Take doorbird chime signal and trigger ST

You can by a very cheap ‘multimeter’ from Amazon or ebay or the like to be able to measure voltage.

The instructions say you need to use your own power supply for that relay to work. This means that the relay is a NC, normally closed, and it opens when the doorbell is engaged. So you can follow along in this thread to make this work. You just need to buy a contact sensor with terminal inputs to hook up to your relay. You don’t need a reed sensor or multisensor since you already have the NC relay.

Gavin,
Did you get anywhere with this?
I am looking for a similar setup.
J

Hi,

Not yet, I got busy with work and had to drop this. I’m planning on getting a smartthings multisensor and trying to hook it up to that.

I’ll keep you posted when I get anywhere with it, let me know if you get there first.

Cheers

Gavin

Just to add some additional context to this for people searching for an approach, you don’t need to hardwire anything on the Doorbird. The Doorbird has an API ability to call a URL on button push, motion or the ‘door open’ button in the app being pushed. You can now also set this up in the Doorbird app, rather than coding against the REST API directly so very user friendly to set up.

I’m using a WebCore piston routine which can be triggered easily via REST API. You plug the WebCore REST URL into the Doorbird app (as a favourite) then assign that HTTP favourite to the button push event through the Doorbird Admin settings. It calls the WebCore URL perfectly.

I’m using this with a ‘Simulated Contact Sensor’ in Smartthings to trick Amazon Echo/Alexa into announcing ‘Ding dong, someone is at the Front Door!’ for those rooms which cannot hear the regular existing door chime. I’m also using the motion event from Doorbird to turn on my porch light between 10pm and sunrise in a similar manner (via Simulated Motion Sensor).

I can put together more detailed tasks if anyone is interested.

2 Likes

Hey @neildmc, I’m about to purchase a doorbird door station (D2102V) for the house I’m remodeling. I’m completely new to smartthings and home automation in general but really excited to get into it. Bookmarking this thread for future but I am definitely interested in tapping into your experience with doorbird/ST.

@neildmc
Not sure you would have time or be able to write the how to for this but I would love it. I recently installed webcore, in order to follow another tutorial but I got busy and I have no idea what it is yet.
I have a door bird at my motorized gate that opens when I push through on the door bird apps open button. Would be amazing to get the Alexa alert, Alexa audio to speak with whoever is there and a voice command to open the gate.

I’d also like to get around to setting up Geo fencing so my gate opens automatically when I’m approaching. I’d imagine this only will happen (with no additional relays) if I can tap doorbird into my ST hub.

@neildmc I’m in the admin profile of Doorbird app and I want to create an instance with Webcore piston but I’m lost in the woods on creating the if/then statement and also how to find the HTTP code for the Doorbird app to call when something happens.

Can you give me some guidance on how to write the piston and respective tutorial on what to push on the doorbird phone app and what to put in for motion sensor to trigger a light I have installed for starters?

Hi - sorry I was busy then on vacation. I’m not going to explain WebCore in detail as that is something covered by the other forum, but happy to detail the Doorbird > Alexa part. There are three parts which I’ll work backwards from to explain the Doorbell action, but you can presumably replicate the approach similarly for motion & dooropen commands also.

1 - Alexa
Alexa has the ability to trigger routines from contact & motion sensors. So create a virtual device in Smarthings for one of those options (call it virtual doorbell or something), then refresh your Alexa devices for it to appear. Once you have it in your Alexa app devices, create a test Alexa routine which just does something like speak a basic phrase whenever the device changes to contact/motion state open/moving. In the Smartthings app, manually toggle the virtual device and it should trigger the Alexa routine to confirm that part is working.

2 - Smarthings / Webcore
Create a simple Webcore piston which just sets your virtual device to open/active, waits 5 seconds, then turns it back again. i.e.

Once the piston is created you will see a link/text “External URL: (click to open/execute)”, right click & copy that URL as you’ll need it in the Doorbird settings. You can also click that REST URL to test this part of the process as it should trigger your above Alexa routine.

3 - Doorbird
In the Doorbird app, navigate to Settings (cog) > Administration and log in as one of your Doorbird admin users. Scroll down to Favorites and select HTTP(S) Calls. Click Add, give it some name like ‘Doorbell’ and paste the REST URL copied in step two into the URL box. Save this Favorite and go back to the Administration menu. Scroll down to Expert Settings and select Schedule for Doorbell. On the upper right hand side you can see a dropdown with an icon, select this dropdown and choose the HTTP(s) calls option. Then select your newly created Favorite from the second dropdown. If you want this to trigger at any time of day, then color in the whole grid below using the icon on the upper right.

Come out of that and save any settings in Doorbird

4 - Test
Assuming all the above is working, you should be able to press the Doorbird doorbell, see the WebCore piston triggering and in turn hear the Alexa routine trigger from your Echo devices.

I also used a similar pattern (omitting the Alexa part) to create a virtual Motion sensor in Smartthings which is triggered from the Doorbird motion (i.e. turn on for 30 seconds from a single HTTP post from Doorbird then turn off). With this I am able to, in turn, trigger the porch light overnight via a 2nd webcore Piston. The only tricky part is that the Doorbird HTTP call needs to be defined in the 3D Motion Sensor > Settings menu option instead.

Hope this helps, it’s not that complex hopefully - the trickiest part is in the Doorbird settings as the app isn’t overly intuitive.

3 Likes

THANKS @neildmc
I’ll take a look at this writeup and hopefully conquer this in short order.
I really hope someone besides myself gets to use it and finds it as helpful as I do!

Conquered!

Also added porch and landscape lighting on scenes if someone approaches motion at certain times of the night.

Anyone else using @neildmc tutorial. Don’t forget to go into webcore smart app within ST app and enable your newly created virtual sensors. KEEP IN MIND THEY HAVE TO BE SENSORS if you want to run routines on Alexa. Alexa will only do sensors from ST for routines. (I was poking around for a bit looking for these new buttons to realize that webcore needs permission to add new buttons in the settings submenu of that ST Smartapp).
There are some other users that have made momentary alexa buttons on Github that work really well.

Also another snag… If the Samsung IDE doesn’t let you create the buttons due to “access denied” issues try to login to your IDE in a new browser or in Icognito/private mode to create the buttons. I ran into that issue as well on google chrome.

@neildmc have you tried poking around at the DoorBird SIP features to speak over an Amazon Echo?
Not sure if your doorbird app is as bad as mine on the iOS, but most persons who ring the doorbell cannot hear me and I can’t hear them. Not sure it would get much better via SIP (doubt it) but would be cool to have the Echo communicating to our gate.

The SIP Api is private I think, you need to engage with Doorbird first, but in any case far beyond my capabilities unfortunately! They’re working on official Alexa integration apparently, but that’s also been in development for a while.

For what it’s worth, there are a couple of generic RTSP skills for Alexa, so you can plug in the relevant local URL for the Doorbird stream (rtsp://192.168.x.x/mpeg/media.amp) and see at least the video from the camera, e.g. “show me the front door”, although no way to talk-back or send commands.

Edit: on video-based Echo devices of course.

Thanks @neildmc
I do have the camera connected to blue Iris. No audio though :frowning:
I don’t have an echo show yet

Thanks all for your posts, I’ve finally got round to sorting this out (about time too!) I’ve followed the instructions above and was really frustrated that despite all of the elements seeming to
work, Alexa wouldn’t announce anything. She even registered the sensor opening and closing. If you’re having the same issue, it’s probably because your smartthings hub was updated from smartthings to a Samsung log in. Have a look here…
https://www.amazonforum.com/forums/devices/smart-home/489689-routine-not-being-triggered-solved

I’d still love to get this playing over my Sonos if anyone has any joy with that, but in the meantime, thanks very much to @neildmc for getting me this far.

I’m glad you got it fixed, and the solution is the same, but it’s not because of the Samsung login.

This issue is covered in the community FAQ on how to use sensors to trigger echo routines.

The short answer is that there is a specific sequence of steps that you must do. Disable the SmartThings skill, log out of the Amazon app, log back into the Amazon app, and re-enable the SmartThings skill. After that you will be able to use your SmartThings sensors in echo routines. :sunglasses:

Neil,

Im looking to hire someone to help with developing a reliable doorbird sonos integration. Would you be interested or know of someone?

Thank you neildmc for posting your doorbird/webcore/alexa intergration. Been trying to do that for years, and just started exploring webcore. The steps have changed slightly maybe with new webcore versions since original post, but I got it to work.

Hi @jraff44,

Do you mean you managed to get doorbird chime playing over Sonos speakers? Could you please share your steps?

Following neildmc‘s directions to start I now have webcore pistons so that

  1. the doorbird press “opens” the virtual “Simulated Contact Sensor”
  2. Once “open” another piston announces “Someone is at the front door” on my Sonos speaker.
  3. Another piston fires to turns on the front door lights if it’s between sunrise and sunset.