Happy to be here

@elvendecker, welcome to the forum...

regards,

LouisR

Nice - we have similar motivations. One project in the queue is a system to ring my doorbell when someone comes onto the porch, so deliveries don't sit there all day (because they don't knock or ring the bell when dropping stuff off, it seems). 🙂

Will be great to see what you come up with.

@binaryrhyme, Hacking into my doorbell sounds like fun.  I made a raspberry pi motion-activated camera that takes a snapshot of the front yard every second or so and then takes video for a minute if there is an appreciable change in snapshots.  I intended it for my front porch but we've not been able to figure out how to hide it. Perhaps better is we could make an Arduino IR motion sensor that triggers a relay when something changes on the porch. Much easier to hide. Let me run it by the family here to see what they think.  They are pushing for a smart doorbell but I have no intention of letting Google or Amazon know anything about my comings and goings. 🙂

Do we take this discussion into another location within the forum?

@elvendecker There is a project section, if you want to spin the topic up there. I was thinking I'd just wire a commercial solid state relay in parallel with the door button and just let the control circuitry ring the bell that way. 😉

Posted by: @elvendecker

@binaryrhyme, Hacking into my doorbell sounds like fun.  I made a raspberry pi motion-activated camera that takes a snapshot of the front yard every second or so and then takes video for a minute if there is an appreciable change in snapshots.  I intended it for my front porch but we've not been able to figure out how to hide it.

That sounds really good, how large is the camera lens ? Would it fit inside the hole for a standard door peep hole ?

If it's too large to hide inside a peep hole, maybe you can just mount it out of reach up the wall or under the  roof line. That would give you a good angle to cover the yard.

Perhaps better is we could make an Arduino IR motion sensor that triggers a relay when something changes on the porch. Much easier to hide.

If you're just covering the porch, you'd just need a PIR to sense a presence on the porch (probably including neighbourhood pets, natural wildlife and your local wild life types.

@will In my case, I have a through the door mail slot that I don't use, where I intend to insert the instrument package. Currently investigating a POE cable door hinge that I can use to wire the package to a larger control system in the basement that will be wall mounted beside the 24v AC doorbell wires running up from the power panel.

@binaryrhyme 

Perhaps you could mount an Arduino and a MOSFET with a PIR that peeks out the mail slot, mount the PIR on the outside face of the slot flap. Make the PIR wire connections easy to tear out in case some "visitor" notices the PIR and tries to disable your system the old fashioned way.

You could then connect this in parallel with your doorbell, so either a push or an approach would ring the bell.

Instead of hooking the porch scanner to the doorbell, I think you should consider using a different sound so that you can immediately tell if somebody is approaching versus when they arrive and ring the bell. That way you can tell when you REALLY need to go to the door 🙂

And, if you have a lot of loose pets and/or pests, you may need an on/off switch or at least a volume control to avoid unnecessary interruptions in your sleep pattern.

Actually, it might be interesting to change the porch alert sound so that in your family's normal waking time the alarm sounds inside and at night it sounds outside. That could discourage miscreants, pets and wildlife from those annoying nocturnal visits 🙂

@will @binaryrhyme Just set up an exclusion time window in the Arduino code to prevent triggering the MOSFET

Posted by: @zander

@will @binaryrhyme Just set up an exclusion time window in the Arduino code to prevent triggering the MOSFET

That'd be a lot better, making it a fully an automatic system; but it still uses power 🙂

@will I was thinking of using something like the esp32 cam set to person recognition, possibly filtering out images too small to be on the porch, with a lag on retriggers in the code.

Posted by: @binaryrhyme

I was thinking of using something like the esp32 cam set to person recognition,

I'm not sure what benefit that will have ? Are you planning to unlock the door automatically if your system recognizes a family member ? Or are you planning to have the visitor's name (or "unknown person(s)" announced as part of the doorbell ring ?

possibly filtering out images too small to be on the porch, with a lag on retriggers in the code.

OK, I mistakenly assumed that this was some kind of general alert system, seems like you're looking at a system more directed at locating and identifying human guests.

You may miss deliveries that are just tossed onto your porch that way 🙂

@will The physical configuration of my porch has them at least going up the steps - but adding a PIR not a bad thought. Basic intention is to avoid false positives from urban wildlife. 😉 We have tons of critters making the rounds in our 'hood.

Posted by: @binaryrhyme

We have tons of critters making the rounds in our 'hood.

I wonder if putting a small piece of wood under the PIR would block the reception from the lower part and limit the zone covered to waist up ? Perhaps if the PIR were mounted outside and above your door frame you could shield it from the floor of the porch ?

I don't think it could be plastic as I believe that plastic is relatively transparent to IR.

@will re: Different tones, on off switch: I'll probably have an RTC in the mix, and can have scheduled down time on the auto ring function in the software.

I've got an analog chime, so additional tone types would need an additional ringer - which I might add. Will probably have an ICYMI blinking led on the back of the door that can be cleared with a button press as well. 😉