On our most recent IoT Podcast episode, Scott called in with a question that’s rather timely since this week was Apple’s WorldWide Developer Conference event. He wants to know if he can view video footage from a Ring doorbell on an Apple TV set-top box.
The answer is yes, although not from a native solution. At least not yet.
This week Apple did show off video camera viewing on an Apple TV box, a new feature debuting later this year, but that’s likely only to work with HomeKit supported video doorbells.
Currently, Ring is not one of those products although the company has been saying it planned to add HomeKit support for several years now. Even though Amazon bought Ring back in 2018, HomeKit support is still on the table as far as we know. We’re still waiting to see it happen.
To get video doorbell footage on an Apple TV today, you need to use Homebridge: A DIY setup that emulates HomeKit on your own hardware.
You don’t need a heavy-duty computer to run Homebridge though. The software works on a minimal piece of hardware like the $5 Raspberry Pi Zero, for example. So you don’t have to invest much money to implement Homebridge: just a little time and effort by downloading and installing the software from Homebridge’s GitHub site.
One you have Homebridge running, you can add customized plug-ins developed by the Homebridge community and there just happens to be one for Ring products.
I did some digging in the developer’s GitHub repository and found that he added support for live video feeds from Ring doorbells to Apple devices, including the Apple TV back in 2019. So the Ring plugin should show a Ring doorbell feed, although some commenters in the software repository noted that the Apple TV requires a reboot after plugin installation.
Until Amazon decides to add native HomeKit support to Ring then, the Homebridge method should work, making it a little bit easier to use that Ring video doorbell and an Apple TV. You just need to spend a small amount of money for hardware and get Homebridge running on your network.
To hear Scott’s question in full, as well as our full discussion, tune in to the IoT Podcast below:
Hi Kevin, Homebridge user here. If you want to be able to process any video stream, you’d need at least a Raspberry Pi 3B, and I would recommend the new Raspberry Pi 4 for better latency. The tiny Raspberry Pi Zero won’t work for this, but you could still use it with any other homebridge plugin.