Doorbell To Internet Bridge Also Useful For Other Home Automation

This wireless doorbell hack can send a text message when someone rings. Adding the hardware to the chime unit turned out to be quite simple. It shows potential for a slew of other applications.

[Martin] started the project with a breakout board he had designed for an RFM12B wireless transceiver board. This board is popular because of its low-cost, small size, and ease of operation. [Martin’s] breakout is barely larger than the RFM module itself, and merely adds an ATtiny84 to the mix. In the case of this doorbell project he uses a pin interrupt to detect when the doorbell’s LED is illuminated. This wakes the chip from sleep and sends a message back to the receiver that something has happened.

The receiver can do anything it wants with that data. In this case it uses an email-to-SMS service to send [Martin] a text message. But the home automation applications are vast for this simple hardware. We have a water heater that is not near a floor drain so we use a simple leak detector to sound an alarm if there is ever a problem (the water heater sits in a shallow tray). That works if we’re home at the time. Using [Martin’s] solution could extend that alarm’s reach worldwide.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

5 thoughts on “Doorbell To Internet Bridge Also Useful For Other Home Automation

  1. I have been using this chip with the ATtiny’s for a while now. For those of you that would like to use these with the Arduino, you can use the JeeNode library. Given you are running the Arduino at 3.3V or using some sort of level conversion.

  2. Even it is in german language you may be interested in this.
    http://robinhenniges.com/de/magic-door-opener-teil1

    It allows you to open the main entrance in a apartment.
    It sends android notifications when the bell rings and when the apartment door is opening.

    Funny sidestory: One day when I was at the university I got a notification that the door was opened. I thought, holy f*** a burglar. I was really nervous. Quickly I connected via VPN on my Raspberry PI that had a camera attached. I shot a Photo and what I was was … nothing. No one there. At the end it was a false detection because the reed switch fall off the door xD. And I was so scared ^_^

    Last weekend I connected it with Alexa. So I can open the buildings door with Alexa.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIxS8v7DTY0

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