smart doorbells are one of the most popular smart home products and we're back on site at our smart
home takeover today and we're going to fit one or someone's going to fit one now there's a rule when
it comes to working at efixx that whenever we do something outdoors two things happen the first one
someone starts a lot of garden maintenance and starts making a noise with the chainsaw the
second one is it's gonna rain and yes we've got both of those today and it's certainly raining
now there's also two elements of a smart home installed there's the product itself and how
easy that is to install and how does the app work now one of us is clearly going to have to learn
about the app and the other is going to have to do the installation all right okay so you don't like
absolutely no i don't like getting wet either i take it on outside today am i well that's just the
way the cookie crumbles so what we've got in the box here gary so in the pro installer kit for this
netatmo smart doorbell we've got a comprehensive set of instructions we've got the star of the show
the doorbell itself next to that we've got a trim plate underneath it we've got the chime
module we'll come back to that and we've made a separate video on that and we're going we have
yeah because that is that's quite a clever bit of kit next to that we've got the angled bracket
that again is optional uh back plate that you do need to use a little template so you know exactly
how to mount this and some screws gary yeah and make sure you look after that little screwdriver
you know you'd hate to be hunting around for it at some point during the installation we've also
got a security stick according yeah now we've made a separate amazingly we've made a separate video
just about that sticker because obviously rules and regulations about where you actually have
to display that and where you might not have to so check out that video if you haven't seen it
next to that is a little qr code there which we'll use in the commissioning process
so the consumer unit end is always going to do the safe isolation procedure there's a six amp type b
circuit breaker there for the transformer which is also built within the consumer unit so the
isolation process needs to be carried out before we start the install itself okay so that's our
existing doorbell so this is a retrofit situation what's that chime module there gary what you're
going to do with that yeah his default position is low one and you start on those and i'm going
to need to stick it to something i'll stick with the actual top of the cover of the uh bell module
chime so it's going to be there and those two cables are going to pass through one of the vents
so i'm going to peel back the stickers in order that i can secure it to the top and then i'll
make those connections you might notice the cable inside there gordon yeah so that's not normal bell
wire see the installers used some possibly some cables left over from the security system there
yeah so we only need two cores and we can use that cable it does make it fractionally more tricky
i think when i start actually looking at fitting the smart doorbell itself so i'll
pull these through and i'm going to make the the connections across the actual bell itself
so there's just two connections in here and then it's just a case of fitting the smart doorbell
itself yeah i mean that's that's the thing with these these bells it is it's retrofit so you have
to deal with what's already in the installation and that is quite a variable situation in terms of
the transformer in terms of what the chime module has to do so check out the video we've made just
about that so you can obviously be fully informed before you go to site yeah clever bit of kickboard
now it's clever [ __ ] right well i think i'm out in the rain in a minute my last connection
in here before i start getting wet so tighten that one up put the cover back on so that was
really easy just two connections and i've only got two more to go pop that back in clip it on
yep so outside traditional doorbell needs to be removed as we said just there the cables inside
here are not our traditional two core belt wire which are nice and stiff i've got this
alarm cable or they've left that short as well so we haven't got a lot of space to play with
we don't need that trim plate because we're mounting onto the frame itself yeah so i'm
going to undo these two conductors um and now we're going to offer up our back template the two
holes there slightly larger ones would be normally where you'd bring through your bell wire i've got
mine slightly to the left there however i'm going to use the angled bracket which is going to help
me out in two ways it's going to be a little bit more room to play with and obviously just
create that slight angle to it it's got a really wide angle on the camera though gordon
yeah so these camera angles are very wide but if you just wanted to angle the lens slightly towards
the actual path or perhaps a different direction it's coming from it does that but yeah again we're
gonna you're using that angle bracket as a way of obviously bringing the cable in if you wanted to
extend the cable you could probably do that with something like a gel crimp or something like that
in there so you've got a bit more room but you're going to you're just going to go for it gary yes
i think they're just about long enough i'm going to have to use a little novel trick
you have to hold on for that in a minute in order to make it a little bit easier for me to
to pull it into the actual plate itself so fix back the the angled plate and now
i've got my two conductors and they're very soft obviously and loose so i'm going to use a ferrule
all right so that's good yeah we always like to see a ferrule on the channel especially used on
these fine stranded conductors yeah and i'm gonna have to push it through into the actual connecting
area um so in order to do that it will help that being a little bit firmer bell wire itself
straight forward nice and easy so uh i recognized that crimp tool gary yeah i found it in your old
tool box there you go so they're on so i'm gonna do both of them and now i'm gonna need to get it
into here so you can see the seals i've got to get it through so again being stiff built below that
would push straight through those ferrules are going to help me now in order to to get into there
yeah if i was doing it again gary i would have lent them those wires but yeah
they were long enough they were long enough just long enough but they were long enough yeah so i'll
just pull those and see i've got two electrical connections in here so there was two in the
chime module itself and two outside at the smart doorbell that's it that's electrically how simple
it is so i've got a few more screws to get in got the right screwdriver head in order to screw these
into position just again those screws are in the kit yeah yeah so yeah screw them back down
and just make my two connections now here we go so screw them into here and then this terminal
is going to be secured onto the plate allowing me to clip my doorbell onto it oh yeah that connector
yeah picks up the pins that are on the back of the of the actual doorbell module itself it does
yeah so that's that's me nearly finished that is how simple it is okay to fit a smart doorbell
there we go one more screw and i just need the Netatmo smart doorbell front in order to clip it
on which again is straight forward it just clips in at the top and then secured at the bottom
final screw here and then we're gonna okay that's our doorbell
yeah so find its position okay and that's it clip straight on okay and there's a small screw
that's here and where's that is that a special screwdriver gary when we found it again yes
i don't know where we put it but we did find it yeah we misplaced it yeah it's got like a
triangle head on it in order to go in so it's like a security screw so that just goes into
the bottom and that is me done so it's over to the app i think next we're ready to ready to power up
that's it four connections so again the great thing is this doorbell works out of
the box once it's powered up you can use it as a doorbell so you might come along later and do
the commissioning procedure but since you've had the that easy job i think i'm entitled
to an easy job and that's the commissioning so it's an attack more security app that we
installed in a previous video on the camera yeah so again we're using that we're going to
add that to the same system the little qr code in the box is the essential bit here
so that's the you need that to uh to do the commission you don't need to put anything in in
terms of like wi-fi passwords and things like that so we've got a white flashing yeah we're looking
for the white flashing light and then we're going to show the qr code to the camera on the iphone
and then we're sort of just waiting for that to uh to pair up obviously just waiting for it so it's
not this simple uh yeah we're just waiting for a nice blue tick you know when we start getting oh
oh there we go we're getting there is that it there we go that's the uh it's finished uh yeah
obviously you might want to name the doorbell and add it to a room or differentiate between
front and back door but there we go we're getting some footage in there and there's
the bloke that fit the doorbell turn out and let's have a look at some of those great features
so gary was that as easy as he made it look four connections gordon it was simple wasn't it yeah
you saw in that video how easy it is to fit in an attack mode smart doorbell yeah for me yeah
really really easy however as always it seems the app didn't seem any trouble either did it uh well
no it was again it's a simple process and again what we're finding on on these smart products
any problems you do have tend to relate to the installation so we have made a separate video that
looks at some of the problems you might experience we've got a rig there that we've put together
um that explains how the chime module works yeah this here yes um because it's always down to you
know you know you're fitting something to an existing system that when it was first designed
wasn't really designed to have sophisticated electronics to the end of it and and there is
some compromise in there the quality of that in terms of what the transformers like yes
so watch that video so you'd be amazed at the voltage you get from an 8-volt transformer
it's very uh giving i think of its voltage yeah very very generous um that can work for
you or against it and obviously the cabling you know that's used in the installation obviously
vault drop things like that the quality you know they'd use bell wire in that installation
used it would have been a lot easier to fit so that was it that was probably the most difficult
part of it and that wasn't my fault was it the bell wall wasn't there but other issues can be
obviously working out where you've got to do that chime module and the voltage yeah and the
same applies obviously to the um to when you're commissioning these systems as well yes you do
need wi-fi at the door you do yes yeah you'd like to think it'd get to the front door though yeah it
should and there's different flavors of wi-fi so you can have uh some routers will give you a five
gigahertz wi-fi right okay and some will give you 2.4 gigahertz right and which of those two
do you need for smart devices we've seen it again and again it's the 2.4 gigahertz uh that's that's
needed because that gets you so you just say that again the 2.4 that's a top tip i would suggest
absolutely because that gets you the range of wi-fi you're not after really high outputs of
data that that's what five gigahertz gives you about 2.4 that is the key um you know the kind
of questions again has the customer got the latest version of the operating system for the phone yeah
have they set up the app you know because it's obviously their details that go in there to do
that sale it's things like that that slow the commissioning process down but the actual pairing
yeah seemed very simple didn't it so one thing we didn't show there we could have done because
the camera itself is infrared it was getting late at night obviously the rain was getting a little
heavier um so we'd like to now go through that process we'd like to perhaps use this one approach
this one and see what happens to your phone when someone rings the tapmo smart doorbell so let's
roll play it gordon i've got the netatmo smart doorbell here it's all energized and ready to
go you've got your phone ready i'm going to walk up the garden path of approaching it now to see
a blue led light on it yes that's the doorbell's in a standby mode obviously the camera has already
detected you've had a notification that the camera seen somebody right okay and obviously
that might be useful if you're uh you know you're not an intended visitor and you've got some other
purpose and you're peering through the letterbox i would have already had that alert but if you now
push that uh push the push and we'll we'll have a blue flashing light yeah we've got a blue flashing
light so now straight away i've had a notification that somebody's rang the bell and there's an
incoming call right notification here and so i can now answer that and now my um my phone's
going to connect to the doorbell itself and you should see that a red led yes i have now a ready
yep red led a red led and yes if i could see you there um and i can now i'm going to answer the
call gary we're in the middle of a video here um i don't really want to answer the door sorry gordon
enough said now obviously that has uh stored the uh start the conversation
uh obviously we can recall that in if we need to in the future it's stored in the sd card that's
in the camera itself now you can obviously um back that up you know to a cloud storage service
but obviously the advantage of this is um you don't need uh to have a an account so a lot of
these doorbells on the market you have to take out a cloud storage account yeah in which case
they harvest all that data footage and store it in their cloud right with this uh netapp system
you've got a choice of where that data restores or either left in the doorbell itself
there's an sd card at 32 gigabytes yep and obviously that's plenty of storage um in
there for lots of uh obviously events that you you choose to record should anybody and
this is always the next question that comes up if somebody tries to pinch the actual doorbell
itself right um you can't take that card out there and access it on another device it is paired
specifically to that doorbell that's clever yeah it's clever so they've thought of sort
of all those tricks that someone someone might try but it's that flexibility in terms of where
that data goes again that was really good really interesting but we haven't really seen this camera
really close up have we okay let's have a look closer look let's have a look so let's come in
with hand cam so here we are yes obviously there's our camera okay and that camera i can tell you is
1080p it's 2 million pixels and has a 140 degrees angle gorgeous you're going to miss much earlier
no so again yeah well it's a very wide angle that's where you'll see the infrared at night for
the infrared camera okay you mentioned that but it's um it's visible as well so again it's it's
almost that visible deterrent as well you know when you actually see that late at night here's
our uh yeah speaker microphone and obviously the bell push itself right we talked about the memory
card didn't we as well is that in the bag yeah so so flip it over um so again some things to point
out here here's obviously around here you'll notice that mates very closely with that back
plate that you had to give us an ip44 seal good yeah in the sd card card in there as well now
you probably never ever need to remove that but that's where it does it does live okay yeah um and
obviously the connections are plugged into that terminal block you saw there okay i'll recognize
a qr code on the back as well yeah so if you were to lose the um the little the little slip that you
showed to the camera for the commissioning process there is one stored on the back oh that's handy
yeah and you're gonna say well anyone can do that but obviously to get to that you have to remove
the doorbell and the the special screw that goes in the bottom with the triangular head
and yeah did you misplace the screwdriver gary i think you've mentioned it once or twice yes yeah
and obviously that yeah probably took longer to find a screwdriver than you installed
um there's a fuse in there as well yeah um so again people ask can you fit these without the um
the chime module no you can't so you couldn't just take a supply direct to that because remember
when this is a when this is in doorbell mode you you're pushing that and obviously creating a low
resistance between the two connections all right okay so yeah that's a that's a closer look at
actually what's going on there with the actual smart doorbell quality kit you've got some weight
to it as well it is yeah i mean we've seen a few we haven't fitted any of the other ones for this
the first time we've done a smart doorbell um yeah but this that this has got a good feel to
the build quality on it some of the other ones i saw a little look around john lewis and doing
a bit of christmas shopping seemed a little bit plasticky okay and but this no this was
this wouldn't look out of place on even yeah the highest of high-end smart homes yeah it's good
but now let's think about the pro installer program so people perhaps got to this point
in video really interested in taking this product on what the benefits to the electrician becoming
a pro-installer winner yeah so um obviously the yeah legrand who run the uh run the uh the tacmo
business are wanting to recruit electricians to the pro-installer program right do you get any
sort of back support and help uh yes so there's dedicated helpline for you as an installer but
also the customer if you don't want to run possibly the customer help desk or we if this
problem you can't solve there is that backup and that's important when you say at the early stage
of learning a new product uh you know it's it's it's those uh installation challenges that are
inherent in the existing installation you might need some help with you also get a four year
warranty on the product as well so that's that's so from two then that's up from two yeah so you
can pass that on to the to the customer so that there's information about that if you
look in the link uh below uh there's obviously links to uh your favorite electrical wholesaler
who's participating in the uh netatmo pro program okay i think we've got it all covered then yeah so
easy to install we've found the app really easy to do as well we've got additional videos so we
can talk about the chime module in order to complete the circle on this device however
as always we're interested in your comments so have you fitted the netatmo smart doorbell before
are you thinking about fitting in the future have you fitted some other types of smart doorbell and
found pros and cons for fitting those again check out the comments below
can you help somebody else within our community by the experience and feedback that you can give
them we'll also chip in on those comments and we look forward to getting back to as many as we can