The Reolink doorbell: snapshot notifications, talkback and recording

Most video doorbells ask you for a subscription and route your footage past a server on the other side of the world. The Reolink doorbell does it differently: it works entirely locally and has an official Home Assistant integration. You get a camera entity, a binary_sensor for the doorbell ("visitor") and both motion and person detection. That lets you build something an off-the-shelf doorbell cannot.

Notification with a photo

Send a notification with a snapshot to everyone in the house on every ring, and have a tap open the doorbell popup on your dashboard straight away:

- alias: Deurbel
  triggers:
    - trigger: state
      entity_id: binary_sensor.deurbel_visitor
      to: 'on'
  actions:
    - action: notify.huishouden
      data:
        title: Deurbel
        message: Er staat iemand voor de deur.
        data:
          image: /api/camera_proxy/camera.deurbel
          url: /dashboard-thuis/deurbel # iOS
          clickAction: /dashboard-thuis/deurbel # Android
          push:
            interruption-level: time-sensitive

That time-sensitive matters here, because it is what gets the notification through a focus mode on iOS. A doorbell notification you see an hour later is worth nothing at all.

Talkback

The doorbell handles two-way audio through the Reolink app. In Home Assistant you can watch through the camera popup and, with the right card and WebRTC, talk back as well. If that is not smooth in your setup, put a button in the notification that opens the Reolink app directly. Less elegant, but it always works, and with a doorbell that is exactly what you want.

Wall panel

Have your wall tablet jump to the camera full-screen when someone rings (see a tablet as a wall panel). Use the camera's sub-stream for that: lower resolution, on screen far faster, and more than sharp enough to see who is there. A main stream that spends five seconds loading is useless when there is someone at the door.

Recording

Have the doorbell record 24/7 or on motion to an NVR or NAS, Synology Surveillance Station for instance. Keep that job separate from Home Assistant, because HA is not a recording system. HA reacts to events; the NAS keeps the footage.

Privacy

Point the camera at your own front door, not at the street or the house opposite. Use the privacy masks in the Reolink settings to block out parts of the image. That is not only decent towards your neighbours, it also keeps you on the right side of the rules.

Frequently asked questions

Does the doorbell work without the cloud? Yes. The Reolink integration talks to the doorbell locally. Only the Reolink app's own push notifications go through their servers, and with this setup you no longer need those.

Why is the snapshot slow to load in the notification? Because your phone fetches the image from Home Assistant. Away from home, HA therefore has to be reachable, through Home Assistant Cloud or your own secured connection.

Can I make the chime play through my speakers? Yes. Play a sound on a ring using the same announcement script you use for your other notifications, so everything in the house sounds consistent.