Intro
Pair a supported smart doorbell with a wall-mounted tablet and Zendo becomes your door panel, no proprietary intercom or door station required.
When someone rings, the tablet wakes, plays a ringtone, and shows a full-screen alert with a snapshot from the doorbell camera. Tap Answer to open the live stream, talk to your visitor, and unlock the door if you have a smart lock nearby.
This sits on top of push notifications. Push notifications reach your phone or tablet when you’re away from home. The door panel is for when you’re home, so your tablets ring out loud and you can answer on whichever one’s closest, without picking up your phone.
What you need
- A wall-mounted tablet (or counter device) running Zendo, with Mounted Device turned on. The door panel only rings when Keep Screen Awake is enabled, that’s how Zendo knows the device is a permanent one worth ringing.
- The Zendo app open on that device. The alert appears while the app is running on screen.
- A supported smart doorbell linked to a room in your floorplan.
- An automation on your Home Assistant/Homey to fire the ring (see Set it up in your automations).
How it works
| When | What happens |
|---|
| Someone rings | The tablet wakes, plays your ringtone, and shows a full-screen alert with a snapshot of who’s there. |
| You tap Answer | The doorbell’s live stream opens so you can see and talk to your visitor. |
| You tap Decline | The alert closes and the ringing stops. |
| You tap anywhere | The sound stops but the alert stays, handy when you’ve seen who it is and you’re on your way. |
| Nobody answers | The alert clears itself after a short while and the screen dims again. |
One ring, many panels
If you’ve got panels in more than one room, they can all ring together. The moment someone answers, declines, or silences the ring on one panel, the others stop ringing too, so the whole home doesn’t keep chiming once the door’s been dealt with.
Fast, and works even when you’re offline
The ring is delivered locally from your Home Assistant or Homey, so there’s no round-trip to a cloud push service. The panel rings the instant someone’s at the door, with no lag.
It also means your tablet keeps working as a door panel even when your internet is down.
For a fully offline panel, please make sure:
- The tablet, your hub, and the doorbell are all on the same local network.
- Your doorbell supports local streaming, so the live video works without the cloud too.
Setup automation
The ring is triggered by your own automation, so you decide exactly when and how the panel rings. Point it at a doorbell press, choose who to ring, pick a ringtone, and you’re set.
Home Assistant
Use the zendo.ring_doorbell action. Target the Zendo notify entities for the people you want to ring, and point deep_link_destination at the camera that should open when answered.
automation:
- alias: "Doorbell - ring the hallway panel"
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.front_doorbell
to: "on"
action:
- action: zendo.ring_doorbell
target:
entity_id: notify.zendo_owner
data:
deep_link_destination: "securityCamera_abc123"
sound: "ding-dong"
volume: 80
repeat: 2
| Field | Required | What it does |
|---|
entity_id (target) | Yes | One or more Zendo people to ring. |
deep_link_destination | Yes | The doorbell camera to open on Answer. Run zendo.list_deep_link_destinations to find the ID. |
sound | No | Ringtone to play. Leave it out for a silent, visual-only alert. |
volume | No | Output volume (0–100). Falls back to the device’s current volume. |
repeat | No | How many times to play the ringtone (1–5). Defaults to once. |
Homey
Use the Ring doorbell on Zendo flow action card.
- When: your doorbell is pressed.
- Then: add the Ring doorbell on Zendo card, choose the person to ring and the doorbell to open when answered, then set the ringtone, volume, and repeat.
Ring only some panels
A ring is aimed at a Person, and a tablet only rings if it’s linked to that Person. That gives you a neat trick for ringing some panels but not others, say, the hallway and kitchen, but never the bedrooms.
Group your tablets by linking each one to a different Person in People & Invitations, then target whichever Person you want in your automation:
- Link the hallway and kitchen tablets to one Person (e.g. “Door panels”).
- Link the bedroom tablets to another (e.g. “Bedrooms”).
- In your automation, target only the “Door panels” so the bedrooms stay quiet.
A Person doesn’t have to be a real person. It’s really just a group of devices you can target however you like, panels by location is a great example. Name them in a way that makes sense to you (“Door panels”, “Upstairs Devices”, “Reception Devices”), and target the group you want.
Quiet times and other options
Because the ring lives in your automation, you can shape it however you like:
- Quiet at night. Add a condition so the panel doesn’t ring between, say, 22:00 and 07:00, or have it ring silently (drop
sound, or set a low volume) so you still see the alert without the chime.
- Ring on silent. Leave
sound out altogether for a visual-only alert.
- Suppress repeat rings. Add a condition or a short cooldown so a jumpy doorbell doesn’t ring the panel over and over.
Here’s a Home Assistant example that stays quiet overnight:
automation:
- alias: "Doorbell - ring the panel (daytime only)"
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.front_doorbell
to: "on"
condition:
- condition: time
after: "07:00:00"
before: "22:00:00"
action:
- action: zendo.ring_doorbell
target:
entity_id: notify.zendo_owner
data:
deep_link_destination: "securityCamera_abc123"
sound: "ding-dong"
volume: 80
