So I’d like to have a video doorbell set up so that it communicates locally with my HA, raising an event when the button is pressed, allowing me to watch its audio and video stream live, and speak back to whoever is at the door. Ideally either from the browser or my phone, when I’m at home or not.
I don’t care about motion sensing or AI or even NVR functions really. What software do I need? Should I bother going through the process of setting up Frigate or is there something simpler that would do the job?
Yep, but the method is separate from HA. Could do it two ways, I use Pi-hole so that it’s still able to contact the NTP server (could also set the time server to something local through the desktop app, I believe) but block all other external traffic, or you can block external access through your router firewall. I noticed the time would occasionally be inaccurate if I had blocked all internet access.
Either way you can use a VPN or other tunnel service to access while you’re away from home. I use WG-tunnel on my phone to auto connect to VPN when I disconnect from my home network, it’s quite handy.
You could also set up a local NTP server, and block them entirely.
Currently, I have mine set with an invalid gateway, and blocked from the internet to be sure.