I have a home with a gate located around 80 meters, and out of view, from the house. For the past several years I have tried three different video communications systems. The first was an old black-and-white inter phone that worked fine until the audio fuzzed out. I then tried a mass-market color video-phone that supposedly could work over just 2-wires, and it barley lasted 3 months. The next effort was from a name brand (Legrand) company and also worked over a two wire connection. I had to run 2.5mm wire (like 10ga) and it lasted two years before the video died. This time I wanted to do it right, and besides getting a good quality picture, I wanted remote access via the Internet. I looked at the Ring andSkyBell after seeing them mentioned on this forum. Research on both the Ring and SkyBell left me a little underwhelmed and I had all but decided to just live with my, now audio only, system. But, after seeing the DoorBird, and in spite of it's price, I changed my mind and ordered one.
Here is what I found. The product is solid... I purchased the Stainless Steel (D201S) surface mount model (picture below) because it will be mounted in the open on a post and I was a little afraid of using plastic. However, all their models are exactly the same internally, they differ only in the case. The surface mount box for the D201 is nice and roomy so there is no trying to stuff lots of wires into the box and no need to cram the cover shut. Everything you could possibly need for a normal installation is required including scotchlock connectors and security screws with a matching screwdriver. Of course, in this price range it should be complete!
A test install in my house took under 5 minutes. The actual install at the gate took three days, but that was due to blocked buried conduits (I wanted to run ethernet/cat5e) and a host of other issues. The unit is fast to respond, has a high quality image and clear sound, though sound from the unit's speaker could be a tad louder.
Integrating with Indigo
The unit directly supports two output ports (simple switch closures) and one input port - to activate a gate or door opener remotely. Having the unit located at my gate made installation drop-dead easy, I just connected the gate control output to the gates input control. I used the second output for its intended purposed and installed a doorbell in the house that chimes when the DoorBird's button is pressed. This was really unnecessary since you can do everything with the app (Android and iOS) - but it got high WAF. Using these three interfaces and some simple I/O board connected to Indigo, you can immediately control the whole system with little work. With the Ring and SkyBell it looks like any integration is through their Cloud. So, to open my gate, a message would have to go up to the Cloud and back to something like Indigo, and then to the gate. I prefer simple.
There is also an API, which I have played with a little. But, I don't have the need of integrating it into Indigo for my purposes. However, for those of you who like deep integration, the following services are supported:
- See live video (no audio)
- Grab a live image (jpg)
- Open the door
- Turn on the Infrared LEDs
- Grab an image from the devices internal history
- Subscribe to events: doorbell|motionsensor|dooropen (more on this below)
- Open a live rtsp video stream
FWIW, tech support is by email, and very prompt. Though, you might have to ask your question a few times if you want some particular detailed technical bit of information.
Highlights: Very high quality, local connections, API, responsive support
Downside: The Price.