Doorbells

Doorbells

For the longest time, doorbells were HomeKit's white-whale. Finally in January of 2021 there are a few reasonable options. I use the Logitech Circle View Doorbell. It works great. The all-glass front leaves a nice high-end feel to the doorbell. Video response is SUPER fast, and the picture is very nice, even at night. The microphone has also worked well. One thing to note: if you currently have both a front and rear doorbell, using Logitech's included ChimeKit and following their directions will disable your rear doorbell. There are ways that you can maintain your old doorbell, but it will be up to you to determine how to wire the two doorbells on your own. The Circle View Doorbell is completely managed in the HomeKit app, including initial setup and firmware updates. There is no Logitech app for the camera. The Circle View camera uses HomeKit Secure Video exclusively, there are no other options for recording video. It has been very convenient having the HomePods throughout the house act as a doorbell chime and the popup video notification while watching TV.

What I Use

  • Supports both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi

  • Light Sensor: The Doorbell has a light sensor, you can use that data in automations if desired

  • Motion Sensor: The Doorbell will give you a motion sensor tile that you can use for automations

  • Notifications:

    • Chime on HomePod - you can select which HomePods will chime when the doorbell button is pressed

    • Allow Snapshots in Notifications - include a still image from the camera in the notification

    • Status Change Notifications - receive notifications when the camera changes from one mode to another

    • Notify when camera goes offline

    • Receive notifications based on time of day

    • Receive notifications based on when people are home or away (or both)

    • Receive notifications when the doorbell button is pushed

    • Receive notifications when activity is detected: yes/no and if any motion is detected, or only when a clip is recorded

  • Chime Doorbell: You can choose to have your old analog chime or not when someone rings the bell

  • Recording Options:

    • When Home: Off (turns the camera completely off), Detect Activity (use the camera only to detect activity/no camera feed), Stream (stream the camera, but do not record), Stream & Allow Recording (view the feed, activity will be recorded)

    • When Away: Off, Detect Activity, Stream, Stream & Allow Recording

    • Record When: Any Motion is Detected or Specific Motion is Detected (choose any combination of people, animals, vehicles)

    • Record Audio (yes or no)

    • Face Recognition: you can integrate Photo Library face detection and you can control who has access to the names in your Photo Library

    • Select Activity Zones: you can draw an area of your camera's view to be the actively monitored zone. This allows you to ignore activity outside of the drawn area, for example if your camera has view of a public sidewalk.

    • Camera Status Light: you can turn the camera status light on or off

    • Night Vision Light: you can control whether or not your camera's LED turns on at night for improved nighttime video footage

TIP:

To turn off notifications for specific people:

  1. Open the camera in HomeKit and select the Settings icon.

  2. Navigate to Face Recognition > Known to Household

  3. Tap on the face of the person you want to disable notifications

  4. Enable the Hide Notifications option