A wifi-connected raspberry pi doorbell with video chat
Github repository for the Smart Doorbell Hackershack video
This project was run on a Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian Buster. The video call wasn't as smooth as I would've liked, so it would probably be better to run this on a Pi 4. However, I haven't run this on the Pi 4, so I can't guarantee that it works.
Enable the camera with raspi-config
In the terminal, type:
sudo raspi-config
Navigate to Interfacing Options
Navigate to camera
Select yes and reboot
Test that the camera is working by running the following command in the terminal to save an image to your home directory
sudo raspistill -o test.jpg
Open the sound input settings
alsamixer -c l
Press F4 to open the capture settings and bump the level up to 100. Press Esc to exit.
Test the audio capture with the following command:
arecord --device=hw:1,0 --format S16_LE --rate 44100 -c1 test.wav -V mono
press control-c to stop. It will generate a audio file in your local directory called test.wav
You can play the file with
aplay test.wav
Store the settings so that they persist on reboot
sudo alsactl store
Visit Jitsi Meet and configure the site to use your camera/microphone
My settings were:
Camera: mmal service 16.1
Microphone: USB PnP Sound Device, USB Audio-Default Audio Device
I navigated to the repo from my Raspberry Pi in the browser and clicked "Download Zip". I extracted the package to my home directory and them moved the doorbell.py file to /home/pi/doorbell.py.
You can test that the program works by running
python doorbell.py
from /home/pi.
To edit the file, install vim and open the file
apt-get install vim
vim doorbell.py
press, i to enter edit mode then make your changes. To exit, press esc then upper-case ZZ to save.
The variables for the code are documented at the top. Feel free to change any of these for your program.
Open the boot.txt file with vim
sudo vim /boot/config.txt
press i to enter insert mode then add a line
display_rotate=1
press esc then ZZ to save and exit. Reboot.
Create a autostart directory
mkdir /home/pi/.config/autostart
Create a file to run the doorbell program
vim /home/pi/.config/autostart/doorbell.desktop
press i, then add the following to the file
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Doorbell
Exec=python /home/pi/doorbell
press esc and ZZ to save and exit.
*WARNING: This will make your local display unusable. Make sure you have a way to connect to the pi through VNC or SSH to remove this file if you want to stop the program from starting at boot.
Reboot.
If you have any issues getting the doorbell to start, please leave an issue on this repository and the community will help you get it working.