It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell
After a home security upgrade, one HN user built an elaborate 5-cloud service Rube Goldberg machine just to hear their video doorbell inside their apartment. This tale of modern IoT interoperability and the looming threat of subscription fees for basic functionality resonated deeply with the community. It's a humorous yet frustrating look at how simple tasks become technically complex in the smart home era.
The Lowdown
The author's journey to improve home security led to an unexpected and frustrating problem: a new video doorbell that was inaudible from inside the apartment. This seemingly simple issue spiraled into an elaborate technical solution involving multiple cloud services.
- After a burglary, the author installed a cheap Blink doorbell for security.
- The doorbell's sound was only audible outside, rendering it useless for alerting residents inside the apartment without their phones.
- To solve this without subscriptions or internet-exposed home devices, the author devised a complex workaround.
- The solution involves: Blink doorbell triggers Alexa, which toggles a virtual light in Samsung SmartThings, sending a webhook to a VPS, which Home Assistant polls to play audio on a Google Home Mini.
- This 5-cloud service chain successfully played an internal chime for 18 months.
- A new challenge has arisen as Samsung SmartThings announced a $4.99/month fee for its API, threatening the free operation of this intricate system.
The story serves as a humorous, yet stark, illustration of the convoluted nature of modern IoT and the often-unforeseen costs and complexities associated with integrating "smart" devices.
The Gossip
Local Lore & Hardware Hacks
Commenters share their experiences and recommendations for building or finding truly local and hackable IoT devices, particularly doorbells, to bypass the cloud service dependency that plagues the author's setup. They emphasize avoiding subscriptions and maintaining ownership of their home automation by leveraging open-source solutions or repurposing older hardware.
Interop Inadequacies
Many users echo the author's frustration with the lack of native interoperability between IoT devices and platforms. They highlight the absurdity of needing multiple cloud services for basic functionality and criticize vendors for not providing simple, configurable interfaces like MQTT or local HTTP endpoints, often leading to vendor lock-in and unexpected subscription costs.
Bell Basics & Retro Rewind
A few commenters ponder if the author considered or could have used a traditional wired doorbell, suggesting that the initial problem of an inaudible chime might have been solvable with a less 'smart' approach, thus avoiding the entire cloud-dependent Rube Goldberg machine. Discussions also touch on the practical drawbacks of 'smart' doorbells, such as notification latency.