Doorbell Sensor with Contact Sensor

Reason.
I wanted a notification when someone rang my old stupid doorbell. I don’t like any current smart doorbells. I’m waiting on a Wyze doorbell. I also wanted to add a doorbell chime upstairs and in the backyard where I can’t hear the doorbell.

I found Smartthings doorbell install and setup - Aeon Labs dry contact z-wave sensor - YouTube and used it as a concept. I also looked up videos on how to install a old stupid doorbell to understand how a doorbell works.

Instead of making it complicated like in the video. Mostly due to the limited smart tech during that year. I used the concept of the electromagnet from the old dumb doorbell chime to activate the Wyze contact sensor.

Wyze Contact Sensor.
You want to use the large piece of the contact sensor. This houses the trigger and transmitter. The smaller piece just contains a magnet that triggers the sensor in the larger piece. I’m replacing the smaller magnet piece with the electromagnet from the doorbell chime.

Doorbell Chime. The old stupid doorbell system uses a 16v power source. There is a transformer that is wired into the house’s 120v and changes it to 16v for the doorbell system. When the doorbell button is pressed at the front door it sends the 16v signal to the doorbell chime. There is 2 type of chimes that I know of. You have to make sure you have the right chime for this to work. The one that doesn’t work is the digital one that plays sound through a speaker. You can usually pick between several different sounds. The one that works is the traditional old stupid analog chime. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I imagine a bell and clapper. The clapper is on a spring that helps move it back and forth to ring the bell. An electromagnet pulls the clapper and the spring pushes back. The electromagnet is just a magnet that is activated with electricity. If there is no electricity, there is no magnetism.

Implementation.
Use the old stupid doorbell chime’s electromagnet to activate the Wyze sense contact sensor. The sensor will work even if the signal is very quick to activate and deactivate. So there is no delay in the sensor. A delay will be seen the app/software though, but it’s only a sec or two behind the old stupid doorbell chime. Even a shallow quick press of the doorbell button will activate the Wyze sensor. Find your doorbell chime. It’s usually in the middle of the house and has a cover over it. Or have someone ring the doorbell as you try to find it by listening to the ring. Remove the plastic chime cover, this usually just pops/pulls off. You will see 3 screws inside, usually labelled Front, Trans, and Rear. There should be 2 wires, one connected to Front and one connected to Trans. If you have a backdoor doorbell, there will be another set of wires for that. We are interested in the Front screw (this should have a wire connected to it). If you look behind the screws you can see that the Front and Rear screws are wrapped in copper wires. This is the electromagnet. You want to mount the Wyze contact sensor close to the Front electromagnet. Make sure the Wyze contact sensor is facing the electromagnet like it would be facing the smaller piece of the Wyze contact sensor. This will ensure the trigger inside the Wyze contact sensor will activate. You can test this by holding the Wyze contact sensor next the electromagnet and have someones press the doorbell button. You should see the Wyze contact sensor activate in the Wyze app. Once you figure out which side of the Wyze contact sensor to point at the electromagnet. Find a way to mount the Wyze contact sensor in place. Just be mindful that you will have to replace the Wyze contact sensor’s battery at some point. You can use the double sided tape on the Wyze contact sensor. Or make a bracket out of something and glue/screw the bracket on. I was able to wrap my Wyze contact sensor with black electrical tape to make it wider and wedged it in place. Just don’t place the Wyze contact sensor directly on the electromagnet. You want it close to it. Not on it. Once you mounted the Wyze contact sensor, test the doorbell button again to make sure it is working.

Applications.
You can use this in many ways. In the Wyze app the sensor is in the open position. You can set notifications on the Wyze app to send you a notification whenever the sensor is in the closed position.
Instead of a notification, you can set Alexa to play a ring tone through your phone or an Alexa device. Or multiple Alexa devices in different rooms. You can also use Alexa Says for a custom verbal notification (Alexa: “Front Doorbell”), instead of a standard ring tone. You can use a third party siren with lights. These can have multiple sounds to choose from, flashes led lights, and be much louder (Good for old people, hearing or vision impaired.
You can have the Wyze contact sensor tell the Wyze cam to record at the front door.

Alexa/Echo.
In the Alexa app under routines. When the Wyze contact sensor is closed. Set volume to 100%. Play doorbell 1. Set volume to 50%. Set what device this activates on.
So when the doorbell is pressed. The Wyze contact sensor closes. Alexa turns the volume on the Alexa device to 100%. Alexa plays the doorbell sound. Alexa turns the volume down to 50%. This is so the doorbell sound through the Alexa device will be loud enough to hear and then turn back down so the next time the Alexa device is activated, it’s not so loud that is scares you.
I created a new routine for each of my 4 Alexa devices and my phone.

I hope this helps the community as I tried to find a solution on/off for awhile now. Please add any other applications you use this for, so others can see the possibilities of this trigger.

Thank you for reading all of this. I probably won’t be back on here to read any replies or questions. So please help each other out if you are active on here. I just wanted to post this somewhere as I couldn’t find any working info on this.

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