One of [Sander]’s first projects with a Raspberry Pi was to get it to send messages to his iPhone. From there he decided to take it a step further and wire the tiny computer up to his doorbell, creating a system that can send push messages to his phone whenever someone is at the front door.

[Sander]’s doorbell is wireless, and he decided to keep all of its original functionality. All it took to signal the Pi was a simple circuit tied to the doorbell’s status LED which turns off whenever the doorbell is pushed.

The Raspberry Pi runs a python program that handles the GPIO pin which is wired to the doorbell. When the doorbell is pushed, the program processes and sends the push notification while taking pictures of the visitor with an attached webcam. The pictures are included in the message so [Sander] can see who is at the front door. The code for the project is included on his project page.

This project rang a bell for us since we’ve seen projects using a Raspberry Pi and push notifications. None of them so far have included a webcam or utilized an existing wireless doorbell though, and this is a great step forward!