My personal Dahua VTO doorbell setup in Home Assistant, with no VTH or cloud dependency.
chrome_9i5oSwBJVz.mp4
chrome_WSyEa4frLc.mp4
The card on this demo is slighty outdated.
20240526_171635.mp4
- No cloud services (no Dahua app)
- No VTH (indoor station)
- No communication over SIP
- Use Home Assistant for notifications
- Use Home Assistant for 2-way audio communication (accepting the call, talking to the visitor)
- Use Frigate for object detection of the doorbell camera
- Use Frigate for recording of the doorbell camera
While my own setup is working fine, this guide is work in progress, but I plan to explain every bit of it (even if just to myself).
I was using a fully SIP setup before, using Asterisk and the SIP card. I decided to move away because:
- Asterisk is too complicated to manage. I don't want to deal with it.
- I could not find a nice way to make it beautiful in my dashboard. It always felt out of place.
- Answering the doorbell when outside home would require to open UDP ports in my router, which I don't want to do.
I could not yet get rid of Asterisk. Since I am not using a VTH, I still need Asterisk so that the doorbell can attempt to call a SIP extension.
And only in such case the button pressed event will be detected by the Home Assistant Dahua integration.
So, until I find a better solution, I am running Asterisk to create a dummy extension for the doorbell to call.
- Dahua VTO Doorbell VTO2202F-P-S2
- Home Assistant server
- Dahua Home Assistant integration to capture the button pressed event, cancel the call after the button is pressed, and unlock the door
- Asterisk add-on to get the button pressed event by the Dahua integration, and also so that the doorbell can announce Calling now when the button is pressed
- Frigate for object detection and recording
- go2rtc for 2-way audio communication, running inside Frigate in this example
- Frigate Home Assistant integration, which allows the Frigate Card to communicate with go2rtc within Frigate without needing external exposure of the go2rtc server
- Frigate Card for 2-way audio communication within the Home Assistant dashboard (at least version 6.0.0)
- Fully Kiosk Browser on a tablet for the doorbell interface
- Fully Kiosk Browser Home Assistant official integration
- layout-card to allow the doorbell dashboard to use full width of my tablet screen in vertical orientation, while still displaying other larger displays in horizontal orientation nicely
- Home Assistant companion app, to receive notifications when someone rings the doorbell
- Notifications for Android TV Home Assistant integration, to receive notifications on my TVs when someone rings the doorbell
This is not a step-by-step guide. This is just a reference for the specific configurations of each of the components above to make it work like in the demo.
You need to install the Asterisk add-on and then add a PJSIP extension for the VTO. Also, you need a "virtual" number/extension for the VTO to call to. The VTO will later connect to Asterisk and when someone rings it, it will call such number.
The relevant Asterisk configuration files can be found at asterisk/custom.
The VTO SIP server configuration should be as following:
Also, this is how I configure my video stream in the VTO:
It works well for me. I use the sub stream to record in Frigate.
Nothing outside of the usual. You can check Frigate docs.
The relevant section of my frigate.yaml can be found here.
Make sure the Frigate Home Assistant integration is also configured.
Note This setup uses Frigate, but it is not strictly necessary. You can also use go2rtc in the Frigate Card without Frigate itself. You will need to use its proxy functionality to make it work outside your local network.
go2rtc runs inside Frigate in this setup. The go2rtc configuration is included in the Frigate configuration. The important thing here is to use the fix_vto_codecs.sh script to echo your VTO RTSP URLs.
In my case, I added such script to /config/scripts/fix_vto_codecs.sh. Make sure it has execution permission with chmod +x /config/scripts/fix_vto_codecs.sh, otherwise go2rtc will not be able to execute it.
The minimum version of the Frigate Card required for this setup is 6.0.0.
The code for my dashboard with the Frigate Card configured can be found here.
My dashboard is configured to use layout-card, but you are free to make it use other dashboard types.
My Fully Kiosk Browser settings.json can be found here. Do not forget to have the Fully Kiosk Browser official Home Assistant integration configured, since it is used in the automations.
Make sure to have the Home Assistant Dahua integration configured.
Then, pretty much everything is orchestrated through Home Assistant automations.
I left a reference of my automations here.
You can pick the ones you want, and then edit them to fit your needs.
The main one is doorbell-ringed.yaml, which starts when someone rings the doorbell and performs the necessary actions like you saw in the demo video.
For example, the first action is to cancel the call in the VTO. This is important so that 2-way audio communication can work well within go2rtc and the Frigate Card.
You will need to create two input_booleans as well. In my automations they are named input_boolean.doorbell_calling and input_boolean.do_not_disturb (suggested icon is mdi:bell-off).
The integration also uses the ringtone.mp3 to emulate a call by playing it on the tablet. Make sure such file is in your /config/www/asterisk/ folder.
I created notification groups for my mobile devices and for my TVs to simplify my automation. If you want to do the same, it's as simple as adding this to your Home Assistant configuration.yaml:
notify:
- name: all_phones
platform: group
services:
- service: mobile_app_phone_a
- service: mobile_app_phone_b
- name: all_tvs
platform: group
services:
- service: kitchen_tv
- service: bedroom_tv