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The card on this demo is slighty outdated.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.
The VTO needs a SIP number to call when someone rings it, and since I don't have a VTH, I'm using Asterisk fill that gap.
In this setup, Asterisk will also be used to trigger the automation in Home Assistant once someone rings the doorbell. You can use Dahua Integration's binary_sensor.button_pressed as well, but I found Asterisk to be both more reliable and more importantly: faster.
- Dahua VTO Doorbell VTO2202F-P-S2 (firmware V4.600.0000000.2.R.240802)
- Home Assistant (running through Home Assistant Operating System in this setup)
- Dahua Home Assistant integration to cancel the VTO call and to unlock the door
- Asterisk add-on to receive the VTO call when someone rings it, and fire the Home Assistant automation
- 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 Advanced Camera Card to communicate with go2rtc within Frigate without needing external exposure of the go2rtc server
- Advanced Camera Card for 2-way audio communication within the Home Assistant dashboard
- Fully Kiosk Browser on a tablet for the doorbell interface
- Fully Kiosk Browser Home Assistant official integration to control the tablet from Home Assistant, like turning its screen on, navigating to the doorbell dashboard page, and ringing
- 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 number/extension for the VTO to call to. The VTO connect to Asterisk and when someone rings it, it will call Asterisk using that number/extension.
When Asterisk receives the call, it will fire the Home Assistant automation. This is done through a script that calls Home Assistant's REST API to turn the input_boolean.doorbell_calling on, which then triggers the automation that handles the doorbell ring.
The relevant Asterisk files, including the script mentioned above, can be found at asterisk.
In my case, these files are added to /addon_configs/b35499aa_asterisk. Don't forget to add execution permission to the script with chmod +x /addon_configs/b35499aa_asterisk/perform_homeassistant_action.sh, otherwise Asterisk will not be able to execute it.
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.
I am using Frigate 0.16 Beta. Beyond that, nothing outside of the usual. You can check Frigate 0.16 Beta docs.
The relevant section of my Frigate configuration file can be found here.
Make sure the Frigate Home Assistant integration is also configured, it is needed for Advanced Camera Card.
Note Support for making this work without Frigate is being tracked here. It can already be done (Advanced Camera Card supports arbitrary go2rtc URLs), but you would need to protect and expose your go2rtc server to the world, which is not ideal.
go2rtc runs inside Frigate 0.16 Beta in this setup. The go2rtc configuration is part of the Frigate configuration itself. 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 /addon_configs/ccab4aaf_frigate-beta/fix_vto_codecs.sh. Make sure it has execution permission with chmod +x /addon_configs/ccab4aaf_frigate-beta/fix_vto_codecs.sh, otherwise go2rtc will not be able to execute it.
Note
The script provides a --https flag in case your VTO has HTTPS enabled. Mine doesn't.
Important
Some VTOs like VTO2211G-WP do not support PCMA with 16000Hz (which yields better audio quality). If that is your case, try changing to 8000Hz in the fix_vto_codecs.sh:
- query+="&Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Audio.Frequency=16000"
+ query+="&Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Audio.Frequency=8000"The code for my dashboard with the Advanced Camera 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.
Important
It is mandatory that you access your Home Assistant through HTTPS for microphone to work. This is a browser restriction for allowing websites to use your microphone.
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, which is used to cancel the VTO call and to unlock the door.
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.
Its 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 Advanced Camera Card.
You will need to create two input_booleans as well. In my automations they are named input_boolean.doorbell_calling (suggested icon is mdi:phone) 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:
- action: mobile_app_phone_a
- action: mobile_app_phone_b
- name: all_tvs
platform: group
services:
- action: kitchen_tv
- action: bedroom_tv