Doorbell Card · homeassistant-fe-doorbell

Turn a Reolink video doorbell that lives behind a Reolink NVR/hub into a full two‑way intercom on a Home Assistant dashboard. Home Assistant's reolink integration can see that doorbell but cannot speak through it — this repo fixes that with a single self‑contained Lovelace card: listen to the visitor, talk back, fire multilingual quick replies, or speak any typed message — all played out at the door.

Front door	Quick replies	Per‑user settings	Entity mapper
Live camera (tap to listen), status, talk	One‑tap replies, expandable	Each user edits their own replies + language	Map your entities in the UI

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Why this is hard (and what it solves)

Reolink cameras behind an NVR don't expose RTSP/ONVIF two‑way audio — they speak only Reolink's proprietary Baichuan control protocol. That's why Home Assistant's reolink integration can read battery, visitor and sleep state but can not do doorbell talk.

The fix is Neolink, an open‑source Baichuan bridge — but a bug stopped it working with battery doorbells. The Reolink Video Doorbell advertises two <audioStreamMode> values in its TalkAbility response, and stock Neolink's parser rejected the duplicate field and reported "camera does not support talk." This project bundles a patched Neolink that accepts multiple audioStreamMode entries (submitted upstream as QuantumEntangledAndy/neolink#415, fixing issue #371).

Talk is relayed through the NVR channel over control‑plane Baichuan, and the NVR wakes the sleeping battery doorbell so audio actually reaches the speaker. Listening uses the camera's live stream over WebRTC (go2rtc) for real‑time, low‑latency audio.

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Features

• One self‑contained card — custom:doorbell-card. Shadow DOM, zero runtime dependencies, no external fonts.
• Listen — tap the camera for a real‑time WebRTC live view with sound (one speaker‑tap to enable audio on iOS, which blocks autoplay sound).
• Hold‑to‑talk — records your voice and plays it at the door.
• Quick replies — one‑tap phrases, spoken via Home Assistant Cloud TTS in the selected language.
• Custom message — type anything and have it spoken at the door.
• Per‑user Settings gear — every household member (no admin rights) can add/edit/remove their own replies and pick their own language; saved per‑user.
• Live‑by‑default — auto‑shows the live view when someone's at the door, and the snapshot when nobody's there (kind to the battery doorbell).
• Multilingual — English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish out of the box.
• Visual editor — map your entities, default language and theme from the dashboard UI (no YAML).
• Theme‑aware — follows Home Assistant's light/dark automatically.

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How it works

flowchart LR
  U([You / any household user]) -->|quick reply · type · hold-to-talk| Card[doorbell-card]
  Card -->|TTS mp3 / recording| Q["/config/addons/talk_queue<br/>(shared folder)"]
  Q --> D[Neolink talk-daemon<br/>add-on]
  D -->|Baichuan talk · channel_id| NVR[(Reolink NVR)]
  NVR -->|wakes + relays| SPK[Doorbell speaker]

  Card -.->|tap camera to listen| GO[go2rtc · HA stream]
  NVR -.->|live video + audio| GO
  GO -.->|WebRTC real-time| Card

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Talk (solid path): the card writes a Cloud‑TTS clip or your recording into a shared queue folder; the add‑on's daemon plays it to the doorbell with neolink talk over Baichuan, through the NVR channel. Listen (dotted path): the doorbell's live video + audio is delivered to the card over WebRTC for real‑time monitoring.

The talk backchannel is exclusive — while the add‑on is talking, the Reolink app can't talk through that camera at the same moment.

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Components

Everything ships in this repo:

Component	Path	Role
Card	doorbell-card.js, dist/, src/	The custom:doorbell-card Lovelace element + visual editor.
HA package	homeassistant/packages/doorbell_talk.yaml	Helpers, three shell_commands, and the quick‑reply scripts.
Add‑on	addon/	The Neolink talk daemon. Multi‑stage Dockerfile builds the patched Neolink; run.sh watches the queue and plays audio.
Cloud TTS	addon/tts_say.py → /config/tts_say.py	Speaks the custom message in the selected language via HA Cloud TTS.
Phrases	homeassistant/phrases.json + scripts/generate-phrases.sh	Optional pre‑baked WAVs per language (the card uses live Cloud TTS by default).

Gotcha worth knowing: HA shell_command templates only support simple {{ var }} substitution. The language → folder lookup is done in the script's data:, never inline in the command — a {% set %} inside a shell_command raises UndefinedError.

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Configuration

Add the card to a Panel / single‑card view. Every option is optional; the defaults below match a Reolink Video Doorbell behind an NVR with the package installed. Entity names, default language and theme can also be set from the card's visual editor (no YAML — see the "Entity mapper" screenshot above), and each user customises their own replies/language from the in‑card Settings gear.

type: custom:doorbell-card
camera: camera.reolink_video_doorbell_fluent
battery: sensor.reolink_video_doorbell_battery
visitor: binary_sensor.reolink_video_doorbell_visitor
sleep: binary_sensor.reolink_video_doorbell_sleep_status
person: binary_sensor.reolink_video_doorbell_person   # used for "live-by-default"
snooze: input_boolean.doorbell_snooze
language: input_select.doorbell_language
message: input_text.doorbell_custom_message
siren: siren.reolink_video_doorbell_siren
default_language: English   # spoken language (or set per-user from the gear)
auto_live: true             # auto-show live when visitor/person present
theme: auto                 # auto | light | dark
# Optional shared defaults. Each user can override these from the Settings gear.
replies:
  - name: Be right there        # button label
    phrases:                    # spoken text, per language
      en: "I'll be right there."
      nl: "Ik kom er zo aan."
  - name: Door is open
    phrases:
      en: "The door is open."

Option	Default	Notes
camera	camera.reolink_video_doorbell_fluent	Snapshot + tap‑to‑listen WebRTC stream.
battery / visitor / sleep	reolink doorbell entities	Status row.
person	binary_sensor.reolink_video_doorbell_person	Triggers live‑by‑default.
snooze	input_boolean.doorbell_snooze	Optional snooze toggle (status chip).
language / message	input_select / input_text	TTS language + custom‑message field.
siren	siren.reolink_video_doorbell_siren	The dedicated Siren button.
default_language	English	Active spoken language (per‑user gear overrides).
auto_live	true	Live when someone's there, snapshot otherwise.
theme	auto	auto follows HA dark mode; pin with light / dark.
replies	built‑ins	Shared defaults; each user edits their own in the gear.

Reply options: name (button label) + optional icon (mdi SVG path), then either phrases (language‑code → spoken text) or service (domain.service with optional target).

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Install (summary)

Prerequisites: Home Assistant OS / Supervised (for add‑ons), the Reolink integration configured, Home Assistant Cloud (Nabu Casa) for TTS, HACS for the card, a Reolink NVR/hub with the doorbell on a known channel, and SSH access to the HA host.

1. Card — install via HACS (badge above), or add /local/doorbell-card.js as a JavaScript‑module dashboard resource.
2. Package — copy homeassistant/packages/doorbell_talk.yaml to <config>/packages/, enable packages, and restart HA.
3. Add‑on — add this repo as an add‑on repository (or build locally) and create <config>/addons/neolink.toml from addon/neolink.toml.example (NVR IP:mediaPort, channel_id, credentials).
4. TTS bridge — drop tts_say.py at /config/tts_say.py and a long‑lived token at /config/.ha_token (chmod 600).
5. Dashboard — create a Panel view with one custom:doorbell-card.
6. (Optional) run scripts/generate-phrases.sh for pre‑baked phrase WAVs.

Microphone needs HTTPS. Browsers (and the HA app's webview) only allow the mic over a secure origin — open Home Assistant via your Nabu Casa URL for hold‑to‑talk.

Full step‑by‑step instructions: docs/INSTALL.md.

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Credits

• Neolink by QuantumEntangledAndy — the open‑source Baichuan bridge that makes any of this possible.
• The bundled TalkAbility fix for dual‑audioStreamMode battery doorbells, submitted upstream as neolink#415 (resolving issue #371).
• Sibling project to homeassistant-fe-tesla — same conventions: a self‑contained card, HACS plugin, zero runtime dependencies.

Built by David Shaw (ds2000). If it saved you an afternoon, buy me a coffee ☕.

License

MIT © David Shaw.