Doorbell setup explained (hard wired doorbell)

Other Devices & Integrations Lighting & Load Control
#1

I finally got around to completing my first doorbell rig. This one assumes a standard wired doorbell is in place. I have a wireless doorbell that I will do this with as well. Once I have that done I’ll post the build for that too.

I got the idea for this from this thread on the homeseer board [url=http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=148558]Homemanageables HM-DW001 for doorbell - HomeSeer Message Board. Not all of my questions were answered in that thread so I wanted to post an end-to-end solution here to help Vera users.

Parts you need to gather up:

[ol][li]ELK-930[/li]
[li]ELK-960[/li]
[li]Everspring Zwave door/window sensor[/li]
[li]16-18 gauge wire[/li]
[li]1N4004 Micro 1-Amp Rectifier Diode (radio shack is cheap and simple for these)[/li]
[li]12v wall wart (pretty much anything you have lying around - I used an old Netgear 12V 1AMP)[/li]
[li]Plastic project box[/li]
[li]heat shrink tube of the correct size for the wire you choose[/li]
[li]solder[/li]
[li]Two sided foam tape[/li][/ol]

Tools needed:

[ol][li]small standard screwdriver[/li]
[li]wire stripper[/li]
[li]soldering iron[/li]
[li]drill with 3/8 drill bit[/li][/ol]

Once you assemble things as shown in the diagram and photos, you’ll need to add the sensor to your Vera and then create a scene with a trigger to take whatever action you want.

Attached are photos of the assembly and the schematic. Since I’m limited to four attachments, I’ll add the rest to additional comments.

Hope this helps save some of you some time.

Tom

#2

Additional photos.

#3

Great pics!! Question - what’s the circuit board to the right of the ELK-930 (i.e. the brown circuit board)? Is that the inside of what used to be your wall wart?

Thanks.

#4

Sorry for the delayed reply. Yes, that’s the board from the wall wart.

One additional add-on to all of this, I’ve added a Skybell to the system. Everything plays well together. If the Skybell doesn’t get to your phone, you still get an alert from Vera.

Note on the Skybell. It does not play well with all Wifi AP’s. I run Cisco enterprise stuff and it refused to connect to the Cisco AP. It connected to the Vera3 without any issues though.

#5

Is there something special about your Cisco setup versus your Vera? Hidden SSID, WPA2 vs WEP, 802.1X?

#6

Nothing special with the AP. It’s an 1140 series stand alone running current firmware. The skybell won’t connect irrespective of config on the AP. I tried everything from WEP through WPA2. I opened a case with skybell but it never got past their worthless first level support.

#7

Is the ELK-960 timmer absolutely required? I thought I saw a thread where this same project was done with only the ELK-930 doorbell interface and an Everspring Zwave door/window sensor.

#8

I believe the timer is required based on the research I did prior to putting things together. Feel free to try without it and post the results. Clearly if it works without it, then the cost and hassle goes down.

#9

A quick follow up on the skybell issue. I did a bunch more troubleshooting on this and found that the problem is not with the skybell but with the Zyxel USG50 that I have on this network. I’m using their DHCP server for the few devices that cannot be set to a static IP (like the Skybell). Well it ends up that there’s something munged in their DHCP implementation that the skybell (and a few other devices on my network do not like). The USG will issue the IP but the Skybell won’t accept it. The workaround is to manually reserve the IP after it is issued. Just documenting it here in case anyone else runs into the issue.