in today's video we're going to be having a look at the uefi 2k
battery-powered video doorbell we're going to be doing a quick unboxing and i'll be sharing
with you my thoughts and opinions on the video doorbell and if you stick around till the end
i'll show you how you can integrate the doorbell into home assistant check it out
what's going on guys i hope you're all doing well okay so let's start this video off with
full transparency i was given this video doorbell unit for free by uefi but i was never paid or even
asked to create this video so everything you see in this video are all my own thoughts and opinions
and you if you won't even see this video until it goes live now this video is not going to be a
full technical review it's going to be more of my first initial thoughts and opinions on using the
device now i've been using it for nearly a week now and out of all the video doorbells i've tested
this one is currently my favorite also it's prime day so if you're interested in this particular
doorbell go ahead and jump on over to amazon and get yourself a discount if you are interested in
seeing an in-depth review for this doorbell make sure you hit that subscribe button and if you ding
dong the notification bell you'll be alerted to whenever that video comes out let's start off by
having a quick look at what this thing is and what it does so as you may have guessed it's a battery
powered 2k video doorbell in addition to getting the doorbell you also get the uefi home base 2.
now the home base 2 access local storage for the video doorbell so any pictures or
photos that the doorbell captures gets stored locally on that home base the doorbell and the
home base connect to each other using a private low-powered wireless connection this supposedly
reduces stun by power consumption by well over half you can connect your doorbell to google
and alexa services to display your camera feed on supported devices alexa show me the doorbell okay
the doorbell also does usual things that other doorbells do like ring when you press the button
it also has human detection and configurable motion detection the motion detection can be set
by sensitivity and you can also record activity zones that let you define areas that you want
to detect motion in you can also use it as an intercom and you can set up pre-recorded messages
the camera also has very good night vision and like other video doorbells
the button glows when motions are detected to allow you to see the button in the dark
okay let's have a look at what we get in the box
uh
so that's everything you get in the box the main thing to take away from that is that you get the
2k video doorbell and also the home base the home base acts as a local and wireless storage medium
for the doorbell so any pictures or video that the doorbell captures will be stored on the home base
so we know what it is and we know what's in the box let's have a look at how we set it up
the setup process for this doorbell is very streamlined the first thing you need to do is
just download the uefi security app once you've got the app opened and you're registered with
eu fee you'll need to set up your home base with the app we'll choose add device and then
we'll select the home base we then just need to plug in the ethernet cable and power cables
with the cables plugged in we just need to wait for the red light on the front to turn blue
it's then going to ask us to scan a qr code which can be found on the bottom of the home base
with that scanned our home base will connect to our network and it will look for any firmware
update these updates will have to be done before you do anything else with the home base updated
we can choose add more devices and select our 2k doorbell the process for adding the doorbell is
done the same you just need to scan the qr code on the bottom of the doorbell you then just need
to follow the remaining steps which are going to involve pressing and holding the sync button
on the back of the doorbell the home base will then play a little tune which will connect it to
the doorbell and once that doorbell is connected you'll be free to place it wherever you want
that's been a quick run through of what the product is what you get with it and how you go
about setting it up again if you are interested in a more in-depth review for this doorbell make sure
you subscribe to the channel and keep your eyes out for that video we're now going to run through
some of my initial impressions and thoughts then i'll show you how to add this thing into home
assistant for the few days that i've been using this doorbell i've gotta say i'm very impressed
with it the design for it is subtle and sleek and it fits into its surroundings it's unobtrusive
it's obvious what it is and for me it's worked perfectly in both day and night conditions
there's not been any horrible lens flare and it's easy to see in the dark as it lights up
this thing boasts a 180 day battery life which is mad when i compare it to some of the other
doorbells that i've been using where they've only lasted two or three weeks in addition to
being battery powered it also comes with some cable connectors so if you've already got some
existing doorbell wiring you can actually wire the doorbell up so it's permanently powered
the app to use the doorbell is very intuitive and simple to use
it launches very quickly and it's easy to find any events or notifications that your doorbell
has created they also open up and play very quickly thanks to the home bases local storage
you get access to features like person detection or marking out your own motion zone whereas with
some other doorbells these features are locked behind a paywall and you have to pay for it
and speaking about paying for things this thing has zero subscription fees so once you buy it
you get everything you get your local storage and all these features with no additional costs and
on top of that it's got nice alexa and google integration as well as being able to integrate
into home assistant the thing that i like most is just how simple it is to set up it's very easy to
set up the home base and also link the doorbell and having this simplicity is going to make you
want to buy more of their products because it's so easy to just chain them together again in the
short time that i've had this doorbell for me it's done everything that it says it can do so would
i recommend this video doorbell i'm going to say yes i haven't tested this product long enough yet
to be able to give a full in-depth review which is why this video is very light on technical features
and it's just a quick overview but with the short amount of time that i've had with it and the fact
that i've had to do the setup and i've really enjoyed it i thought i'd share it with you guys
so if you're after a doorbell that plays nice with your existing home automation systems it's got
local storage has zero subscription fees and you can also wire into the mains if you want then this
could be the doorbell for you okay home assistant time so in order to get this doorbell set up and
working with your home assistant you're going to need to have an mqtt broker set up and installed
in this video i'm not going to be going through the process of setting up an mqtt broker but i
have previously gone over the process of setting up a broker in a previous project so in part two
of my room assistant setup i've run through the whole process of setting up an mqtt broker so if
you haven't got one set up go ahead and check that video out and then come back to this part and if
you're sticking around i'm going to assume that you've got an mqtt broker set up so we're going
to get straight into it we're going to be making use of a custom add-on known as the uefi home
assistant mqtt bridge created by max winterstein what this add-on does is it forwards the uefi
security push notifications to home assistant via mqtt this is going to allow us to access
information such as the camera's battery level if there's any people or motion being detected and we
can also grab an image directly from the doorbell camera this add-on works with the doorbell that
we're looking at but it also supports a bunch of other different uefi cameras to get started we're
going to need to open up the supervisor and we're going to need to go to the add-on store from here
we're going to choose the three dots in the top right corner and we need to add a new custom repo
to do this we're just going to press repositories and at the bottom here we're just going to paste
in the url for where the add-on is located you can find this url in the description below once you've
pasted that in just press add and you should then see this custom add-on added into your list
we can then just press close we can then see the uefi home assistant mqtt bridge located here
so we're just going to press on that and then from here we're just going to press install and while
we're waiting for that to install a massive thank you to matisse for creating this bridge
when that's finished installing we're going to need to make a quick change to the configuration
so up at the top there we're going to press configuration to carry on with the configuration
you're going to need to create a second uefi account this account can't have two-factor
authentication so you're going to need to give it a very strong password currently this add-on
doesn't support two-factor authentication and if you use the same account that you used to log into
the uefi app on your phone with the add-on there's a chance that you're going to get logged out
which is a pain because you're either not going to get the notifications in home assistant or
you're not going to get the notifications on your phone so go ahead and set up that second account
and then from your main account you're going to want to share access to the doorbell with your
secondary account in the configuration we're then going to want to enter the username and password
for that secondary account that we just created and you need to ensure that that account does not
have two-factor authentication the next bit of the config to fill in is your mqtt information
so this will be the url for where your broker is located and the username and password that you use
to connect to your broker again if you've got no idea what those are or how to go about setting up
that broker check out that video that i previously created that's going to be all the configuration
that we need we can then jump back to the info tab at the top and we can press start on the add-on
if we head over to our mqtt integration now we should see the doorbell information being pulled
into home assistant let's just check this so we're going to press configuration at the bottom there
and i'm going to choose integrations in our integrations list then we're going to want to
find our mqtt broker so i can see mine there and i'm just going to press on the 17 devices in my
device list i can see the uefi doorbell just there so i'm going to press on that and from here we can
see that information that i previously mentioned so we can see the battery percent if the doorbell
has been pressed the last event which is a snapshot of whatever last happened on the doorbell
if there's motion currently being detected and if there's currently a person being detected
and as those things are classed as sensors binary sensors and a camera
you can make use of those in your automations as you normally would you can see on the right
here i've got a little script set up and what this particular script does is it's going to grab that
last event image and it's going to store it in home assistant and i'll just show you that quickly
and it's nice and simple all it does is call the camera snapshot service and then i store
that image and then i can use that image then in-home assistant an example for using that image
could be with tv notifications so for example when the doorbell is pressed if the tv is on
it's going to display a little image of who's at the front door if you're interested in setting
up home assistant tv notifications i created a video on this not that long ago so go ahead
and check that out and that's pretty much it we've had a look at what the doorbell is what
you get in the box how to set it up and how to integrate it into home assistant over the coming
weeks i'm going to be testing this doorbell out to see if it lives up to its specification
i'll also be doing more with the home assistant integration and anything cool i come up with i'll
be sharing with you guys in that video review if i manage to get this out on time it should
still be prime day and you should be able to go and grab yourself a discount on this doorbell
as always a massive thank you to these awesome dudes who are my patrons if you're interested
in supporting my channel then check out my patreon linked in the description below if you've enjoyed
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following me on my instagram account thank you for watching and i'll catch you in the next one cheers
you