Adding a 2nd (or 3rd/4th) doorbell in your house

During this COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been working at home for 85% of the time. I redecorated my 3rd floor to be my home office, bought some extra furniture and new monitors to be able to work comfortably. Yet every time someone (mostly the mailman) rang my doorbell, I didn’t hear it. Obviously I get a notification on my watch, but I wanted to change that…

Because I’v got plenty of my ESPHome based doorbells, I figured out it could be used for so many more! So I sacrificed my test setup to be my permanent office doorbell.

Now I ain’t going add a second pushbutton at the door, I just wanted to trigger a second bell when I’m in my office. Unfortunately it’s not possible to trigger a gpio remotely. Therefor I needed another way to trigger the dingdong sequence. Those loud “ring-ing” doorbells are way to loud and unfriendly.

How to trigger the doorbell remote

As I can’t trigger the GPIO remotely, I had to figure out another way. Luckily an ESPHome dev-er Guillermo pointed me to use an API service. The service can be triggered within Home Assistant, and runs a script:

api:
  services:
    - service: dingdong
      then:
        - script.execute: dingdong_script

script:
  id: dingdong_script
  then:
    if:
      condition:
        - switch.is_on: chime_active
      then:
        - switch.turn_on: relay
        - delay: 200ms
        - switch.turn_off: relay
        - delay: 600ms
        - switch.turn_on: relay
        - delay: 200ms
        - switch.turn_off: relay
        - delay: 600ms
        - switch.turn_on: relay
        - delay: 200ms
        - switch.turn_off: relay

The script uses the condition “switch.is_on” for chime_active. Therefor it’s easy to mute the doorbell, if needed (like in a video conference).

Automation

I already had an automation to trigger the lights to flash and send a notification to my phone. Just add another service “service: esphome.dingdong_dingdong”:

  - id: '<random generated id>'
  alias: Notify Doorbell
  description: ''
  trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.doorbell
    from: 'off'
    to: 'on'
  condition: []
  action:
  - service: notify.mobile_app_iphone
    data:
      title: Deurbel gaat
      message: Er belt iemand aan
  - service: light.turn_on
    data:
      flash: short
    target:
      entity_id: light.notify
  - service: esphome.dingdong_dingdong

Home Assistant Lovelace

Within my Home Assistant dashboard, I’ve added both doorbells to one panel, including some other handy toggle’s:

GitHub

All used code I have placed on my GitHub: https://github.com/zuidwijk/esphome-doorbell
(I’m not that familiar with GitHub, yet … that will come)