Reollink Doorbell App missing features

diegosalerno

I have just received my Reolink Doorbell POE and it is fully installed and operational. I have it integrated with home assistant for button pressed events and it is working fine.

In addition I like to use Reolink app due it simplicity and performance. I found few gaps when using the doorbell with the app:

1) Main issue, I was not able to control two way audio volume, visitors could barely hear me. This has been just fixed, I received a trial version of Reolink app from support and I can now control volume and I found the volume wa set by default about 20 or 30%. I have also a RLC-811A camera and volume control existed there. I didn't understand why the doorbell did not have the same. Anyway, Kudos to Reolink for the excellent support here.

2) I have asked Reolink Support the following regarding the definition of notifications categories. Regarding notifications, I know the feature is part of Android however the developers can define different notifications categories for their apps and this allows users to define different sounds and rules per type of notifications. Developers can segregate them very granularity and inside each category you can define things like ring tone, whether it should vibrate or not or whether it should ignore don't disturb rule or not. I think, now, with the existence of Reolink Doorbell, it is a good opportunity to create a specific notification category for visitor (when button is pressed) and why not extend to notifications specific when person ,vehicle or anything is detected. This would allow users, for example to receive notification when movement is detected (as of today) pause these notifications at night when sleeping, but still allow visitors notifications (doorbell button press) to bypass not disturb, or bypass silent mode and play full ding dong sound only if button is pressed.

3) We should have more Routings support for Alexa. Particularly triggers when the button is pressed. I'm not Alexa fan, but it is nice to have.

user_642923687080044

Concerning the notifications I have this working. I get different types of notifications depending on whether someone pressed the doorbell, a person was detected, it's night,... However I use Home Assistant for the notifications instead of the Reolink app.

Here's my list of wishes:

Allow activating the “quick replies” from Home Assistant or other third-party solutions. If you want that as well please ask Reolink to enable it in their API. This has many uses. e.g. when you can configure home assistant to send you a notification with a picture when someone presses the doorbell (or even when it detects a person) and the notification can have several options that you can click on for what the speaker should say (e.g. leave the package at the door).
face recognition: When the camera sees a person I have Home Assistant send me a notification with a screenshot. I’d like to be able to not send me those screenshots when it’s my wife etc.
Allow activating the alarm sound from Home Assistant or other third party solutions. Again this needs to be enabled in the Reolink API.
2-way audio: would be great to have this working in Home Assistant and Synology Surveillance Station and other third-party solutions.
Full integration with Synology Surveillance Station: (play custom sounds trough the doorbell, detect person, detect doorbell press, 2-way audio)

And list of issues:

Important information to make the Reolink work remotely with a VPN if you’ve blocked it from accessing the internet: by default the Reolink app adds the doorbell based on the ‘UID’ rather than it’s IP address and then it only works using the cloud once you have excited the app and open it again. To make sure you add the doorbell based on it’s IP address you need to delete the device if you already added it. Then disable wifi on your smartphone so that you are on mobile data. Then activate the VPN. Then add the doorbell using the option ‘input UID/IP’ then choose the IP option and enter the camera’s IP address.
When the doorbell switches to Infrared mode and vice-versa it is falsely reported as a motion detected event. That’s a bit amateuristic.
The android app has a major problem on Samsung smartphones. On Samsung smartphones it uses the microphone at the bottom (used to speak when holding the phone to the ear) and not the microphone at the top of the smartphone (used when talking in “speaker mode”). The update (not released yet officially) helps a bit with the problem because you can set the audio volume of the built-in speaker. Would still be far better if it uses the right microphone because I still have to hold my mouth at 1 cm distance from the smartphone so I can’t really watch the screen and talk at the same time.