Unifi doorbell (or alternative)

[steveg]

Has anyone used the doorbell lite and smart chimes?  We don't need intercom or video, we just need a doorbell that works well and can sound multiple sounders in different rooms from a long distance.  

 

Standard cordless doorbells don't come close the the range we need (have tested the 1000ft ones) and a wired doorbell would be a pain running cabling. 

 

The POE powered chimes look ideal, then just running a cat5 out to the doorbell, but want to know they work well and can ring multiple chimes at once, and don't need internet / cloud access to work.

 

 

[MatthewL]

Paxton intercoms, they come with the handsets or have a look at Blink door bells (no subscription needed) integrates with Home Assistant create some sort of notification.  I use mine at home with an Alexa to announce there is someone at the door.

[steveg]

We've got Paxton intercoms for our gates,  but they are expensive and we don't need all the features they provide, it doesn't need to be any smarter than a doorbell that rings multiple chimes around the building at the same time.  

[FN-GM]

Do you have a PA system? I know someone who has a Unifi doorbell and the linked it to their speakers so it can be heard throughout the house.

[steveg]

We use our 3cx phone system as a pa system.  I'd imagine it's possible to integrate it into that, but looking for the keep it as simple as possible option, press the button and multiple chimes go bing, and possibly bong 🙂

 

 

[DalekSec]

UniFi you can plug into their other kit, we even had ours connected into the AI Loudspeaker for testing! 

 

IIRC they do have networkable chimes etc so no need to directly feed to the doorbell. 

[steveg]

25 minutes ago, DalekSec said:

UniFi you can plug into their other kit, we even had ours connected into the AI Loudspeaker for testing! 

 

IIRC they do have networkable chimes etc so no need to directly feed to the doorbell. 

 

It's their network chimes I'm hoping to use.  Just need to be sure it all happens locally - doorbell > Unifi OS controller > Network chime.  I ideally don't want the internet / cloud involved!

 

 

[p858snake]

It would still require running cable, But we have done this with our security system (Button triggers relay - relay triggers the speakers or other actions as required such as duradisplays with messages). We've had the setup on both our old Tecom Challenger before being replaced and the replacement InnerRange integrity 

[steveg]

No problem running a cable out to where the doorbell push will be, I'm just trying to avoid running cabling into 4 separate rooms which need chimes when we already have adequate network sockets in those rooms.  

[dhicks]

1 hour ago, steveg said:

We use our 3cx phone system as a pa system.

 

We do as well - we found the phones were a little quiet for noisy classrooms, so we've now added some PoE speakers as well. Both the phones and the speakers simply listen for network broadcast traffic on a specific broadcast address and play it if / when it appears. Therefore, all you need is for a doorbell that transmits a short "Bing-Bong!" sound to the network when its button is pressed. If there isn't a ready-made solution available it's the kind of thing a microcontroller with a button attached should be able to handle, so you could make your own. Our 3CX system is set to drop calls when announcements are made (because they are assumed to be emergencies), you might want a separate broadcast channel, maybe only picked up by selected devices, for the doorbell, as dropping phone calls every time the doorbell is pressed could get annoying.

[EssentialRug]

We've been using the G4 Doorbell Pro with the Chime for a good few years now and works great.

[paulkerton]

We're installing UniFi networking in all of our schools at the moment. Over Easter we're replacing the school purchased Ring Doorbell that we saw appear in the tickets at least twice a week, with a UniFi solution. It's very slick, and incredibly cost effective. Looking forward to seeing what it can do.

[TomL]

If you're running Data Cabling out to the location of the doorbell - you've pretty much got a pick of anything.

We've done/used Hikvision/Paxton/UniFi all in the past (+ others too - just keeping on-par w/ the brands others have mentioned here already)).

 

Hikvision's probably the cheapest. Paxton's probably the most expensive. UniFi's somewhere in between.

 

The only 'advantage' to Hik is their product selection - you can have the Indoor Screens etc (UniFi has these too - but, they're smaller). Plus, you can take the in-built camera's RTSP feed & either pipe it out to a monitor (or, if you have an NVR (to there) either as ONFIV (or Hikvision's own protocol if you've got one of their NVRs)) and it'll record as a CCTV Camera.

Edited March 18 by TomL

[FN-GM]

13 hours ago, steveg said:

We use our 3cx phone system as a pa system.  I'd imagine it's possible to integrate it into that, but looking for the keep it as simple as possible option, press the button and multiple chimes go bing, and possibly bong 🙂

 

 

 

In that case, I would use a SIP doorbell / Intercom and add it directly to 3CX. As you're looking at Unifi I assume you have Ethernet at the door / gate anyay?