[HomeKit] Supporting Doorbell HomeKit accessories

[diRk262]

Hi,
I would like to use a switch as the HomeKit Doorbell accessories.
But I can’t find any support for this.

Maybe it is possible to add support for it?

Thank you

[IonasElate]

For now you can do this with homebridge.

[pytekmobile]

Hi,

I've stumbled across this issue when I made my Honeywell doorbell smart with the help of a Shelly Uni. That works fine but I wanted a notification per HomeKit and HomePod too. So I've implemented the Doorbell accessory by myself.

I have committed my development to my fork. It's still work in progress. At the moment an Item (ie. Switch) can be marked with {homekit="Doorbell"} and it get's shown in the Home app. Notifications are sent to the devices and to the homePod too. But in the Home app it is still marked as not supported.

In openhab.log sometimes this warning is shown:
[WARN ] [.impl.json.CharacteristicsController] - Accessory 1538846455 has no characteristics or does not exist. Request: /characteristics?id=1538846455.7

I've no idea what this means but I've found this problem for Homebridge too.

According to the HomeKit Accessory Protocol Specification R2 only the event mechanism is required.
My next steps would be to implement the optional Characteristics (volume and brightness)

Any Ideas what else can be the problem for this?

[lsiepel]

Gentle ping to @ccutrer do you know if this accessory is already supported or maybe planned ?

[ccutrer]

It is not currently supported, and I haven't looked into it much. Is it possible to have a doorbell without a camera? I've been avoiding cameras cause I know they have more encryption and out-of-band communications.

[lsiepel]

Have not seen a home kit doorbell without a camera. :-( how do you stand towards partial support? Like have the doorbell without camera? At least that would give a ring notification in home app

[ccutrer]

I'd be perfectly fine with a partial implementation, but will iOS?

Another thing to check out would be a stateless switch I believe it's called. It's for representing any smart button or scene controller that doesn't directly control anything, so that then you hook up with automation in the Home app to cause some action. Perhaps it can be set to notify, and that would suffice for your needs.

[lsiepel]

Unfortunately my knowledge to the underlying dettails of the HomeKit binding is very limited, so i cannot be of any help other then to express my wishes :-)

Hope this will get in the binding, but i can understand it other accessoiry's have more priority. Thanks!

[ccutrer]

So I did a bit of investigation today. A StatelessProgrammableSwitch is useful, but can't be used to trigger a simple notification like "The doorbell has rang" - you have to create an Action in Home, and even then you'd have to convert it to a Siri Shortcut, and I don't see anything built it to simply send a notification. As for Doorbell - it's built on top of the same characteristic type as a StatelessProgrammableSwitch (makes sense, since it's the same type of button), but without the video components, Home just shows it as an unsupported accessory, and won't let you do anything with it.