vghaisas

Yeah, will probably have to consider something like that.

Yeah this would have been my answer, except for one catch: what do I do with the existing integrated button on the Blink doorbell?

Oh, can a Dash button talk to my Google home mini? I imagined it would be the same problem I currently have.

A zigbee button/doorbell would work well, but then we'd have two buttons on the front door unless we hid the Blink's integrated button somehow.

Yeah, a Blink chime is definitely a solution. But after feeling like I got a great deal on a cheap doorbell, I didn't want to buy yet another thing from them. I also thought it would have been easy to play audio on the Google home and so I started tinkering and then got carried away.

MQTT was an option, but it actually felt like overkill to add an MQTT server on my VPS than just a tiny Express server. (But who am I to talk about overkill here.)

When I started my search, I thought this £30 doorbell would be good enough and I wouldn't need the £180 Nest doorbell. Little did I know...

It's just a few seconds and a lot of that is the HA polling interval.

It takes a few seconds, but a lot of that is just the HA polling interval.

Oh our London flat has no pre-installed doorbell at all! This is surprisingly common and everyone just knocks.

But yes, there were definitely other ways to solve this problem.

I thought it was finally time to write up the story of my absurd home doorbell implementation, especially because the upcoming Samsung SmartThings API pricing means things will have to change soon.

Suggestions welcome!

Interesting info about the cameras, thanks!

> I'm surprised GPT didn't suggest a local HA setup

I had already bought the Blink doorbell at the time, so I was specifically asking: how do I make it play a sound on my Google home mini?

That was actually the original title! It's still the URL though :)

Yeah, a local solution is probably the way to go. This was at the beginning of my home automation journey so I didn't have Home Assistant and Zigbee set up yet.

But even if I replace the actual doorbell with a zigbee button, I still need a solution for the camera portion too.

I thought it was finally time to write up the story of my absurd home doorbell implementation, especially because the upcoming Samsung SmartThings API pricing means things will have to change soon.

Suggestions welcome!