ding dong. who's there? DIY homekit doorbell

[@paulstejskal]

Very well edited and composed video. Nice job.

[@esparbe3513]

Great video, very clear and also entretaining thanks!

[@Mellow_labs]

Hey, great video! Great editing, but something keeps nagging me. Why run an Ethernet wire from the doorbell when you could have just put the microcontroller in the doorbell box and run a much smaller wire just for power?

[@paulstraw]

Good question! My reasoning was: 1. If there's an issue with my outdoor case design (i.e. it leaks), or someone vandalizes/steals/otherwise breaks the outdoor portion, I'd much rather just replace a button than a whole microcontroller. 2. I've not done any sort of security hardening on this system, and I don't want to put a microcontroller with access to my home network (and unencrypted credentials) on the outside of my house. Now, do I really think those would be real-world problems? Nah, but this way I don't have to worry about either!

[@Mellow_labs]

@@paulstraw that makes a lot of sense. Somehow I didn’t consider the vulnerability aspect. I’ll have to keep that in mind as I’m working on an outdoor IOT project soon.

[@salimbenbouz]

Well done! I love the Homespan lib, I've been running it on several QT Py ESP32 S2 and it's solid, never encountered any connection issues. Is that problem specific to Pico D4?

[@paulstraw]

Thanks! I've tried a WROOM-32 (Amazon board), PICO-D4 (TinyPICO), and PICO-­MINI-­02 (Feather ESP32 Feather V2) so far, and all present the same issue for me. I have some S3 (TinyS3) boards on the way, looking forward to testing with those.

[@salimbenbouz]

@@paulstraw Really Weird. This is unrelated to HomeSpan but I had some issues in the past with few of my homekit hubs stuck on standby and leaving bunch of devices unresponsive or struggle to get connected.

[@paulstraw]

@@salimbenbouz I actually ran into that issue last week with my security cameras! Sadly it seems to be a separate problem. I'm also getting the same results on a separate test network without any HomeKit hubs. It's a real head-scratcher 🙃

[@salimbenbouz]

​@@paulstrawOn a separate Network!? You got me intrigued. I will definitely try the new Homespan release in the upcoming days.

[@paulstraw]

@@salimbenbouz Yeah… I feel like it must be something ridiculous on my end, I just have no idea what the common denominator is yet.

[@danielkonigs2769]

Do you know if it’s possible to do an intercom no-video doorbell? Would love to hack something together for a building intercom.

[@paulstraw]

I don't think audio is possible with HomeSpan. You might consider getting a cheap security camera with two-way audio and ripping out/otherwise disabling the camera parts? TP-Link Tapo C310 could be a good candidate. I use Scrypted to connect non-HomeKit cameras to HomeKit, and it works very well.

[@kevinsherman6706]

"maybe a nice bike ride" in the snow 🤣. Fun video! Just need to get me a 3D Printer :D. And a soldering iron.

[@paulstraw]

Check out the Pinecil! I've heard great things, and they're ridiculously cheap. I'll probably pick one up myself soon. pine64.com/product/pinecil-smart-mini-portable-soldering-iron/

[@TheUnofficialMaker]

what is homespan? how about a video on it! Wireless would be much cooler!

[@paulstraw]

Not a bad idea! High level, HomeSpan makes it easy to connect ESP32 boards to HomeKit: github.com/HomeSpan/HomeSpan

[@Official_LKS]

Can you explain how to upload the script?

[@paulstraw]

You should be able to install platformio.org/ and then open the folder from GitHub. Then you can use the PIO upload command (either on the command line or via the VSC plugin).

[@germylicious]

well done