I’m currently using a SkyBell HD, Hue lights and LIFX lights. The Skybell sends notifications of button press to the cloud, and so no matter which service I use – IFTTT, SmartThings – it takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 15 minutes following button press for my smart lights to start blinking.
I formerly used the Stringify service to automate the button press/light flashing process and it was quite quick, but with my current setup I’m looking for alternatives.
What I have: SmartThings Hub, LIFX bulbs, HUE bulbs and bridge, HassIO, SkyBell HD.
What I would like: a doorbell + smart home hub + light combination that works quickly, under 10 seconds from button press to lights flashing.
Which combination will get me there? Thank you in advance for any suggestions!
Would prefer a video doorbell. I know the LIFX lights are cloud based but the greatest delay seems to be from the Skybell to the Skybell cloud. Both SmartThings and IFTTT do not have consistent response times under 5 minutes when the doorbell is pressed, but I get instant notifications on my phone (go figure). Because I am Deaf a 5 minute delay is a no-go; imagine seeing the lights go off indicating someone is at the door, but when you get there, they’re long gone!
Consumer Reports has a 2019 review of over a dozen video doorbells, and they specifically tested for response time.
Ring Doorbell and Nest Hello doorbell had the fastest response times, but Skybell was only one grade down.
As far as THE fastest for a video doorbell to trigger a light inside the house, I’m pretty sure that it will be a Ring doorbell using the Ring bridge to turn on a Ring security light, typically a “step light” for indoors. But it won’t blink, it will just turn on.
That’s a totally local connection Within its own system. The doorbell has a SmartThings integration. The light does not, but it does work with Alexa, so you could get limited integration that way, mostly to turn the light off again.
You can also use IFTTT to get to Hue or LIFX, but I suspect that’s where your lag is.
At present Nest Hello has very few integrations, fewer than the thermostat or smoke detectors. So I’m not sure what’s possible with that. @jkp might know.
One other option that we use at our house to get an alert when packages arrive: you can put a hue outdoor motion sensor inside a box to narrow the detection zone and have it trigger hue lights inside the house. In our case we have the lights turn orange. Very fast, again totally local within its own system, and you can trigger other events based on the light coming on. It wouldn’t be directly connected to the doorbell, but you could check the doorbell camera yourself when the light came on.
You might want to dedicate one hue bulb to just be a doorbell proxy, then trigger your other lights, etc, off that. That’s what we do.
May not be much help, but I use a simple zigbee button as a doorbell, and have a smart lighting automation tied to it. I believe smart lighting automations run locally as long as all the devices involved are using stock DTH’s, so the lighting response is near instant. The automation I use for the sound portion of the doorbell uses Echo Speaks, which is cloud to cloud, so it sometimes has a bit of a delay, and doesn’t work at all if the internet or cloud is down. I keep the lighting and sound automations separate so that the lighting is always instant, even if the internet or ST cloud is down.
Doesn’t include video or utilize your existing SkyBell though.
As @JDRoberts mentioned above, having something else like a motion sensor triggering a smart lighting routine running locally would be another option.
Depending on how much tinkering you like to do and how “hacky” you’re willing to get, you could potentially take the SkyBell apart and tie a dry contact sensor (or hacked open/close sensor) to the button in the SkyBell, and then use that to trigger a smart lighting routine.
These are all great ideas and I particularly Iike the idea of using a motion sensor, which is useful in some scenarios.
It seems like it should be a basic principle of accessible software design: provide multiple ways to interact. For instance, take a smart doorbell. They usually have audio or app notifications baked in - a doorbell chime and notifications on your mobile device. These come “out of the box” or with minimal setup. Skybell, Ring, etc, don’t let you say, ok, I want to toggle notifications on my Hue lights, toggle notifications on my iPhone, via email, through my smart speakers, etc. The integrations provided, such as the one within the Skybell app that links your Skybell with IFTTT, are, as I discovered, unusable: the delay defeats the purpose of having a doorbell – to know precisely when visitors are at your door.
The closest I’ve come is a forum post I stumbled upon talking about using a Webhooks sniffer to catch the packets indicating a doorbell press as they are sent out by the Skybell (see: https://github.com/GeekVisit/Simple-Skybell-Sniffer) but implementing it is outside of my comfort zone.
This would give a “button press” event in HomeKit. Does IFFT allow to automate this button press and import it in SmartThings? I’d love to automate the doorbell press as well
