Doorbell Chime on Base Station?

IF SS decided to integrate the doorbell and the base unit (the odds are nearly zero that they ever would), then they would have to redesign the base unit AND the doorbell camera, which would probably take at least 5 years.  And you would have to buy the new base unit and the new doorbell to use the function.  And you probably would not hear the "doorbell" unless your base station was near to where you were and there was not a lot of noise around.  And the doorbell would still need to communicate with SS servers, which could lead to a confusion between the two signal paths.

Come on SimpliSafe, this is an issue, please listen to your customers.  To have to reply on a mobile device to hear my doorbell is insane.  So often those devices are no where around me and people end up knocking on my door.  This is a big downfall with the product.

SS has never listened to their customers  :-)

If you have a doorbell, then you will hear the doorbell when the doorbell is rung.  If you don't have a doorbell, then it is kind of odd that you expect a non-doorbell company to force a non-doorbell system to simulate a doorbell.  Badly (every doorbell I've ever heard is many times louder and easier to hear than the SS base station).

+1 to this thread. Such a huge oversight.

Okay,

My base station is connected to my WIFI I believe because I had to enter the wifi information.
The Doorbell is connected to my Wifi because again I had to enter the information.

The main keypad is connected to the base station ( I assume through wifi ) OR to SimpliSafe servers. either way Wifi.

Also, the sensors on the doors and windows talk to the base station and are able to generate a chime ...

Sending a push-notification from one device with a known MAC address or IP address to another device on the same subnet should be trivial.

The base station receiving the message and creating an audible sound should be trivial as well. After all, the thing is talking to me in english.

My recommendation would be to talk to your engineering team and see why the sensors can do what the doorbell can't. I don't believe this is a technical issue.

In case this is a technical issue I would recommend Doorbell PRO v2.0 which fixes the issue and an update to your firmware to

Sigh.  The keypad talks to the base via an encrypted, proprietary signal.  The base uses Wi-Fi, but only to talk with SS servers.  The sensors talk to the base via the same encrypted signal.  The base is DESIGNED to talk to the sensors, and has the chime function from those sensors built in.  The base Wi-Fi is only used to send/receive information from SS.

Thus, it would require a REDESIGN of the base station to signal a doorbell after the doorbell camera sends a signal to SS and then SS sends a signal to the base.  The SS servers would have to be redesigned and reconfigured as well.  A redesign means buying a new base, and probably several years to develop it.  Plus, I suspect there would be an obnoxious delay from button push, to doorbell sound, which many people wouldn't be able to hear anyway, as the base is easily muted by distance/walls or normal household noise.

You use the word "trivial" a lot.  I don't think that word means what you think it means...  

If you want a change, ask for it (you won't get it, but that's SS for you).  It is silly for you to estimate the difficulty of the task when you don't know how the system is set up, or what can be recoded and what can not.  And any hardware change will cost you money and a very long time.

Changes and fixes are always trivial and easy for those that only have to talk about it rather than actually do it.

Would love this feature too. As a developer I'm inclined to suspect that it really wouldn't be difficult. Not necessarily trivial but given their number of customers I'd say it would be justifiable and affordable.

I work with distributed, low latency communication and there is no reason that with decent wifi you couldn't do this with less than a half second of delay. Also, I know that other SimpliSafe devices have peer to peer communication and if the doorbell has that too it would be possible to do it through that sort of communication. Despite sevensiamesecats assertions I highly doubt it would require a base station redesign. You should only need a firmware update. Also redesign the server? No. Servers are fairly standardized at this point. I suspect it's one of the 5 common server os's and provided but a cloud service distributor like AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. A simple code push, which they would have to have in place already to ensure they could put up security updates, should be all it takes to update the server. I've done several dozen of those this week.

Well if im correct the new update they are pushing out will have the base station chime when the video doorbell is pushed, or am i wrong. Of course still waiting anyway and it doesn't bother me as i would rather see the base station announcing what door is opened.

Wow, mark the date on the calendar.  SS actually made a change requested by customers, which is at odds with their original design direction.  Kudos to them and hopefully it indicates a new direction for the company.

Now we can just hope that the convoluted communications path does not  introduce too much delay between button press and chime sound.

@2020 kys57 this was just recently added. If you turn the feature on, when someone presses the doorbell button your base will chime "ding dong".

Have you tried to read all the manuals to make sure that function is possible at all, check over here? Possibly it is not designed for it. And you will not be able to tune non-existing functions. In my opinion, it would be best to invite an electrician to check everything and connect if possible. It looks like it would be difficult to sort it out on your own. Anyway, let us know the result.

Does anyone know if the update should be pushed out already, or is this feature something we should be expecting in the coming weeks?

Great news!! Love that SS actually delivered on this.  Bonus: sevensiamesecats had to eat crow after all that condescending drivel lol.

Yepper.  I didn't say it couldn't be done, just that it might not be trivial and probably wouldn't be done.  Wrong.  Let's just hope it works reliably and in a timely manner.

FYI, crow can be pretty tasty in a nice garlic ginger sauce.