Quest for the Ultimate Senior Video Doorbell?

[TheWaterbug]

My Dad is 87 with some mild-but-increasing dementia and paranoia, so I need to put together a security system for their house, both for their peace of mind and for mine. A big part of this will be a video doorbell, but I'm having a hard time finding one that checks all my boxes:

1. Must haves:
   1. RTSP, because I also will build a BI system for them that I will manage and monitor remotely.
   2. Can ring the frickin' doorbell!!!! I don't want to string together 3-4 pieces of hardware and software to will need maintenance, just so that a button next to the existing doorbell wiring can ring the doorbell!
   3. Standalone remote video screen.
      1. My elderly Dad cannot reliably even answer a phone call on his iPhone. Between mis-taps and pushing the sleep button or being unable to get the phone out of his holster, etc., 90% of calls to his phone go unanswered. There's no way an app on a phone will ever be useful for him. They spend a lot of time in the TV room; I want to have a single-purpose, dedicated screen sitting on the coffee table that always presents the exact same interface to him, so he can tap on it and "answer" the door.
   4. No subscriptions.
2. Highly Desirables:
   1. POE. I know this is a tough one, so it's optional, but I like POE for everything, if possible.
   2. An app. My Mom can use an app. But I want one that doesn't require a subscription.

This Dahua camera and kit look pretty darn good, but it doesn't ring the doorbell without a Home Assistant script and a bunch of other stuff that I don't want to maintain.

Any other candidates?

 

[TheWaterbug]

Does it have to be a doorbell? I live in a 2-flat built in 1919 and doorbells aren't an option so I installed an inexpensive IP camera. Any reason that wouldn't work? Seems to me it beats the search for a unicorn. Just me thinking out loud...

I still want a button that rings the doorbell and triggers the camera to trigger the display. So I think it needs to be a doorbell.

 

[wittaj]

But if they already have a working doorbell, a small camera with IVS to trigger on a human would actually be better. Many doorbell cams now will only trigger an app if someone rings the doorbell. You have to subscribe to the monthly app to get alerts based on humans approaching. Not all are that way, but any doorbell cam that is connected to the internet could go that way at any time.

What if someone knocks on the door - then possibly the doorbell camera doesn't record. At least the camera set up correctly would trigger for anyone that approaches, whether they knock on the door, ring the doorbell, attempt to steal a package, etc.

 

[Flintstone61]

The Amcrest AD110 works with out a subscription. This would tick some of your check boxes.

works in Blue Iris
Works with an APP
uses regular doorbell wiring for power.
even if the wifi goes on the fritz,( power outage) etc....it will still work as a normal doorbell
No cloud required, but available.
Not sure how to get a Tablet showing the front door, 24/7 that has an answer button on it.
I have it in BI.

 

[TheWaterbug]

This Dahua camera and kit look pretty darn good, but it doesn't ring the doorbell without a Home Assistant script and a bunch of other stuff that I don't want to maintain.

Thanks, all, for the feedback. I'm thinking that this Dahua kit might be OK if I could hardwire the physical doorbell in parallel with the guts of the Dahua panel. Has anyone ever taken one of these Dahua kits apart? IIUC a doorbell button is just a simple switch closure wired to the +12V or +24V or whatever doorbell supply voltage.

 

[TheWaterbug]

Well, at the end of it all I ended up with a more normal Amcrest AD110, WiFied back to the BlueIris station.

My Dad will never be able to use it, but maybe I can rig up some sort of inexpensive, always-on screen to put next to their digital picture frame, that just shows the doorbell camera feed.

 

[looney2ns]

Well, at the end of it all I ended up with a more normal Amcrest AD110, WiFied back to the BlueIris station.

My Dad will never be able to use it, but maybe I can rig up some sort of inexpensive, always-on screen to put next to their digital picture frame, that just shows the doorbell camera feed.

An inexpensive kindle fire tablet can be used, and use the built-in Silk browser for displaying with UI3.

I went through this in past couple of yrs with my elderly parents, I feel your pain. There are endless ways of problems arising when they have ANY access to it.

 

[TheWaterbug]

An inexpensive kindle fire tablet can be used, and use the built-in Silk browser for displaying with UI3.

I went through this in past couple of yrs with my elderly parents, I feel your pain. There are endless ways of problems arising when they have ANY access to it.

Yup. There are ways to lock down a Fire/Android tablet, but now I'm thinking something Raspberry Pi-based might be more manageable.

I just remembered that I bought an RPi 4 last year, intending for it to do this job while hooked up to their giant TV. I never implemented that, because neither of my parents can figure out how to change the input on the TV, nor (more importantly) how to switch it back once it's been changed.

So an RPi bolted into one of these could do the trick:

Amazon.com

I'll load up Raspbian (or whatever it's called these days) and see if I can turn off the touchscreen part of it, so it's just a display. And then I'll turn on VNC so I can administer it remotely.

That seems like a pretty good solution for $99, given that the RPi is a sunk cost already.

But if there are better screens/cases for the Pi, I'm all ears!

 

[TheWaterbug]

This one looks nearly identical. It might even be from the same factory:


View: https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-10-1-Touchscreen-Display-Housing/dp/B08L6J42VM

 

[TheWaterbug]

I bought the UPerfect one, and it works very well:



I have Chromium launching with a BlueIris URL that displays a single camera, full-screen, with no user internvention. In fact, no intervention is possible because the touchscreen isn't connected, and there's no keyboard or mouse. "Management" is via VNC, which I will do as necessary.

Things I've done or need to do beyond auto-starting Chromium:

1. Hide the mouse pointer
2. Disable all the different things that can time out.
   1. I've already turned off the Blue Iris web UI timeout
   2. I think I need to turn of RPi sleep
   3. I think there's also some sort of WiFi sleep that needs to be turned off
   4. There are some online guides to these functions, but some of them are really old, and may have changed.
3. Add a smart outlet so that I can remotely restart it if I can't VNC or ssh in.
   1. One nice feature of the Monitor/Case is that it turns on when plugged in. There's no need to push a power button.
4. Disable the hardware buttons on the Monitor/Case
   1. There are buttons to activate an on-screen display, switch inputs, etc., as this can also work as a normal display for any other HDMI device, not just the Pi installed within.
      1. I sort of wish I could delete those features and $10 in cost, because I have a very specific use case that requires none of these features.
5. Protect the file system when it gets shut down dirty.
   1. Since there's no way for them to interact with it, if they want to turn it off and move it to another room, they're going to just pull the plug.
6. Deploy!

 

[TheWaterbug]

Well, at the end of it all I ended up with a more normal Amcrest AD110, WiFied back to the BlueIris station.

PSA, but the latest firmware update for the AD110 vastly improves its connectivity/reliability. That camera had been very intermittent in BI since installation, and it was about ~10% likely to be offline at any given moment. I originally thought it was poor placement relative to my wireless access points, but I was at my parents' place yesterday for other network maintenance, and I had to fire up the Amcrest app to reboot this camera (there's no web interface, even though there's a web server?). The app told me there was a firmware update, so I applied it, and it's been solid for the ~24 hours since.

 

[dmcIPCAM]

Not much love for the Dahua VTO and VTH's? I love mine!

 

[TheWaterbug]

I bought the UPerfect one, and it works very well:

I want to build another one of these for the office, so that anyone working early/late can have a view of the front door without having to schlepp a computer or have to figure out how to use a tablet for this, and they're no longer available at amazon. I had to buy from the manufacturer for $170, vs. the $100 I paid at amazon back in January. But the mfr is giving me a 3-yr warranty, which is nice.