I didn’t have a doorbell before (multiple reasons) and my house feels unwelcoming without one. So I built a doorbell app that uses a QR code - visitors scan the QR code to ring the doorbell and I get notified on my phone.<p>Here is an example of the QR code I have on my door. You can scan it and say hello: <a href="https://www.thebacklog.net/img/2024/10/show-hn.png" rel="nofollow">https://www.thebacklog.net/img/2024/10/show-hn.png</a><p>This was also a great excuse to build my first app for Android and iPhone.<p>I’d love to get some feedback before I spend more time polishing the app. Please try it out and feel free to ask me any questions! No logins or accounts needed.
Hey! Welcome, valued visitor! You’ll notice I don’t appear to have a doorbell. Don’t worry, this is for your convenience and mine.<p>If I’m out and about you’ll be able to contact me, and I can tell you that I’m unable to answer the door right now but I value your visit.<p>All in real time!<p>Let’s get started: simply solve the puzzle below. The solution will let you work out the code to unlock the box next to my door.<p>When you unlock the box scan the QR code inside, which will allow you to connect to my WiFi guest network.<p>Once you’re connected scan the second QR code to open the virtual doorbell selector. You can then select the appropriate message for your visit.<p>Unable to connect?<p>Simply knock on the door and wait. If I’m home I’ll surely answer soon enough. If I’m not home or don’t want to be disturbed you should use your own judgement: if it’s urgent trying shouting through the letterbox, or maybe wait a while and then return later!
This does seem like it might be prone to pranksters copying a particular doorbell code and putting it outside someone else's house (or several houses), distributing fake flyers that include it ("Scan here for a chance to win a cruise!"), and so forth.
Choose better UX design.<p>1. Get a QR code to put at your door<p>2. Visitors scan the QR code using their smartphone camera<p>3. Get a notification on your phone wherever you are!<p>OR<p>1. Install doorbell at your door.<p>2. Visitors press the doorbell using any of their extremities.<p>3. Get a notification on your phone wherever you are!
Feedback: Bad UX. After scanning your example code I got page which asked me to take photo and I get really confused because I thought you want me to scan QR code again but there is no way to switch to other camera of my phone.<p>Overall this feels too complicated. Unfriendly to people without smartphone or mobile internet. I understand this is DIY equivalent of camera doorbell, but I would definitely prefer some no-name chinese radio doorbell both as one ringing and maintaining it.
Interesting idea...<p>Cheap wireless doorbell is $5 delivered from Amazon. That's your biggest competition for the straightforward case. And that's easier to install, and easier to use.<p>There are plenty of scenarios where a Qr -> optional form -> notification is useful, eg hosting an event -- so maybe explore/emphasize those rather than the simple approach.<p>Fighting abuse and the resulting customer service, bad reviews, etc will be a constant drain/challenge.<p>There might be some market overlap with generic notification apps like Pushover.
What's the advantage of this over a traditional doorbell + a phone (which everyone already has)? If I'm home, I can hear them. If I'm not, they can just message/call me.
This feels like a mocking app of today's Reddit post requiring an app to operate an elevator.<p>Kinda silly in any case. If you want to use a QR, just point it to your phone number so I can call you and talk to you.
I can see some potential for people with hearing loss. I've seen apartments and houses of such folks, with some small dedicated bulbs or even normal ceiling lights flashing furiously on all over the house upon someone ringing the doorbell.
A doorbell signaling smartphones, making smart wrist watches vibrate etc, could be reasonable in such cases. But it could be still a plain uncomplicated button next to the door.
Reading through the comments I realize the subheading on the site is not sending the right message:<p>> Replace your doorbell with a QR code<p>The purpose of the app is to create a doorbell for instances/contexts where there isn't one. Not to replace currently working doorbells.
You're focusing on an app, instead of ringing person's UX and _the_ doorbell itself.<p>My suggestion: find a niche, like a doorbell for hearing impaired home owners. Otherwise you'll be recreating Nest. Google won't buy identical product twice, to kill it. A generic Nest-like product has little chances to take over the market.<p>A button feels more natural and is much more approachable over an QR code. QR may be a nice fail-over for when no one is opening the door in reaction to knocking or pushing a button. But QR as the main method? Maybe for evolving markets or harsh neighborhoods where wireless doorbells get stolen - if that's even a thing.<p>You're looking into providing value to home-owners, by making it easier for someone outside their homes. In most cases this dumb button that makes some sound inside the house just works. Little area for improvement here, for most people.<p>Your potential market for people willing to stick a QR code on their door are:<p>> "I'm hearing-impaired. Please use below QR code if I don't hear you knock"<p>> "I'm not opening? chat with me here [QR code]"<p>↑ this is your potential target. You already see that most comments in this thread tell you that people don't want QR codes on their doors. You have an idea for a solution still looking for a problem. Accessibility around hearing loss may be one.<p>You can help people. And from a business perspective, you may be able to get government grants for such project, which may be better for you than crowd-sourcing. And, you may get customers who get their purchases partially covered by gov health programs, if you properly interact with related accessibility-related gov bodies (YMMV around the world of course), apply for getting your stuff assessed for free advertisements inside hearing loss-related clinics etc. And again - you can make a product that makes impaired folks' lives better. Win-win.<p>There are multiple ESP32-based doorbell projects (I like this one[0]) that can be expanded easily with code changes. I can't really see how a QR code is better. Make your product either equally interesting to public or covering some niche use-case. And again: Nest...<p>[0] <a href="https://tristam.ie/2023/758/" rel="nofollow">https://tristam.ie/2023/758/</a>
I recently visited a friend in Finland. In Finland it's common for apartments to not have doorbells downstairs. Instead the door has a pincode that people use to get in which are typically shared with friends when you invite them.<p>Except those pin codes are now commonly disabled for security reasons. So, I was waiting downstairs wondering what to do and in the end just called my friend after which he came downstairs to open the door. That works of course but a QR code would be a good alternative.<p>Even if it just contained a tel:// link with the phone number. I love QR codes for low tech solutions like this.<p>This stuff doesn't have to be hard. And you don't even need an app for this. Just print your own code with your phone number, email address, etc. (from any of a vast number of web based generators) and put it near the door with some instructions.
Nice work!<p>I wonder if instead of complexity you should call this a cheaper alternative to a smart doorbell?<p>I don't think many of us think of smart doorbells as particularly complex. However, they could be out of budget for many.<p>Alternatively, you could market as privacy respecting, where a smart doorbell is always recording.
As a hack, this is great. As a thing I would actually use? Very, very unlikely.<p>- I would never use a random QR code in public and I wouldn’t ask anyone else to.<p>- Pranking seems like an issue.<p>- If I know someone, they’ll text me they’ve arrived. If I don’t know someone, there are two main cases: delivery person, who is going to pound the door and leave immediately (and I’ll get a notification of delivery); and religious proselytizers, political door-knockers, and solar company sales people, none of whom I care remotely about talking to.<p>Again, as a project, this is delightful. But as a thing to incorporate into my home, I can’t see the use case.<p>EDIT: Also, criminals. They’re not going to use a QR code to see if I’m home.
I went down a rabbit hole several years ago with this concept.<p>I built much of the code front end and back end then abandoned it because I just could not summon the belief in the idea as a startup.<p>I was focused on QR codes as entry points to buildings and companies, with integrated guest book functionality.<p>This was pre-covid so QR codes had not yet become something everyone knew how to drive and mobile phone implementation was not yet universal.<p>Also being pre-covid every still went to the office to go to work.<p>I came up with many names and registered many domains I think one of them was paperdoorbell.com and many other such variants.
My old fantasy of "scan an NFC tag and it brings up an UI on your phone to do things to the machine bearing the tag" applies here too.<p>Easily add a control panel to machines that can't easily have one (because of cost etc). Or a debugging panel for improved UX over the usual "three LEDs giving you a code you have to look up in the user manual".<p>NFC is better UX (less user taps).<p>For an easy PoC, make an NFC tag that connects you to an SSID and opens the captive portal usually used for Wi-Fi auth as the control panel.
I thought about keeping my existing doorbell button and chime, but adding an ESP32 plus hall effect sensor, to detect when the doorbell chime is being powered and trigger a notification over wifi.<p>It seems a bit convoluted, though. Is there a DPST momentary button I can use instead (removing the need for the hall effect sensor)? I searched on digikey but 'DPST momentary' came back with results that were too bare (just the button), expensive ($50 per unit) and had a long lead time (8 weeks).
It has been a while since a _useful_ new app came along!
Thank you, i appreciate it to the point I'd be willing to pay for it.<p>Feedback: Teach people to never ever scan a QR code if they don't know for a fact who created it.
For if you don't, you'll be part of the crowd who is conditioning people to scan all the QR codes they can find without thinking...
I don’t see this as a doorbell, I see it as a QR code that can be trivially reproduced and used to trigger notifications on your phone by anyone from anywhere at any time, basically completely anonymously. Not a great idea.
The one thing I do not appreciate about this Show HN is that there is no repo linked. I do NOT want to install any apps, I just want to build something like this without becoming someone's customer...<p>I guess my implementation would just be sending a notification to my phone on a messaging platform, or send an email. Maybe use <a href="https://ntfy.sh" rel="nofollow">https://ntfy.sh</a> and the more generic app to get these notifications.
I think I walked past this in a European capital city, could that have been your doorbell (city not specified for obvious reasons)? Or are other people already using this?
Good for you that you build your first mobile app(s) and for having an inventive mind, but please be aware that there are many many "bad" people out there that will abuse/prank/exploit simple ideas like yours. Keep yourself safe and don't allow people to disturb you in ways you haven't imagined. Unfortunately this is the state of the world right now :-(
I’m sorry. I’m just frustrated enough scanning the QR code in the restaurant.<p>Now I have to scan another QR code just to meet you?<p>I prefer looking for new friends.
Now someone might want to check for neighbors having such QR codes on their doors and replace them with QR serving ads (and accessorily ring the "bell" application), or just with something unrelated (like a page to install a rogue app).<p>On a side note, a delivery person might actually not want to scan the QR code because (a) if you do this all the day long, it take much more time than pushing doorbell buttons, and (b) if they use their professional devices to do this, they might either have that URL blocked, or scanning a "random" QR code might be against their company's policies because it might expose them to security risks (imagine a phishing page with the login interface of the delivery company, or a site serving malware).
iOS debuted a feature called “App Clips” awhile ago (2020?) that would be perfect for this.<p>Most phones have an NFC reader as well so should work with Android too.<p>Similar concept:<p>1) person taps phone against “door bell”<p>2) sends notification to user(s)<p>3) optionally, send “selfie”<p>IIRC, app clips needed to be very small in size. So something like this could work, even in low bandwidth situations (ie, poor signal strength)
I have a better idea: using a QR code as your door key.<p>* Install a lock that does not have any external mechanism to unlock it. No key holes, no password pad, nothing. So there will be no lock picking in any way.<p>* Use your peep hole as a camera.<p>* Show a QR code to said camera.<p>* Door unlocks if QR code is correct.
Sounds like a cool and novel idea. But I can imagine this becoming a remote version of that knock-door-and-run game - ding dong dash!<p>Wish you the best with it though. Could catch on
I unwired my doorbell and never looked back. It’s been one of the best decisions I’ve made about my house. If you get past the FOMO you might love it too. Why does the world get an interrupt button for your home?
Rather use NFC TAG, INSTEAD
SCANNING QR REQUIRES SPECIFIC APP, HELL EVEN IN 2024 I DONT KNOW HOW TO SCAN QR WITHOUT 3RD PARTY APP, AND I HAVE GOOGLE LENS AND RELATED APPS DISABLED
This is a brilliant idea! Love the "take a photo" at the start. I assume (if you answer) it will go through WebRTC?<p>Might be nice to play a "ding dong" sound in the browser?
I wish my annoying neighbor would get this, because then I can post the code online and have the whole world knocking on his door at all hours of the day.
this seems silly<p>seeing as you need an internet connection to access whether the doorbell has been rung, you may as well connect a physical doorbell to an app that monitors this and gives you a notification on your phone without the need for a QR code<p>the QR code is just a hassle
I know this won’t enrich the conversation much, but here’s a Reddit link to the comments showing “normal folk” reactions to a QR code on a door.<p><a href="https://reddit.nerdvpn.de/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1gg37bm/couldnt_you_just_have_printed_the_hours_on_here/" rel="nofollow">https://reddit.nerdvpn.de/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1gg37...</a>
"R2-D2 you know better than to trust a strange QR code".<p>Scanning QR codes outside a trusted environment (e.g. a workplace stock keeping system) is asking for trouble. Security advice now routinely recommends not deploying QR codes on your products, nor encouraging your employees/users to scan strange codes.<p>It's like 1995 all over again.<p>EDIT: In response to doubters below
<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz472gy8nd9o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz472gy8nd9o</a><p>Besides, to paraphrase Dubya: "Goatse me once, shame on...shame on you. Goatse me—you can't get goastsie'd again."