My house doesn’t currently have a doorbell of any form (100+ year old house, I guess no one ever installed one along the way), and lately we’ve been suffering a bit of antisocial behaviour so I’ve been looking into getting a smart doorbell.
Despite both my wife and I being tech literate people the only smart home devices we have are a few smart bulbs which we control through our phones (both Android and Apple).
Given that we don’t have, and are not interested in getting a smart speaker or hub, are there any video doorbells that send meaningful notifications to your phone?
So far Google Nest Battery Doorbell looks like it would be the best all rounder for our needs, but it seems that it just sends a regular notification to phone that would be stupidly easy to miss. I also looked into Eufy and found contradicting things about how phone notifications are handled.
Ideally I’d want to get a ringing phone notification that wakes the phone and displays the camera interface, like a phone call, that way it would get immediatly noticed and not just lost amongst other regular notifications. I can easily set a different notification sound…but that isn’t much help as my phone is always set to vibrate mode.
It sounds like Ring doorbells have the style of notification I’m looking for, but they seem to have an awful reputation and we’d like to avoid a subscription if possible.
Is there anything that fits my admittedly limiting criteria?
Thanks in advance for any tips, help, and advice : )
Google Nest is a privacy nightmare, Ring is even worse. Amazon employees will just randomly access your video feeds, in fact there is a lawsuit about it right now. My go to is Ubiquity UniFi doorbell. It stores the video data locally on a device in my network, and there’s no remote access for them to get into it. It sends alerts to my phone which can be answered like a phone call. The only annoyance I have with it is that it still doesn’t have a time-based “snooze” function to disable notifications for a set time, so when someone is mucking around in the front yard for a few hours I just toggle off notifications so it doesn’t blow up my phone. Caveat with this system is you do need an additional Unifi device in your network to store the footage, but it does not have a monthly fee which is super nice.
Sounds interesting; I’ll look into it. When you say we would “need an additional Unifi device in your network” do you mean something like the box that comes with Eufy, or something more complex. I emphasise that our “network” currently is a handful of smart bulbs and our phones; we are not looking to get into a full smart home setup.
You need some device to store the footage the camera generates. A Cloud Key would suffice, I currently have a Dream Machine which is a firewall and NVR all in one.
I like my unifi doorbell but it recently died, I just ordered the POE new version so hope to get it installed this weekend and hope not having that old chime connected to it will keep it alive.
When someone rings the door bell I get a phone call from my doorbell so I can see who is there or just look at the notifications if there’s is movement in areas I choose or the AI detection if it detects a person in the yard.
I’m not sure if you can use the doorbell on its own, you’d need the app at least to set it up and either the dream machine or maybe host the unifi is on a machine yourself but at least it’s all self hosted
I’ve got the Arlo Essential, it’s also a privacy nightmare but it ‘calls’ you and your wife on your phone, as well as making a noise itself. It’s possible to make a smart speaker say something (even though you don’t want that) and you can use the ringing of the doorbell as a trigger for all sorts of home automation (like changing the colour of a light bulb or have a dedicated indication light or something that blinks).