PiBell - The Raspberry Pi controlled doorbell

Actually, once you have a Raspberry Pi that is always running, you can use it for much more then just controlling your doorbell. You can also use the Raspberry Pi to provide numerous web services for you. At the moment, I have configured my RaspBerry Pi as: An OpenVPN server. which I use for secure connections on public WiFi-hotspots A network-wide ad-blocker using Pi-hole A reverse proxy through a SSH-tunnel to bypass firewalls (secure enough to by-pass most corporate firewalls, not secure enough to bypass the great firewall of China, because it is easily detectable if deep packet inspection is used). I use this connection mainly for configuring my router remotely, because connections are initiated from the Raspberry Pi within the home network A SSH server with passwordless access using RSA keys And of course the Raspberry Pi still controls my doorbell In later posts I will explain how I installed and configured most of the applications above. But, the conclusion is... A Ras

As promised, here are some pictures of the Raspberry Pi in my meter cupboard. On the left you see the Raspberry Pi, in the middle the relays, and on the right the fuse box. On the picture below you see the breadboard with a capacitor and some resistors to dampen the jitter from the doorbell button. Later on I'll publish a scheme of how I connected the breadboard.

Okay, I have to be honest. I've started this project already 2 years ago. You probably know how this goes... An interesting project... Things start working... Other thing in life start requiring time... Project goes to the fridge... And you're 2 years older before you know it! But now is the time to get the project out of the fridge again! The positive thing about the delay is that the Raspberry Pi is already controlling my doorbell for 2 years without any issues. So I know my electrical layout is working, and the (25 lines of ;-) source code are stable. But wait, what then is exactly working? Good question! Basically my doorbell functions as any other doorbell, except for the fact that when the doorbell button is pushed, the signal actually goes to some IO-ports on the Raspberry Pi. The PiBell software on the Raspberry Pi receives an event, and it activates a relay switch that triggers my actual bell. So I still have to write software for sending and receiving messages b

This blog describes my DIY project to create a Raspberry Pi controlled doorbell. The idea for this project came when my wife put a lot of effort in putting our children to bed for their afternoon rest, and a delivery man rang the doorbell asking us to accept a package for our neighbors. Result, two kids wide awake again. So, the vision is to create an Android mobile phone controlled doorbell. If the bell is rang, it should ring normally, and/or push a notification to our Android phones. Via our phones we should be able to controll the output of the bell, ring normally, ring normally and send a message to our phones, be silent and send a message to our phones or be completely silent.