Door Bird doorbell camera

[Ira]

Recently researching doorbell cameras (Ring, SkyBell, etc.) and came across the "Door Bird". More expensive than the others (a lot more for some models), but a lot more options for integration with both hardware and software. Dry contacts for signaling something like an Elk M1G, open API for integrating wth CQC, etc. Also supports wired (as well as wireless) network connection.

Any comments on how this could be integrated with CQC? I'm mostly interested in whether or not CQC could "control" the video stream.

https://www.doorbird.com

Regards,
Ira

[Dean Roddey]

If it puts out a video stream that can be accessed in one of the usual sorts of ways, the new web camera widget should work with it. I didn't see anything about what the form of the video is. If it's an RTSP stream or some sort of HTTP streaming, then probably it can be supported. We just need to know what it is.

[Dean Roddey]

Doesn't sound too great looking at the API. Each of their devices only supports one connection at a time. If anyone connects using their app, it gets precedence and the API connection is dropped while the application is running. That would seem to me to make it fairly useless since most folks would want to use both if they are integrating it.

[znelbok]

Live video request
rtsp://<device-ip>:<device-rtsp-port>/mpeg/media.amp

[Dean Roddey]

BTW, the same thing applies to the video feeds as I understood it from reading the document. If someone brings up the app somewhere, you'd lose the video feed, because it only makes one available and the app gets precedence.

[DaveB]

BTW, the same thing applies to the video feeds as I understood it from reading the document. If someone brings up the app somewhere, you'd lose the video feed, because it only makes one available and the app gets precedence.

Most cameras that support RTSP work that way as they can only support one Hi Def stream at a time.  Only the higher end cameras can support multi streaming.  out of four cameras that I have installed in my home, only one supports multi streaming.  If I open the stream in the naitive app, the app grabs the camera, but then releases it when I close the app.

[znelbok]

But at least it is there. If you use something like BlueIris you can include the door camera into your system and then have CQC hook into the BI structure and show the image from that.

Do you really need the app if you are using CQC? The door release etc can be done via the API but what can you do only in the app and not with CQC.

SIP functionality is also there which is good (Beta at the moment) so any SIP soft-phone/PBX should work with it.

[Dean Roddey]

I was just assuming that most folks, being app-happy, would want to use one on a regular basis.

[Ira]

It's hard to say exactly how we would use it since it would be our first attempt at using something like this. The main use would be to use the video stream to know when it's okay to ignore someone at the front entry (e.g., door-to-door salesman). In this case, no need for 2-way communications. The next most important use is to be able to keep a video history of front entry activity. Again, no need for communications for this. Finally, I would like the ability to see who is at the front entry when we are away from the home. To be able to communicate with someone at the door in this scenario may be a benefit.

If we can do the first two things with CQC, Elk M1G, etc., and only use the app when we actually want to talk to the person at the door without going to the door, that would probably be sufficient. I wonder what happens when two people try to use the app for the same Door Bird simultaneously.

[batwater]

I use a standard surveillance camera hooked into BlueIris. No issue with multiple connections to the camera as we connect to the BlueIris server instead of directly to individual cameras. BI also has native Android and iOS clients