A stupid smart doorbell system

A smart doorbell is useful when you are not at home but you want to be notified about when and who rang.

Ideas #

The idea behind my implementation is very naïve: someone rings at the doorbell, a program listening from a microphone pics up the sound and triggers a script. A webcam pointed in front of the door takes a picture which is sent as an email attachment.

Initially I wanted to use a cheap wireless doorbell. The problem is that I have no experience in soldering and I didn’t want to mess things up. However, the idea intreagued me nonetheless.

I had to find another system to get the trigger. The obvious way was to use the existing doorbell system in the house. For this purpose I found a ruby script which uses ALSA and soX to record and examine the sound. If the sound is greater than the set threshold an external script is called. I added an expected frequency range detection check which is useful to avoid some false positives. To do this I first translated the script from ruby to bash.

Hardware tests #

The first thing I did was to try the Raspberry PI 3B plus, with a an unnamed USB webcam which has an integrated microphone. A Logitech USB webcam would take the pictures instead.

The Raspberry was connected via Ethernet. Unfortunately the single board computer suffers from USB bandwidth problems since the 4 USBs ports and the Ethernet socket are all shared as part of a single hub. Just in case I also tried using a powered 7 port USB hub. The results were the following:

Error starting stream. VIDIOC_STREAMON: Connection timed out
VIDIOC_DQBUF: Invalid argument
Capturing 1 frames...
VIDIOC_DQBUF: Invalid argument
No frames captured.

What follows is part of the output from $ lsusb concerning the previously cited webcam.

ID 0c76:1600 JMTek, LLC. Ion Quick Play LP turntable
ID 1871:0306 Aveo Technology Corp.

Even using the integrated WiFi card, which is not connected to the USB hub, didn’t solve the problem. I had to use a proper computer…

With an old IBM Thinkpad everything seemed to work fine so I decided to add another feature. Using the same unnamed webcam and the software motion it is possible to detect movement. I tried to use that to know when and who passes through the front door. Just like before, there were problems with the USB bandwidth. A cause of this might be that the computer has USB version 1.1 ports. I had slightly better improvements when I passed from a USB microphone to an analog one and changed the original webcam to an

  ID 058f:3880 Alcor Micro Corp.

But the bandwidth was still not enough, so I had to settle for a simple doorbell system for the moment.

Ingredients #

What follows are a couple of tables of all the hardware and software ingredients I used.

Hardware #

Software #

Scripts #

What follows are the two scripts I used, called listen.sh and shoot.sh respectively.

#!/bin/bash
#
# listen.sh
#
# Copyright (C) 2009 Thomer M. Gil [http://thomer.com/]
#               2018 Franco Masotti
#
# Oct  22, 2009: Initial version
# Oct  29, 2018: Translation from ruby to bash. Added expected frequency range.
#
# This program is free software. You may distribute it under the terms of
# the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
# Foundation, version 2.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General
# Public License for more details.
#
# This program detects the presence of sound and invokes a program.
#

# You need to replace MICROPHONE with the name of your microphone, as reported
# by /proc/asound/cards.
MICROPHONE='I82801CAICH3'
# Sampling format of the audio card.
FORMAT='S16_LE'
THRESHOLD='0.30'
# Expected frequencies in Hz.
EXPECTED_FREQ_MIN='600'
EXPECTED_FREQ_MAX='1250'
# Sample gathering in seconds.
SAMPLE_DURATION='3'
SCRIPT_FULL_PATH="/home/doorbell/srv_maint/scripts/doorbell/shoot.sh"

HWDEVICE="$(cat /proc/asound/cards | grep "${MICROPHONE}" | awk '{print $1}')"
while true; do
  out="$(/usr/bin/arecord -D plughw:"${HWDEVICE}",0 -d "${SAMPLE_DURATION}" \
    -f "${FORMAT}" 2>/dev/null | /usr/bin/sox -t .wav - -n stat 2>&1)"
  # As you can see, no regex are used here -> this might fail.
  amplitude="$(echo "${out}" | grep 'Maximum amplitude' | awk '{print $3}')"
  frequency="$(echo "${out}" | grep 'Rough   frequency' | awk '{print $3}')"
  if [ "$(echo ""${amplitude}">="${THRESHOLD}"" | bc -l)" -eq 1 ]; then
        if [ "$(echo ""${frequency}">="${EXPECTED_FREQ_MIN}"" | bc -l)" -eq 1 ] \
        && [ "$(echo ""${frequency}"<="${EXPECTED_FREQ_MAX}"" | bc -l)" -eq 1 ]; then
                echo "match: f=${frequency} Hz; a=${amplitude}"
                ${SCRIPT_FULL_PATH}
        else
                echo "no match: f=${frequency} Hz; a=${amplitude}"
        fi
  else
        echo "no match: a=${amplitude}"
  fi
done

#!/bin/bash
#
# shoot.sh
#
# Copyright (C) 2018 Franco Masotti
#
# Oct  29, 2018: Initial version.
#
# This program is free software. You may distribute it under the terms of
# the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
# Foundation, version 2.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General
# Public License for more details.
#
# This program takes a picture and sends it via mail.
#

BASE_DIR="/home/doorbell/srv_maint/scripts/doorbell"
PICTURE_FILE="/var/www/doorbell.jpg"
MESSAGE="event: $(date +"%F %T")"
CAMERA="/dev/video0"
RESOLUTION="640x480"
CAPTURE_FRAMES="1"
SKIP_FRAMES="50"
BRIGHTNESS="100%"
CONTRAST="100%"
LOG_FILE="/var/log/doorbell.log"
MAIL_SUBJECT="doorbell"
MAIL_SENDER="Home"
MAIL_RECEIVER_ALIAS="all"


pushd "${BASE_DIR}"

fswebcam \
        --set brightness="${BRIGHTNESS}" \
        --set contrast="${CONTRAST}" \
        -r "${RESOLUTION}" \
        -R \
        --font 'dejavu:10' \
        -S "${SKIP_FRAMES}" \
        -F "${CAPTURE_FRAMES}" \
        -d v4l2:"${CAMERA}" "${PICTURE_FILE}" &
pid="$!"

# Below: put generic commands.
# Speak out.
espeak -s 125 -v it "Doorbell" &
# Keep a log file.
echo "${MESSAGE}" >> "${LOG_FILE}" &

# Wait for the picture to be taken.
wait "${pid}"

# Below: put commands which need the photo as dependency.
echo "${MESSAGE}" | mail \
-r "${MAIL_SENDER}" \
-s "${MAIL_SUBJECT}" \
-a "${PICTURE_FILE}" \
"${MAIL_RECEIVER_ALIAS}" &

popd

Instructions #

Installation #

• Configure the network in /etc/network/interfaces

• Install the software

# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade
# apt-get install alsa-utils fswebcam openssh ntp s-nail msmtp sox bc alsa-utils bash espeak haveged webfs

• Add a user and its password

# useradd -U -m -s /bin/bash doorbell
# passwd doorbell
# exit

• Login with the newly created user and copy the scripts

$ mkdir ~/srv_maint/scripts/doorbell
$ cp listen.sh shoot.sh ~/srv_maint/scripts/doorbell

• Add a cron entry so that the scripts runs automatically at every boot.

$ echo "@reboot /home/doorbell/srv_maint/scripts/doorbell/listen.sh" > ~/srv_maint/cron_entries.txt
$ crontab ~/srv_maint/cron_entries.txt

• Touch and prepare the log file

# touch /var/log/doorbell.log
# chown doorbell:doorbell /var/log/doorbell.log

• Configure the mail system. See this also.

• Configure webfs in /etc/webfsd.conf. Once everything is set up you may run the shoot.sh script and $ wget http://<doorbell_computer_address>/doorbell.jpg

# debian config file for webfsd.  It is read by the start/stop script.

# document root
web_root="/var/www"

# hostname (default to the fqdn)
web_host=""

# ip address to bind to (default: any)
web_ip=""

# port to listen on (default: 8000)
web_port="80"

# virtual host support (default: false)
web_virtual="false"

# network timeout (default: 60 seconds)
web_timeout=""

# number of parallel connections (default: 32)
web_conn=""

# index file for directories (default: none, webfsd will send listings)
web_index=""

# size of the directory cache (default: 128)
web_dircache=""

# access log (common log format, default: none)
web_accesslog=""

# use bufferred logging (default: true)
web_logbuffering="true"

# write start/stop/errors to the syslog (default: false)
web_syslog="false"

# user/group to use
web_user="www-data"
web_group="www-data"

# cgi path (below document root -- default: none)
web_cgipath=""

# extra options, including arguments
web_extras=""

Calibration #

• Use $ alsamixer to set the audio levels. The hardest part was finding a working interval for the amplitude and frequency values through which the script is able to avoid as much false positives as possible.
• Fix the desired audio level for the next reboots

# alsactl store

Possible roadmap #

• Version 0.0: this version.
• Version 0.1: discontinue the Thinkpad A31 and use the Raspberry PI instead with an (full HD?) IR camera module and its extension cord to reach out of the door. This should free the USB hub that we must use for the audio trigger (a usb microphone or USB audio card connected to the analog microphone).
• Version 0.2: instead of using an audio trigger, use some kind of sensor. Our doorbell transforms the electrical current to piston movement against two metal bars that vibrate at a certain frequency, which in turn produce sound. This new yet unkown method should always be reliable and avoid any false positive.
• Version 0.3: add an open-close door sensor which interfaces to the GPIO. Use a USB camera once this trigger activates.
• Version 0.4: adapt all this stuff so that it works with something like Home Assistant or Kalliope.

~