Xiaomi Zero Doorbell Setup
Pair your Chinese Xiaomi Zero (Mijia) AI doorbell with your WiFi, phone and (optionally) a chime. A basic review of pros and cons can be found in the description below.
This is a bit of a random video for me to upload, I've been out of the YouTube game for quite some time but after struggling myself for a whole evening with this bit of kit I thought it was only fair to share the procedure.
Regarding the actual quality of the doorbell, the jury's still out. Here's a quick list of pros and cons though compared to the original Ring doorbell I had:
Pros:
Came with free cloud hosting for storing your videos on. Ring was something like $30 per year. Looks like I got given at least a year free but the wording isn't clear so we'll see what happens in a years time I guess!
Doorbell chime works well and is instant (like a standard doorbell)
The price was exceptionally good, was a little over £30 for the doorbell and chime pack.
Video quality seems good, certainly seems on par with the original Ring one if not better.
Xiaomi are a massive well respected company so hopefully we should be getting good updates in future.
Has some good features not available on Ring (at the time of writing) such as face recognition, voice changer and default audio replies you can send at the click of a button.
Cons:
A total bastard to setup!
A lot of things are in Chinese (although once setup most bits are available in English)
The timestamp on the video is Chinese time and not UK time (I guess it's based on the server you connect to). The timestamps in the app history are correct, it's just the timestamp on the video itself and any notification popups sent to the phone which are wrong.
If you previously had a Ring doorbell then you'll probably need to place this in a slightly different location as the camera seems to be configured a little different.
I know my WiFi is pretty poor but this seems even slower to respond to a caller than the original Ring doorbell I had. I dunno maybe it's just my imagination but it's certainly not quick. Potentially I guess this could (in part) be due to it having to hook up to the Chinese server as it's not officially available in the UK yet.
All in all, I'm pleased with it but am hoping for some decent updates to improve speed. For 30 quid you can't grumble, you'd struggle to get a decent wireless doorbell for that and it certainly does all the basics just fine. The real-time answering stuff (speed wise) isn't amazing at the moment but it records just fine for security purposes :)