After missing several people knocking at the door it was decided a doorbell was in order but I didn’t just want some annoying ringing bell to drive me nuts so after seeing Ahmad Khattab’s project on Hackaday here planning began on my own Raspberry Pi based door bell.
You can find Ahmad’s original Github repository here and Google doc with build instructions here.
Parts List:
Raspberry Pi Model B
I downloaded the complete SD image from here and used Win32 Disk Imager to put the image on an 8GB SD-Card after boot I went in and modified the code slightly by commenting out lines related to the LCD as I won’t be using it and have added support for Pushover a service that allows for push notifications to be sent to iOS, Android and also desktop browsers.
I also modified camera.py to take two pictures one at 800×600 which is emailed and a second at full resolution which is later copied to my NAS for storage.
launch.sh is used to start it monitoring the GPIO pin, I added this as a cron job on reboot.
Can download the modified files here.
The files that need to be customized for use are:
send_email_fast.py – Set your email address and SMTP server
send_email_attachment.py – Set your email address and SMTP server
pushover.py – Set your Pushover User and App Key’s
run.py – Un-comment and set path if you wish to copy the picture to a network share
There is also Google hangouts, twitter and Zapier support but I have not used them here.
With the software sorted it was onto the hardware:
I stripped the circuit board from the receiver unit and un-soldered the speaker and battery connectors and replaced them with new leads. Someone was even nice enough to silk screen the board with all the appropriate labels.
I then connected the battery leads to 3.3v (Pin 1) and Ground (Pin 9) and the speaker leads to GPIO7 (Pin 26) and Ground (Pin 25) for my build I omitted the 10K resister and am yet to have any issues.
A quick test and seconds later both a pushover notification and E-Mail arrived:
Open up the email and we find the picture attached:
I’m still awaiting my case from China after it arrives the next step will be to mount all the hardware in the case, run a network cable to the location and wire up PoE for the unit.
I also intend to add support for the camera to be triggered by the motion sensor out the front for when I’m away or asleep for security.