A New Doorbell

sebastiantombs said:
The VTH acts as the SIP server, but even with that there's no pickoff for a button push to activate a real doorbell. Jumping through hoops to do that with scripts is a no go for me, too old to jump much anymore. Last time I did that my teeth fell out and my toupe' went flying.

In terms of video, it's fine for what it is meant for...close up observation. It's not an overview camera at all. At the range of a few feet 720P is fine. It is a little clunky compared to a normal video doorbell but in my case, mounted on a gate post, it fits in just fine.
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I was sad to realize my villa setup could not easily & simply use a mechanical door chime when button was pressed (I've always read this...have not actually dwelved down the rabbit hole to see if anything was possible).
Were you not interested in Home Assistant (or home automation) recently? If it was you, there is a Dahua integration directly into Home Assistant. When doorbell is pressed, could have lights flash, or a siren to buzz (simulating a doorbell), etc.
I really have not dabbled with my VTO/VTH setup. When someone hits the doorbell, it rings my smartphone while in local and also over VPN when out & about. But yea, I do not have it mechanically wired to a physical doorbell chime device.
 
Yes the VTO/VTH can ring your phone but that's through a cloud app which is self defeating in the security world to me. As far as integrating with HA or HS, it's yet another kludge to make something that is very basic to work. All I'm looking for is to get a doorbell to ring a chime and provide video if/when I want to look at it, not flash lights or turn on the stereo.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
Yes the VTO/VTH can ring your phone but that's through a cloud app which is self defeating in the security world to me. As far as integrating with HA or HS, it's yet another kludge to make something that is very basic to work. All I'm looking for is to get a doorbell to ring a chime and provide video if/when I want to look at it, not flash lights or turn on the stereo.
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almost correct :)
I figured a way for the VTO to just interact with Google/iOS notification server and that's it. Everything else is local or via VPN.
But yea... one day someone will make a wired POE doorbell that can ding a mechanical chimer.
 
Interacting with Google is still a cloud based app, security out the window along with it. The VTO/VTH connection is, indeed, local but that's about it.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
Interacting with Google is still a cloud based app, security out the window along with it. The VTO/VTH connection is, indeed, local but that's about it.
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I stand corrected.
I wanted ringing notification to my smartphone so had to utilize the google/ios push notification service. I did not want, however, to use P2P & Dahua cloud service to get that same notification.
 
green1 said:
Does it expose the same API as the Amcrest ones? If so, then this should be accessible there and can be captured by such things as home assistant using the dahua add-on, or amcrest2mqtt.
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I had asked that same question 3 weeks ago and received the following response from Looney2ns... "Nope".

Review-Dahua/EmpireTech new doorbell cam Db6l 5mp

Does this have POE? I am doing a new house build right now and really have only been planning on running ethernet cable, not 2 wire doorbell wire. I've been looking at the VTO2111D-P-S2 but this looks smaller/sleeker.
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com

That's a show stopper for me as support for the Dahua CGI API is essential for exposing the doorbell press and human detection events to Home Assistant.
 
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GaryOkie said:
I had asked that same question 3 weeks ago and received the following response from Looney2ns... "Nope".

Review-Dahua/EmpireTech new doorbell cam Db6l 5mp

Does this have POE? I am doing a new house build right now and really have only been planning on running ethernet cable, not 2 wire doorbell wire. I've been looking at the VTO2111D-P-S2 but this looks smaller/sleeker.
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com

That's a show stopper for me as support for the Dahua CGI API is essential for exposing the doorbell press and human detection events to Home Assistant.
Click to expand...
I'm sure hoping he's wrong. The amcrest version is supported by that integration, seems unlikely this wouldn't be. I'll know in a week when my cameras get here. If it's not, then I'll really be forced to use the relays on it and monitor the chime, but as I've said before I'm really leary of that option.
I wonder if I could power the camera through USB, and have a low voltage gpio on the relay? Or if the internal power supply would mess that up...
 
Screenshot_20220208_084253.jpg
Screenshot_20220208_095941.jpg
Maybe the best doorbell on the market ?

Video Resolution: 2K
Audio: Two-way audio with noise cancellation.
Detection: Motion detection + AI detection
Storage: Micro SD card or Reolink Cloud or Reolink NVR.
Wi-Fi: 2.4GHz/5GHz
Smart Home: works with Google Assistant /Alexa
Support third-party software

doorbell.PNG
 
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green1 said:
I'm sure hoping he's wrong. The amcrest version is supported by that integration, seems unlikely this wouldn't be. I'll know in a week when my cameras get here. If it's not, then I'll really be forced to use the relays on it and monitor the chime, but as I've said before I'm really leary of that option.
I wonder if I could power the camera through USB, and have a low voltage gpio on the relay? Or if the internal power supply would mess that up...
Click to expand...
I got my Dahua branded DB-6I this week from B&H, and can confirm that the API for revealing button push is there as I had expected. This is working great for me, pushing the button sends the signal through the API to my Home Assistant automation which sends an MQTT event to an ESP8266 which closes a relay to ring the physical chime. Total delay is barely noticeable and definitely less than a second.
 
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That is very good news! I was astounded when I heard the equivalent Lorex 2K doorbell was reported to not support the API over port 80, And then later, it was reported the Dahua DB-6I didn't support the API either. I don't know how the information wires got crossed on the Dahua.
 
I suspect it's because there no web interface on port 80, and people are making assumptions. I know I initially confused those 2 things was well.
 
Ah - perhaps that explains it. Sure wouldn't have thought the expert reviewers here would have confused this important distinction though.

BTW - My very recent experience with Amcrest warranty support was vastly different than yours. My 6 month old AD410 lost focus somehow and after a factory reset didn't solve it and sending images to Amcrest Support, the doorbell went to their RMA dept who sent me a brand new full packaged replacement, not a refurb. Whole process took about a week.

It's good you found a mechanical chime workaround that responds quickly. I know others have had a similar problem. I've never had an issue with the chime kit and my mechanical chime.
 
user8963 said:
View attachment 118055
View attachment 118057
Maybe the best doorbell on the market ?

Video Resolution: 2K
Audio: Two-way audio with noise cancellation.
Detection: Motion detection + AI detection
Storage: Micro SD card or Reolink Cloud or Reolink NVR.
Wi-Fi: 2.4GHz/5GHz
Smart Home: works with Google Assistant /Alexa
Support third-party software

View attachment 118069
Click to expand...


Not sure about that. POE yep definite step forward.

However, the performance of the G4 doorbell is outstanding day and night from what's been posted on here and that's going to take some beating especially as it's using a 5K sensor.
 
GaryOkie said:
BTW - My very recent experience with Amcrest warranty support was vastly different than yours. My 6 month old AD410 lost focus somehow and after a factory reset didn't solve it and sending images to Amcrest Support, the doorbell went to their RMA dept who sent me a brand new full packaged replacement, not a refurb. Whole process took about a week.
Click to expand...
I'm glad you had a positive experience with them!

Unfortunately I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to have to try Dahua's warranty support too. I bought 2 of the DB-6I units, the first one installed perfectly first try, and seems to be working great. Unfortunately the second one doesn't seem to properly enable it's wi-fi hotspot, so the DMSS app can't connect to complete the setup. I've done the "hard reset" process a dozen times, and each time it comes up again to "wi-fi hotspot is enabled", but my phone never sees a hotspot. Bad Wi-Fi chip maybe?
 
Well, there are definitely other mysteries to sort out. It seems that the main stream is H.265, while the sub-stream is H.264, unfortunately that means that in a browser I can only watch the sub-stream, as browsers don't support H.265.
So at the moment, I get the advantage of the full resolution only on my phone through the DMSS app, but not through my NVR.
The DMSS app is quite limited in settings for this thing, and it would be really handy if there were a few more things I could do.

On a side note, I tried to connect to port 80, and there is a web server active there, it serves a webpage with a title of "Web service" with what appears to be a blank page, however looking at the source of the page shows a lot more going on. Unfortunately not an actual user interface.
 
green1 said:
Unfortunately I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to have to try Dahua's warranty support too.
Click to expand...
You have 30 days return or exchange with B&H. Unlike Amazon, you may have to pay return shipping. Did you get the 2 or 3 year Allstate extended warranty?

green1 said:
It seems that the (DH-DB6I) main stream is H.265, while the sub-stream is H.264,
Click to expand...
Interesting the default is H.265. Yeah, very limited browser support for it, but my old Dahua NVR supports it visually just fine. On the AD410, the default is H.264, with H265 an option through the NVR UI, not SH app. So on your NVR, you can't change the main stream to H264?

Issue this CGI command to dump ALL current configurations to your browser. It's great to see how things are set up under the covers...
<ip_addr>/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=getConfig&name=All

To just list the current mainstream video settings:
<ip_addr>/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=getConfig&name=Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video

My AD410 returns the following main stream configuration, which is unchanged from its default...
table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.BitRate=2048 table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.BitRateControl=CBR table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.Compression=H.264 table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.FPS=15 table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.GOP=30 table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.Height=1920 table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.Pack=DHAV table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.Priority=0 table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.Profile=Baseline table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.Quality=4 table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.QualityRange=6 table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.SVCTLayer=1 table.Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.Width=2560

So if you can't change the encoding to H.264 on your NVR or DMSS, you should be able to with the API...
<ip_addr>/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=setConfig&Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.Compression=H.264
 
So my NVR can't change config on dahua cameras, I'm sure a dahua NVR could, but that's not what I have.
Seems the answer is to use the SmartPSS app to change the encoding. somewhat kludgy, but it works. Also allows you to add a text overlay which you can't do in DMSS, and adjust picture settings such as WDR, white balance, etc, etc. The downside is that SmartPSS is windows/mac only, and I don't have either of those in my house. I did manage to get SmartPSS to run on Ubuntu under Wine, but it wasn't super happy about it.

Another positive to the dahua vs the amcrest though is that amcrest splashes their logo on the stream with no obvious way to get rid of it. dahua doesn't do that.

As for the warranty. I'm impressed so far. I sent an email to Dahua at 10pm, before 8am I had a reply with a case number to give to B&H, I sent it to B&H, and in about 5 minutes they had sent me all the RMA info including prepaid shipping. Night and day difference compared to the ordeal with Amcrest.

Somewhat concerned with the overall quality/reliability of these that I need another warranty claim after 2 of the rebranded ones also failed, but I am happy that they responded so quickly. Hopefully I won't have to test their warranty any further!
 
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Good to know about the ease of return. Regarding the Amcrest logo in the stream - I've posted a solution to that in this forum. It's easy to remove via the API.
 
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