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Axxess Door Bell Hack?


cdepaola

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Anyone have an Axxess Door Bell and either opened it up or tried to hack it? What do I mean? 

Well I had a thought that I want to keep my current door bell button but would like it to be integrated better, or easier, then the Elk 930 allows.  So I'd like to run the door bell buttons to the Axxess door bell button, similarly to how we wire up to a garage door opener, so when someone pushes the regular door button it activates the Axxess button.   This would allow for easy integration into C4 and the ability to deactivate the standard doorbell chime or place it on a schedule. 

 

 

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49 minutes ago, cdepaola said:

Anyone have an Axxess Door Bell and either opened it up or tried to hack it? What do I mean? 

Well I had a thought that I want to keep my current door bell button but would like it to be integrated better, or easier, then the Elk 930 allows.  So I'd like to run the door bell buttons to the Axxess door bell button, similarly to how we wire up to a garage door opener, so when someone pushes the regular door button is activates the Axxess button.   This would allow for easy integration into C4 and the ability to deactivate the standard doorbell chime or place it on a schedule. 

 

 

Not sure I follow?

If you want to keep the current doorbell button, but integrate it with C4 - all you need to do is connect it to a contact sensor.

You want to be able to 'schedule' the chime, you can go about that two way - either take complete control of the chime http://axxind.com/automation/chime-relay/

Or simply create an override in the chime. What I mean by that is keep what you have, but add a relay on one leg of the wires to the chime, allowing you to open that relay and disable the chime.

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Power and getting wire back to the equipment room from the doorbell is the issue....  I've got an Axxess Contact/Relay Sensor just sitting around but it obviously needs power or I need to be able to run wire from the door bell to it in the equipment room both of which would be very difficult at best. 

Thought was the doorbell button is battery powered and could be installed above the ceiling right where the doorbell wire comes down, I'd then use the Axxess Chime Relay as well. 

Am I crazy?

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1 hour ago, cdepaola said:

Power and getting wire back to the equipment room from the doorbell is the issue....  I've got an Axxess Contact/Relay Sensor just sitting around but it obviously needs power or I need to be able to run wire from the door bell to it in the equipment room both of which would be very difficult at best. 

Thought was the doorbell button is battery powered and could be installed above the ceiling right where the doorbell wire comes down, I'd then use the Axxess Chime Relay as well. 

Am I crazy?

No not crazy. But here's what you presumably have now. If that is in fact correct, you're just making things more complex than needed.

A doorbell wired to to a transformer (often at you electrical panel) - plus a wire from your chime to the same transformer. That transformer....has power.

So, using an Axxess contact/relay combo unit, you'd simply place it in between the doorbell and the transformer, wire going to doorbell from transformer/chime now goes to a relay, doorbell goes to the sensor. Now doorell triggers C4, C4 triggers chime.

 

Now, if there was never a doorbell wired, that's a whole different matter.

You also hint that you may have an ELK 930 now. If so, all you'd need to do is put an extra relay on one leg as mentioned, allowing you to add an override. Again, this would be done right behing the transformer powering the Chime, so there will be power..

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I went down the road of adding a relay to toggle the chime on/off for those times when the kids were sleeping (when they were babies). Be prepared for a little bit of work. I had to add a resistor and what not to still get the elk to fire. The elk looks for the power draw of the chime to recognize he Doorbell fired. You'll need to create that some other way. Maybe a second chime with the actual chime/plate removed would have been easier.

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Proof of concept worked, now to do some small soldering.  Wish I had steady hands or one of y'all with steady hands lived around Chicago.

 

I was in Chicago Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. I'll be out there again at least twice in January.

I know we've said this a couple of times, but we really need to get a beer!

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Progress Report:

Impressions of Axxess Doorbell Button: The aesthetics of the button are poor at best, and I wouldn't suggest this for a front door application. The button and housing are made of cheap plastic I'm more accustom to seeing on a McDonald's happy meal toy. I'll attach some photos in case anyone now or later wants to know what this looks like to evaluate it for their application. 

However it functions well so in the right location or if you use it as I'm doing then its a great piece and I'd have no qualms about it. 

So I attempted to do the soldering but it is not my strong point as I have fairly shaky hands and this is fairly small work. When I find someone who can help me with this I will get this done.  However in the meantime the doorbell has two contact sensors built in and comes with a wire harness for one. I've attached this contact sensor to the doorbell and viola, doorbell is integrated into my C4 system. Going this route you lose double and triple tap capabilities, not a deal breaker for me but I will still be doing the solder job to gain this function back. 

Now to try out the Chime Relay. 

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7 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

I just installed a ring...

Going to use it with the IFTTT driver?  Let us know your impressions and how well it works that way.  

I most likely will also be going the route of Ring as long as the IFTTT channel and integration works well and I can accomplish things I want like schedules. 

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6 minutes ago, cdepaola said:

Going to use it with the IFTTT driver?  Let us know your impressions and how well it works that way.  

I most likely will also be going the route of Ring as long as the IFTTT channel and integration works well and I can accomplish things I want like schedules. 

nope, got some other plans....

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As for the axxess doorbell, you can still program a triple tap or even a 20 tap if you wanted. We will call it old school C4 programming.

The contact sensor on the axxess doorbell is sensitive. In fact I believe it could sense 5-8 taps per second. If I understand correctly, you have attached your existing doorbell button to the contact sensor input on axxess device. And then programmed a doorbell driver to trigger an event when pressed. And that the contact sensor in bound to generic C4 doorbell driver.

With a variable and a timer, you can create a tap sequence.

Under agents, Create a number variable called doorbell.

Under agents, create a timer called doorbell tap and set it timer for 1500ms is a good amount of time. A bit of tweaking on this value may be needed depending on how many times you want to tap. And how long you want C4 to wait to trigger command given.

Under programming, find the doorbell, select when doorbell pressed.

On actions side, select variable doorbell. Then select +1 variable and drop the green arrow. Into center of screen. Next select timer doorbell tap on right and start timer. Drop that green arrow into center of screen. Should read.

When doorbell is pressed

->set variable doorbell to +1

->start timer doorbell tap

Next, on the left side scroll down to timers.

Select doorbell tap timer and then "when timer expires" and then on right select variable doorbell and then go to conditionals tab and select variable =1 and drop that ? Into center.

And repeat for =2 and =3 and so on.

Next go to actions tab on right for variable, and select set variable to =0 and drop that green arrow into center.

When timer expires

?if variable doorbell equal to 1

->play "doorbell announcement"

?if variable doorbell equal to 2

->toggle front entry light

->toggle front entry light

->toggle front entry light

->toggle front entry light

?if variable doorbell equal to 3

->open "garage door"

-> set variable doorbell to 0

Now place events under each number.

Single press within 1.5 seconds will yield doorbell announcement. Or of course trigger the axxess doorbell chime.

Tap tap within 1.5 seconds will yield the front porch light to flash twice.

Tap tap tap will yield the garage door opening.

Hope this makes sense and that you or anyone else can make use of this rough guide. You can use this on an trigger within control4 environment like the door sensor opens 5 times within a 2 hour timer to send an email alert or motion triggered 10 times within 1 hour and so on.

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OP, any luck getting the axxess doorbell to work the way that you wanted it to?

Happy Automating!

I was able to get it working exactly as I had hoped and wanted. I think it's application is only useful in a handful of situations but at my home it made getting a standard doorbell integrated into c4 far easier and cost effective then any other option.

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