Doorbell
On the Echo Shows.
When someone rings, the device wakes, rings and shows live video with the doorbell’s sound and a microphone button for two-way audio. It supports up to four doorbells. Person, package, vehicle, animal and motion detections show as notifications.
Add a doorbell
Section titled “Add a doorbell”Open Settings → Home control → Doorbell → Add doorbell, or the gear on the Doorbell app. Choose one of three setup methods:
| Home Assistant (Reolink integration) | Doorbells and cameras from Home Assistant’s Reolink integration. Tap Auto setup on one; its camera and its ring, person, package, vehicle and animal sensors are filled in |
| Reolink NVR | Enter the NVR’s address, user and password and tap Connect, then tap a channel. The channel uses ONVIF for video, events and talkback |
| Manual | Enter a name and pick Video; the form then asks for what that video source needs |
A doorbell added with Auto setup uses Home Assistant for its video and its rings, without talkback. To connect to it directly, with talkback, tap it on the Doorbell page, set Video to Reolink and enter its password.
The doorbell’s page
Section titled “The doorbell’s page”Video comes right after the name, and the rows below it follow the choice:
| Video | Rows |
|---|---|
| Reolink | UID, IP address or hostname, user, password and stream |
| ONVIF | IP address or hostname, user, password and stream |
| RTSP | The stream’s RTSP URL, and the user and password if they aren’t in the URL |
| Home Assistant | The Home Assistant camera to show |
- ONVIF finds the camera on the network by itself. If it isn’t found, add the camera’s ONVIF
port to the address (
192.168.1.20:8000) to connect to it directly. - Stream picks the main or sub stream. With ONVIF, main is the camera’s largest stream and sub its smallest.
- Events and Talkback only offer the sources that work with the chosen video.
- When Events is Home Assistant or Automatic, the page also lists the Home Assistant camera and a Ring, Person, Package, Vehicle, Animal and Motion sensor. Each can be any binary sensor in Home Assistant, from any camera brand.
Tap Save to check the doorbell and save it. Not saved says what’s missing, or reports a wrong password, a different doorbell at that address, or a doorbell it can’t reach.
Tap a doorbell on the Doorbell page to change it, see whether its events and video are working, or Remove it.
When someone rings
Section titled “When someone rings”| Setting | Entity | What it does | Choices | Default |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ring style | select.<device>_camera_doorbell_ring_style |
What a ring does | Auto answer, Same as screen, None, Banner, Card, Full screen, Toast | Auto answer |
| Ring sound | select.<device>_camera_doorbell_ring_sound |
Chimes, Ring and custom tones | Ring | |
| Ring for | select.<device>_camera_doorbell_ring_for |
How long the ring sound repeats | Never, 5 s to 5 min | 30 s |
| Keep live view open | select.<device>_camera_doorbell_live_view_open_for |
How long the live view stays open | 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 min | 2 min |
| Notification style | select.<device>_camera_doorbell_notification_style |
How detections appear | Same as screen, None, Banner, Card, Full screen, Toast | Same as screen |
| Notification sound | select.<device>_camera_doorbell_notification_sound |
Chimes and custom tones | Ding | |
| Dashboard tab | switch.<device>_camera_doorbell_dashboard_tab |
A Doorbell tab on the native dashboard | Off |
- Auto answer rings once and opens the live view with the doorbell’s sound on.
- Same as screen uses the Alert style from Alerts & Alarms.
- Banner, Card, Full screen and Toast show “Someone’s at the …” with a picture and a Watch button, while the ring sound repeats for Ring for.
- None shows nothing and plays nothing, but the screen still wakes.
Detections show as “Person at the …”, “Package at the …”, “Vehicle by the …”, “Animal at the …” or “Motion at the …”, in the notification style, for 20 seconds. Motion comes from the doorbell’s own motion detection over Reolink or ONVIF, or from the Motion sensor with Home Assistant events.
Watching and talking
Section titled “Watching and talking”The live view has a speaker button for the doorbell’s sound and a microphone button: tap it to talk, tap again to stop. The doorbell’s sound is muted while you talk. The view closes after Keep live view open.
If the screen can’t play the doorbell’s main stream, it uses the sub stream.
The Doorbell app shows a picture of each doorbell and the recent events; tap one to watch. Recent events are kept until EchoLocal restarts.
Sources
Section titled “Sources”Set the video, event and talkback sources separately on each doorbell’s settings page or in Home Assistant.
| Setting | Entity | Choices |
|---|---|---|
| Video | select.<device>_camera_doorbell_1_video_source |
Reolink, ONVIF, RTSP, Home Assistant |
| Events | select.<device>_camera_doorbell_1_event_source |
Automatic, Reolink, ONVIF, Home Assistant |
| Talkback | select.<device>_camera_doorbell_1_talkback_source |
Automatic, Reolink, ONVIF |
| Name | text.<device>_camera_doorbell_1_name |
The same four entities exist for doorbells 2 to 4.
- Automatic events and talkback are for Reolink video. Events connect to the doorbell and use Home Assistant’s sensors while it can’t be reached; talkback tries Reolink, then ONVIF.
- Home Assistant video opens the doorbell’s Home Assistant camera, with no talkback.
- ONVIF talkback works with doorbells that take G.711 audio, over ONVIF or RTSP video.
Doorbell status (doorbell_status) in Home Assistant says how many doorbells are connected, or
what’s wrong.
Settings → Home control shows the Doorbell page only when home control is on and Allow the device to perform Home Assistant actions is turned on for the device in the ESPHome integration. Without that, open the doorbell settings from the gear on the Doorbell app.