A Custom Zigbee Doorbell
Just a quick post today about how I replaced our doorbell with a custom Zigbee button and Home Assistant, running on an old Raspberry Pi 2 I had sitting in a drawer, which pings our phones when someone presses the button, instead of ringing a regular chime. If this interests you, read on!
Our cat Harry, who we adopted from the shelter a couple of years ago, is terrified of all humans except us. We don’t know why, he was 10 when we got him, and over the last 2 years we’ve tried to acclimatise him to visitors, but he’s absolutely not having it. He’s super friendly once you’re on “the list”, but getting on “the list” means being one of the people that feeds him for a month or so. Realistically, no-one but us is ever making the list.
He knows that the doorbell often means visitors, so when it goes off, he freaks out and runs to one of his hiding spots, such as under the bed, and won’t leave until he’s sure everyone else has gone. The problem is people ringing the bell for anything else, such as deliveries, set him off as well. Those are more common than actual visitors, so he’s freaking himself out unnecessarily most of the time.
