[eamonnsullivan]

I did pretty much the same thing. The issue wasn't cats (I have two, but they'll gladly let anyone pet and feed them), it was that I can't hear the doorbell from my WFH office. I wanted to flash the light. I already use Home Assistant for loads of stuff.

I tried ESP32 and a 433MHz antenna thingy, so that I could continue to use my cheapo bell. That proved unreliable (a press got picked up, at best, about 90% of the time).

Then I went through two zigbee buttons. The issue is that Amazon and other delivery drivers appear to use a hammer to press doorbells. That's the only explanation I can think of for the state of the buttons after a few weeks.

I finally just caved and bought the cheapest (still expensive) Ring doorbell and disabled the camera. It's been solid, but I feel dirty and regret it each time I pay the annual bill. It's my last cloud-enabled device, but I can't afford to just keep throwing Zigbee buttons at the gorillas who deliver my packages.

[mason55]

I have an Amcrest doorbell and run amcrest2mqtt which sends messages that get picked up by Home Assistant. Keeps everything local and means I don't have to pay for a Ring subscription.

My only complaint is that when I blocked the doorbell from the internet, it just started rebooting every few minutes. If I cared, I'd tape over the camera, but I'm not too worried about someone spying on my front yard via my doorbell camera.

[rokkitmensch]

The threat model is that they capture your ingress and egress patterns.