---
id: edge-front-door
area: edge
level: 3
title: "Artefact — Front door · vision · voice · and a rebuild"
claim: "A doorbell that sees a person · describes the image · speaks to the house and to the visitor · and is currently being rebuilt with a time-of-flight sensor."
confidence: in-progress
period: "2020–"
tech: [ESP32, ESP32-CAM, PIR, mmWave, VL53L0X, MiniMax, Piper, Whisper, Apprise]
metrics: [{label: "voice engines in use", value: 2}, {label: "presence sensing inputs", value: "PIR · mmWave · time-of-flight"}]
artefacts: []
public: true
last_verified: 2026-10-26
tags: [edge, doorbell, vision, voice, artefact]
---

# Artefact — Front door · vision · voice · and a rebuild

**Status: in progress.** The device was built and is being rebuilt. The page states this rather than describing it as finished.

## What the artefact is

A door unit with microphone, speaker, camera, button, PIR and mmWave presence. It detects a person, captures an image, logs it, has the image described, and announces to the house who is at the door before offering a spoken greeting; the visitor's reply is captured and played over the house speakers, with an alert pushed to a phone. Voice output ran on one provider and now runs on a cloned voice with a fallback to a local synthesiser.

## What it proves

Vision, voice and actuation in one device under real constraints — latency that a person at a door will tolerate, and a failure mode that must be polite.

## Limits stated on the page

The measurement it is being rebuilt around: presence detection with a time-of-flight ranging sensor, to stop the unit greeting people who are walking past rather than standing at the door. Until the rebuild is finished the honest label is `in-progress`.

## When it is delivered

Phase 7 for photos and the sensor change. Source: evidence notes section 1.