One Box To Rule Them All: Announce ReoLink Doorbell on Echo Devices

I recently installed a Reolink POE Video Doorbell, and like it a lot. Its got great picture, doesn't require web connectivity, and integrates really well with my Unraid.html">Blue Iris set up

. The only issue I have is that notifications on my mobile are poor and often missed. The bundled chime works OK inside the house, but when I'm in my detached office, I can often miss visitors.

I thought it would be nice to have the doorbell ping my office Alexa when pressed. Of course, there's a skill for that, but as someone with a penchant for Node-Red automations and too much time on my hands, a project was born....

And this is what I came up with. A Node-RED flow that allows me set one or more Echo devices to announce doorbell presses;

Sure, the native skill does something similar, with extra bells and whistles, but I like this because;

The included Echo devices can be specified on or off by voice
I can easily configure the notification sound and string
I can name the command whatever I like
It works on devices with or without screens
I made it, and learned a lot in doing so
~~Likely works without internet~~ (confirmed not working as Alexa won't even process wake word)

I was inspired to undertake this project having seen this solution by u/Loafdude in this Reddit post where notifications are sent to Google Home / Nest. I adapted that for Alexa, and added the ability to configure individual Echo devices to be included in the broadcast.

Here's the flow. The code is included at the bottom of the page.

This works chiefly by utilising the amazon-echo-device node from node-red-contrib-local-alexa-devices. This allows for a device odes to be set up in Node-RED that can be discovered and therefore addressed by Alexa.

These nodes manifest as lights in the Alexa app, and can therefore accept on and off commands, as well as dim requests and a few others. The neat thing is that these works like regular smarthome devices, and I can use nodes from node-red-contrib-alexa-remote2-applestrudel to interact with it from within Node-RED.

There are two main parts to this flow;

MANAGE REOLINK EVENTS

This uses part of the original google-focused solution to listen for OnVif events, filter out 'Visitor' messages that are generated from a bell press and then push voice notifications to the user selected Echo devices.

When a request is made through Alexa to switch Doorbell Alerts on or off, this information is stored in a context flow, (see next secion). The config anouncement for 'on' devices function iterates through this object and prepares a payload for the Alexa Routine nodes that determines to which Echo devices announcements are made. Line 27 of the function is where the spoken string is configured, and can be changed as preferred.

I elected to send both a sound effect and spoken phrase as I found it a little odd to have Alexa just pipe up out of the blue. The 3s delay before the spoken part is necessary to allow time for the effect to play and complete.

MANAGE ALEXA EVENTS

This part of the flow deals with Alexa device setup and command management.

Here I set up two devices named Doorbell Alert and Doorbell Alerts. I have a poor memory for infrequently used Alexa commands, and she is fussy about accuracy so I found this gives me more flexibility. You ca see here that, once discovered, these show up in the app as normal lights;

When deploying this flow for the first time, it's necessary to use the Alexa app to discover these devices. Otherwise they won't respond to commands.

Thereafter, the phrase 'Alexa, turn [on / off ] Doorbell Alerts' will trigger this part of the flow. If you want to use this flow yourself, but need to change these device names, note that after a change, its necessary to re-discover these devices in the Alexa app, and likely delete the old ones, if previously discovered.

The next part of this flow was the most tricky. The incoming payload generated from the user utterance contains a deviceID, but this cannot be used to address return spoken phrases back to the Echo. The Echo device name is required.

Therefore, it's necessary to use the Alexa Other node to get a list of recent Echo activity. This object contains details of up to 20 recent conversations with any Alexa device on the network. The Get Device Name of most recent Doorbell request function node then parses this object to find the most recent command that includes the substring 'doorbell alert'. If found, the device name can be retrieved.

This is likely the most vulnerable part of this solution. In a (very!) busy household, there's a risk that the relevant command will disappear from the activity list before it can be processed. Or indeed, if a doorbell alert command is spoken simultaneously into two or more devices, things will likely go awry. The short delay before the Get Activities node is critical as it takes a beat for the command to show in the recent activity list.

If you've changed the names of the device nodes at the start of this flow, it would also be necessary to amend line 11 of the 'Get Device Name of most recent Doorbell request' function to ensure the activity can be identified correctly.

All being well, the device name and current status is added to an array saved to a context variable and a response is composed and sent to the relevant Echo device indicating the notification status.

The Utility Functions section of the flow is just a couple of functions that help with management and debugging.

The list devices trigger will compile a .msg that contains the currently stored list of devices that have registered an interest in receiving alerts along with the current on/off status flag for each.

The DELETE devices trigger will clear this stored list. A reset of sorts.

The flow Doorbell Alerts debug node also lives here, and is connected to other parts of the flow via link nodes.

If you wat to play along at home, please note that this solution has dependencies on the following nodes that should be installed before importing and deploying the flow.

node-red-contrib-onvif
A Node-RED node that interacts with ip cameras using the ONVIF protocol
onvif-events
part of node-red-contrib-onvif-nodes
(Still beta, must be installed manually - see notes on the repository page)
node-red-contrib-local-alexa-devices
Local Alexa Devices
node-red-contrib-alexa-remote2-applestrudel
node-red nodes for interacting with Alexa

This last one is a bit finicky to set up. It's necessary to authenticate your Alexa account the first time you use it. There are instructions on the repository page, but from memory, I seem to recall it being somewhat obtuse. Patience is a virtue here.

Before downloading the flow, if you find this interesting or useful, please do consider buying me a coffee. Every little helps feed my often insatiable tech. appetite!

NB: There's now an updated version of this with some enhancements. Details here.

Anyhow, here's the flow. If you spot ay errors, please do leave a comment and I'll try to address. Thanks for looking!

One Box To Rule Them All

Saturday, 4 November 2023

Announce ReoLink Doorbell on Echo Devices

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