Piano Doorbell Adds Music To Your Home

June 8, 2025 by Lewin Day 16 Comments

Regular ding-dong doorbells are fun and all, but it can be nice to put something a little more special by your front door. To that end, [Arpan Mondal] built this neat little piano doorbell to make visiting his home just a touch more fun.

The heart of the build is an ESP32 microcontroller. It’s responsible for reading the state of five 3D printed piano keys: three white, two black. It’s nowhere near a full octave, but for a doorbell, it’s enough. When a key is pressed, the ESP32 plays a short audio sample embedded within the program code itself. This is done with the help of a PAM8403 audio amplifier module, which jacks up the output to drive the doorbell speaker loud enough to be heard throughout the home. It’s not exactly studio quality audio, but for a doorbell, it sounds pretty solid.

If you’re looking for a fun and easy build to make your home just a little bit more whimsical, it’s hard to beat something like this. Your musical friends will love it—they might even develop an intro riff of their very own. We’ve featured some other fun doorbell builds before, too—the best of which are the Halloween projects.
Continue reading “Piano Doorbell Adds Music To Your Home” →

Adding Assistive Technology To A Doorbell

June 4, 2025 by Bryan Cockfield 4 Comments

The advent of affordable computing over the last few decades has certainly been a boon for many people with disabilities, making it easier to access things like text-to-speech technology, automation, or mobility devices, and even going as far as making it easier to work in general by making remote work possible. Some things still lag behind, though, like user interfaces that don’t take the colorblind into account, or appliances that only use an audio cue to signal to their users. This doorbell, for example, is one such device and [ydiaeresis] is adding features to it to help their mother with some hearing issues.

The first thing up for this off-the-shelf remote doorbell is a “brain transplant” since the built-in microcontroller couldn’t be identified. There are only a few signals on this board though so an ATtiny412 made for a suitable replacement. A logic analyzer was able to decode the signals being fed to the original microcontroller, and with that the push of the doorbell can be programmed to do whatever one likes, including integrating it with home automation systems or other assistive technology. In [ydiaeresis]’s case there’s an existing LED lighting system that illuminates whenever the phone rings.

Although it would be nice if these inexpensive electronics came with the adaptive features everyone might need from them, it’s often not too hard to add it in as was the case with this set of digital calipers. To go even further, some other common technology can be used to help those with disabilities like this hoverboard modified to help those with mobility issues.

Thanks to [buttim] for the tip!

A Low Effort, Low Energy Doorbell

January 10, 2025 by Al Williams 19 Comments

Bluetooth is a good way to connect devices that are near each other. However, it can drain batteries which is one reason Bluetooth Low Energy — BLE — exists. [Drmph] shows how easy it is to deploy BLE to make, in this case, a doorbell. He even shows how you can refit an existing doorbell to use the newer technology.

Like many projects, this one started out of necessity. The existing wireless doorbell failed, but it was difficult to find a new unit with good review. Cheap doorbells tend to ring spuriously due to interference. BLE, of course, doesn’t have that problem. Common BLE modules make up the bulk of the project. It is easy enough to add your own style to the doorbell like a voice announcement or musical playback. The transmitter is little more than a switch, the module, a coin cell, and an LED.

It is, of course, possible to have a single receiver read multiple doorbells. For example, a front door and back door with different tones. The post shows how to make a remote monitor, too, if you need the bell to ring beyond the range of BLE.

A fun, simple, and useful project. Of course, the cool doorbells now have video. Just be careful not to get carried away.

A treadmill with a doorbell alert in one of the cup holders.

See Them Knocking With A Doorbell Alert

June 21, 2024 by Kristina Panos 8 Comments

Picture it: you’re on the treadmill, running through a forest, sweating like a pig, and the doorbell rings because a package is being delivered. Would you even hear it? Chances are, if you’re rocking out to music on headphones and your treadmill is as noisy as [Antonio]’s, you wouldn’t, and you’d once again face the dreaded ‘we’ll try later’ slip.

What you need is something that thing listens for the doorbell and flashes a giant 20 mm red LED to alert you. Could this be done with a 555? Yes, in fact, [Antonio] used a pair of them in the form of the 556 on the alert side.

The first 555 is wired up in astable mode to control the tempo of the flashing light, and the second timer is in monostable mode to control the length of time the light flashes. Power comes from the doorbell’s 9V, which is wired up through an existing Ethernet jack.

Now whenever the doorbell rings, [Antonio] has 60 seconds of flashing light in order to react, stop the treadmill, and jump off to answer the door. To conserve power when [Antonio] is relaxing, there’s an on/off switch.

Multi-Year Doorbell Project

September 17, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 5 Comments

Camera modules for the Raspberry Pi became available shortly after its release in the early ’10s. Since then there has been about a decade of projects eschewing traditional USB webcams in favor of this more affordable, versatile option. Despite the amount of time available there are still some hurdles to overcome, and [Esser50k] has some supporting software to drive a smart doorbell which helps to solve some of them.

One of the major obstacles to using the Pi camera module is that it can only be used by one process at a time. The PiChameleon software that [Esser50k] built is a clever workaround for this, which runs the camera as a service and allows for more flexibility in using the camera. He uses it in the latest iteration of a smart doorbell and intercom system, which uses a Pi Zero in the outdoor unit armed with motion detection to alert him to visitors, and another Raspberry Pi inside with a touch screen that serves as an interface for the whole system.

The entire build process over the past few years was rife with learning opportunities, including technical design problems as well as experiencing plenty of user errors that caused failures as well. Some extra features have been added to this that enhance the experience as well, such as automatically talking to strangers passing by. There are other unique ways of using machine learning on doorbells too, like this one that listens for a traditional doorbell sound and then alerts its user.

Continue reading “Multi-Year Doorbell Project” →

Smart Doorbell Focuses On Privacy

August 18, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 11 Comments

As handy as having a smart doorbell is, with its ability to remotely see who’s at the front door from anywhere with an Internet connection, the off-the-shelf units are not typically known for keeping user privacy as a top priority. Even if their cloud storage systems were perfectly secure (which is not a wise assumption to make) they have been known to give governmental agencies and police free reign to view the videos whenever they like. Unfortunately if you take privacy seriously, you might need to implement your own smart doorbell yourself.

The project uses an ESP32-CAM board as the doorbell’s core, paired with a momentary push button and all housed inside a 3D-printed enclosure. [Tristam] provides a step-by-step guide, including printing the enclosure, configuring the ESP32-CAM to work with the popular open-source home automation system ESPHome, handling doorbell notifications automatically, and wiring the components. There are plenty of other optional components that can be added to this system as well, including things like LED lighting for better nighttime imaging.

[Tristam] isn’t much of a fan of having his home automation connected to the Internet, so the device eschews wireless connections and batteries in favor of a ten-meter USB cable connected to it from a remote machine. As far as privacy goes, this is probably the best of all worlds as long as your home network isn’t doing anything crazy like exposing ports to the broader Internet. It also doesn’t need to be set up to continuously stream video either; this implementation only takes a snapshot when the doorbell button is actually pressed. Of course, with a few upgrades to the ESP circuitry it is certainly possible to use these chips to capture video if you prefer.

Thanks to [JohnU] for the tip!

Ring In The New Year With This Cute Cat Doorbell

January 16, 2023 by Abe Connelly 5 Comments

What better way to ring in the new year than with [iSax Laboratories]’ charming little project that replaces a doorbell with a Maneki-Neko cat figurine to ring a physical bell?

Details are unfortunately a bit light, but it looks like the Maneki-Neko cat was disassembled to allow for a small SG92R servo motor to attach to the arm pendulum mechanism. [iSax Laboratories] added wooden platform where the Maneki-Neko cat figurine is mounted along with some indicator lights, switches and the physical bell, with a cavity routed out in the base to allow for the Arduino Nano microcontroller.

[iSax Laboratories] has what looks to be an Assa Abloy Svara 23 wired answering machine, which has one of its output lines connected to the Nano to sense when a doorbell signal has come in.

The Maneki-Neko cats are cute, easily hackable figurines and we’ve featured them in the past, using them as everything from hit counters to POV displays.

Be sure to check out the demo video after the break!

Continue reading “Ring In The New Year With This Cute Cat Doorbell” →