThings notification to the homeowner telling them to open the Ring app, but I don’t know if that’s sufficient for what you are looking for.
But if I understand your use case correctly, you shouldn’t need a SmartThings button at all. The person at the house should be able to just push the ring doorbell button, the homeowner would get the ring notification and be able to talk to the person through the existing ring intercom functionality.
So you would just need to look into one of those smartthings to 433 MHz projects I mentioned. The homeowner would then be able to activate that through the smartthings app.
I do have a broadlink rmpro3 that open the gates for me now.
So if it can send a notification to the individual owner, he has to open the ring app manually, talks to the person at the gate, and then opens the broadlink app to open the gate. Looks like a few steps too much?
Yes, but they are not weatherproof and they have the shortest range of any of the systems that work with smartthings. How far is the gate from where the hub will be?
Right, the issue is going to be that you are in Singapore.
Zigbee is the same throughout the world, but Z wave is restricted to specific frequencies in different regions in order to avoid interfering with ambulance and mobile communications, which are also on different frequencies.
Singapore’s Zwave frequency is not the one that is used for the US, and it’s not the one that is used for the EU and China. Instead, it is the same as the one which is used for South Korea and Thailand.
All of which means you are limited in the devices you can use, as you can see from the list of compatible devices for a SmartThings hub which is legal to operate in Singapore:
I had some devices in mind for this project, but they are not going to work in Singapore.
Also the aeotec doorbell button is unusual in that it itself is not zwave. It is an accessory to their Z wave doorbell chime and only works directly with that device.
So you may be back to having to choose between the smartthings button or one of the Eria remotes. Which might mean having to put another Zigbee device as a repeater.
I don’t know, I Will have to think about this a little. Hopefully some other community members will have additional ideas.
This is actually an option to get the chime as well which will light up and ring for a person to answer from the house. It’s about $50. It can connect to the smartthings hub so can send a notification as well. Can function as a repeater too?
Except I don’t think that device is sold on the Singapore zwave frequency. If you buy one from the US it will not work with the Singapore hub, and if you buy a US hub, it will not be legal to operate in Singapore even if they let you import it, which they won’t if they catch it at customs.
No, those devices do not talk to the hub at all. They have to be within range of the chime device that they are connected to, although I see that the newest model has a longer range, they are 433 MHz devices. The older model was I think using Bluetooth and with a very short range. So you would need to check the model numbers as well.
In either case It is the chime device that communicates to the smartthings hub for that model.
Yes, Smartthings buttons communicate directly to the smartthings hub. So you would get a SmartThings notification. But that is not going to include the ring video, they will still have to open the Ring app to get to that I believe.
SmartThings video integration is quite limited.
Specifically with the ring doorbell, you can use the ring’s motion detection or button press to trigger and automation through smart things. But you can’t view the video stream or use the audio intercom from within the smartthings app. You have to go back to the Ring app for that.
