We aren’t too fond of cameras around here and there’s almost always someone home so it’s not really a necessity for us. Having said that, we’ve had a few cams for a while now and most important is the doorbell.
I’m certain for 95% of you I don’t have to explain why I want the Amazon/Ring bell gone.
I run HA and have deployed Frigate separately to start messing with IP cams.
Here is my question? I understand that you can take the feed from the Reolink bell/cams and import it into Frigate from which I will send it over to my home assistant. For those of you who already do this, how offline is it? Did you need to set up any kind of reolink account to adjust settings or do the initial login? Does the camera try to call home occasionally? Is it fully offline?
I learned my lesson with Amazon. I want to control this doorbell myself and I’d to avoid video, audio, or logs exiting my network without me knowing.
How has the Reolink - Frigate - Home Assistant trio panned out for you?
Not entirely on-topic, but in case you aren’t aware, there is a slight functional difference between the white and black models of the Reolink doorbell camera. The video on the white has a portrait aspect ratio, whereas the black’s is landscape.
I was curious about that. I settled on the black one for my space, though I haven’t ordered yet and I probably would also be happy with white. There is a long straight wall to the right of my door, so I need basically no FOV to the right and the left can sweep the whole yard in the background.
Seamless with ha, reolink and frigate. Reolink itself works with ha natively but I like it with frigate better. It is all offline. No online set up or accounts at all.
I haven’t used Frigate specifically, but Reolink overall has been exactly what I wanted. Works out of the box no config, no signup, no login, completely local with the mobile reolink app. I never connected it to home assistant or anything, I either use a VPN into my home network or just stick to using it locally.
I did have an occasional bug with the UI/connection. The iOS app gave me some trouble, but I use android and its been plug and play with all the main features I would want.
The Reolink cameras have a straight IP output source, so you should need any accounts or anything like that (verify with the specific model type of course). You then point Frigate to the camera as an input source feed.
The HA Add-On then just uses Frigate as a media source. It creates a few entities you can use for automations which can be seen here.
You can simplify the process by just using the reolink doorbell directly with HA. Reolink is an integration in HA. Works completely local and I have all my cameras in a clan with no internet access. You don’t need any app to setup the camera either.
If you really want to use frigate there is that option too.
I know you meant vlan, but I love the idea of a loyal tightly knit band of cameras and doorbells.
I used to have the amcrest doorbell but switched to reolink after two amcrest died back to back after only a year each. You need to do the initial setup using the reolink app like opening rtsp/onvif ports, but then you can feed it to frigate and disable internet access. I have this exact setup and it works well. They only thing I haven’t got working yet is two way audio. If you don’t mind reolink online, then you can use their app and integration for two way audio.
Can you link the reolink doorbell to a few Echo’s to play door chime sounds/announcements?
You could string up an automation for this. Reolink integration requires internet connectivity but exposes the doorbell to home assistant for follow on notifications if you like.
I’ve got a wireless button with a wall-plugged speaker inside. It’s all I need, as we have cameras feeding a motion-server.
I’d really want to get push notifications when the doorbell is rung, as we’re not always where the bell is. And sometimes we’d like to disconnect it because the baby is sleeping and the dogs go off at the sound of the bell.
I haven’t found any zigbee-replacement. I’m thinking to just put a zigbee-button and solve the chile through HA.