Hey Chris, loved the video. I'm installing my G4 next week....so i've got a few days to find and normalize/limit wav files. I too am a person who likes to get under the hood to see how things work. What I liked about your video was that not only did you show the steps....but you explained exactly what each step does (both in the ssh and wav editing). I really wish more people would take that approach...rather than those people who outline do "A" then "B" without even telling you what it's doing behind the scenes. It always makes we wary to follow those type of instructions. This was awesome.
Thanks! For me the how and why is the most important part of an explanation. All it takes is one software update to break the syntax of a command, but if you understand why you’re doing certain things then it’s usually easy to work around problems. Hope you enjoy the camera!
@@christiansakanai9812 Now I'm just on the hunt for some good online wav file resources...I could likely scrape the sounds myself into a wav file....but not sure how good I'd be at recording it myself.
Well it's been a year and now I have this product. Surprised they haven't made it official to compete with Nest's holiday chimes that you have no control over when they appear and disappear. I will be doing this but my doorbell is powered by a GFCI that trips when my holiday lights get too wet... So I can see myself having to do this a couple times throughout the holidays ahead. Thanks for the video!
For the past year+ is was just able to SSH into the doorbell, rename "/sounds/chime.wav" to "chime.wav.old", upload my custom sound with the name "chime.wav", and restart the sounds and leds process. And it worked great. But recently that process wasn't working, I am guessing due to an update. When I did these steps today the custom sound would play briefly and then the doorbell would reboot, which sucks because I wanted to have a special Halloween doorbell. After playing around with it, I notice that they now have a "sounds_ring_button" folder in the "sounds" directory that contains "Chime.wav" (big C). Sadly this folder is read only so the same rename trick isn't possible. But I did get it to work. Like in the video I altered the sounds and leds config file, but I pointed it to a wav file that doesn't exist (i.e. ""sounds_ring_button": "../../../../../var/etc/sounds/HauntedMansionDoorbell.wav") AND then I did the usual rename "/sounds/chime.wav" and restart sounds and leds process. AND ITS WORKING! My guess is that the doorbell is pointing to the new "sounds_ring_button" folder, for the config but has a fall back to the original "sounds/chime.wav" if the file is not found. Ubiquiti if you are reading this PLEASE just make this an official process thru Unifi Protect
I followed your great instructions. Learned a lot. But could not get it to use custom.wav. I tried different file paths. I tried changing permissions to match the others in folder. I killed processes and even rebooted doorbell. In the end I used WINSCP to rename chime.wav to chimeold.wav and then uploaded my new file as chime.wav. Works great. I now have a great Halloween sounding ring tone using a snippet of Ghost busters theme song.
why not just write a batch file so we can download and run by changing IP via powershell? great video!!! Very informative... I'll defiantly be doing this for Christmas. :)
Great video, super technical. But do you know if it is possible to disable the white light(for G4 pro), the one pointing to the ground, via ssh? Thanks.
You said you're a game developer for Activision. Can you make a video describing your thoughts on the PS5 and Xbox One as far how easy is it to program code and are the next gen features really all their cracked up to be. Me and many other people would be really interested in what your thoughts are on that. And if you make that video I will be really interested in watching it.
Chris, excellent and thanks. Is there a way to be able to turn off or mute the chime for a predefined time? A simple turn on and off will do. I'm not a programmer but your steps are pretty clear to follow. I have Windows 10 and I take it the steps and similar. Thanks 👍
I think this is possible via editing the correct json file. then create a scheduled task on some box which copies (scp) in the correct json file at the specified time.
Do the sounds get deleted on hard reboot if you put them in the /var/etc/persistent/ folder (or a subfolder of)? It sounds like that whole folder would be persistent? Thanks for the great guide!
Christian Sakanai Ah poop! I’ll have to think of a creative way to set up an offline check then run a script to copy it back when it comes back online lol. ☺️ Hopefully Ubiquity will just add a ‘upload WAV’ option in the interface. I might have a play with the other options in that file too as some of the LED and speaker settings seem interesting!
The fact that they made all these settings configurable gives me hope that future support is planned. I haven't played with most of the other settings yet so reply back if you find anything interesting. I'm sure others would want to know.
@@ferdinandmunoz861 It’s on my ToDo list lol, will have a better look at it. Mostly it was the down detection without slamming my server constantly checking. I was hoping to try and use the offline alert emails as a trigger but parsing those also needs something running to wait for that to come in lol. Will sit and play some more and post it on PasteBin etc. when it’s in a working state!
The default message ("Welcome") can be changed through a psql command on the unifi-protect NVR (DMPro in my case) but I did not find any other way to change (translate ...) the two other messages, nor the cute animation. It would be SUCH a great update to be able to modify those screen. By Default, I would love to have my family name on the doorbell and then translated message for my country (we don't let package at the front door like in other countries).
@christiansakanai9812, I am going to use customize sounds for major holidays and want to revert back to the original sound on the doorbell. What is the easiest way to do this? Should I reboot or factory restore?
Worked great; however, my door bell installed an update last night and now it keeps crashing every time I load the custom wav file. Anyone else experiencing this issue? Know of a work-around?
I'm almost 100% certain that this is because your transformer is too weak. I replaced by 16V 10VA transformer with a 16V 30VA one and mine stopped rebooting. Still doesn't work, though...
If only there was an easy/affordable way to get the low voltage current feeding the G4 to be UPS protected...so effectively never have it run out of power. That would keep it from losing the sound if the power blips out (seems to do that regularly where I live.
Doorbell only accepts AC PoE is DC and not correct amperage. Unless you found a way to convert. Also if using the optional Ubiquiti doorbell plug in power supply just plug that into a UPS.
It looks like this has been patched bij UBNT. Whatever I did it never uses de custom.wav. nevertheless I used your video to get access to the camera's with SSH. a comment below stated that you can just rename te file with the mv (move) command and upload a new chime.wav, this also worked for me.
Unfortunately, it seems like this has been patched out... Messing with this config file doesn't change the sound my doorbell makes and there are references to the various wav files within /bin/ubnt_sounds_leds binary now. I don't know whether these were always there or not... Maybe you could patch the binary, and maybe you'll get lucky and you can fit a longer name in there, but if my understanding of the problem I'm running into is correct, that just sent the difficulty of this fun little tweak through the roof.
Indeed, this is disappointing. The 'Chime.wav' is the only sound mine will play. It cannot play custom WAV sounds or even the alternate default loaded into the config file 'Ding-dong.wav'. This would have been a fun halloween project.
@@erikzweigle I just did this today. I followed the instructions in the video like what was in the video which didn't work. So what I did instead is I just replaced "chime.wav" with my audio file with the same name. This removes the need to do any editing of files or pointing to a new file. Note the "chime.wav" is case sensitive. I replaced the one in the file /var/etc/sounds/
@@2zum I'm glad you got it working on your end. Unfortunately, my var/etc/sounds/chime.wav is read-only and scp will not overwrite it. I need to modify the ubnt_sounds_leds.conf file to back out of the usr/etc/sounds/sounds_ring_buttons directory because my Chime.wav is playing from that location and it is a read-only file as well. I tried your suggestion again in the var/etc/sounds/sounds_ring_button directory but run into the same read-only problem. I can only save to the var/etc/sounds/ directory using a unique name. I've tried elevating permissions with sudo to overwrite but have not had much luck. Any suggestions are welcome.
@@erikzweigle Thats interesting. I know the Chime.wav in /sounds_ring_buttons was read only as well but not in the other folder. I used WinSCP instead of native SCP from say a mac so I wonder if its any different? I copied the chime.wav and Chime.wav from both locations deleted the chime.wav from var/etc/sounds/chime.wav then uploaded my chime.wav. Sounds like I just got lucky some how.
@@2zum Thanks for the additional hints. I was finally able to get it working with your latest suggestion. Since 'scp' could not overwrite the existing read-only file I tried 'rm' removing the original chime.wav first and then placing my new chime.wav that contained the audio file I wanted to play into var/etc/sounds and that was successful. I also went back to the ubnt_sounds_leds.conf file and replaced the "../../../../var/etc/sounds" with just "chime.wave". Just mentioning that again so that anyone else who follows this thread remembers to do it.
Have you tried any path traversal by changing the wav path to be an absolute path or a full relative path rather than just a filename? You might then be able to point at a file in the persistent folder instead. Edit: NVM just watched the rest of the video and see you are doing relative paths to the sounds directory. Seems odd you wouldn't be able to put it in the persistent directory though.
Hey Chris, loved the video. I'm installing my G4 next week....so i've got a few days to find and normalize/limit wav files. I too am a person who likes to get under the hood to see how things work. What I liked about your video was that not only did you show the steps....but you explained exactly what each step does (both in the ssh and wav editing). I really wish more people would take that approach...rather than those people who outline do "A" then "B" without even telling you what it's doing behind the scenes. It always makes we wary to follow those type of instructions. This was awesome.
Thanks! For me the how and why is the most important part of an explanation. All it takes is one software update to break the syntax of a command, but if you understand why you’re doing certain things then it’s usually easy to work around problems. Hope you enjoy the camera!
@@christiansakanai9812 Now I'm just on the hunt for some good online wav file resources...I could likely scrape the sounds myself into a wav file....but not sure how good I'd be at recording it myself.
You have convinced me to get one of these doorbells. Thanks!
This was super helpful for this year's Halloween escapades. Thanks!!
1st of all, great work & video! :)
And now.......! they support it! It took a while, but hey, it's here! :)
Do they? Where? I can change the sound of a connected chime in the UI, but not the sound of the outdoor doorbell. At least I don't see where?
Thank you very much! Was able to use this successfully on Protect 2.8.35.
This is the kind of content I'm looking for! Insta Sub. :) Great work, sir!
Excellent. Been looking to do this for a while. Thanks for the how-to!
Yes... i have made my decision, i want this doorbell now.
Well it's been a year and now I have this product. Surprised they haven't made it official to compete with Nest's holiday chimes that you have no control over when they appear and disappear. I will be doing this but my doorbell is powered by a GFCI that trips when my holiday lights get too wet... So I can see myself having to do this a couple times throughout the holidays ahead. Thanks for the video!
For the past year+ is was just able to SSH into the doorbell, rename "/sounds/chime.wav" to "chime.wav.old", upload my custom sound with the name "chime.wav", and restart the sounds and leds process. And it worked great. But recently that process wasn't working, I am guessing due to an update. When I did these steps today the custom sound would play briefly and then the doorbell would reboot, which sucks because I wanted to have a special Halloween doorbell.
After playing around with it, I notice that they now have a "sounds_ring_button" folder in the "sounds" directory that contains "Chime.wav" (big C). Sadly this folder is read only so the same rename trick isn't possible. But I did get it to work.
Like in the video I altered the sounds and leds config file, but I pointed it to a wav file that doesn't exist (i.e. ""sounds_ring_button": "../../../../../var/etc/sounds/HauntedMansionDoorbell.wav") AND then I did the usual rename "/sounds/chime.wav" and restart sounds and leds process. AND ITS WORKING!
My guess is that the doorbell is pointing to the new "sounds_ring_button" folder, for the config but has a fall back to the original "sounds/chime.wav" if the file is not found. Ubiquiti if you are reading this PLEASE just make this an official process thru Unifi Protect
Awesome video. Thanks for explaining your audio workflow, too!
I followed your great instructions. Learned a lot. But could not get it to use custom.wav. I tried different file paths. I tried changing permissions to match the others in folder. I killed processes and even rebooted doorbell.
In the end I used WINSCP to rename chime.wav to chimeold.wav and then uploaded my new file as chime.wav. Works great. I now have a great Halloween sounding ring tone using a snippet of Ghost busters theme song.
I ran into the same issue.
This was really good, thanks mate!
why not just write a batch file so we can download and run by changing IP via powershell? great video!!! Very informative... I'll defiantly be doing this for Christmas. :)
Can you pass off your christmas wav file. It was awesome :). thanks again for this hack.
Anyone able to enable ssh? (v3.1.16 unvr) (v2.10.10 OS) I cant seem to enable it. Help would be appreciated :)
Great mod thanks for sharing !!!
I did added the turn on and off chime on the ubiquiti forum and maybe that is a feature they will add in the future.
Great video, super technical. But do you know if it is possible to disable the white light(for G4 pro), the one pointing to the ground, via ssh? Thanks.
Thx. Great video.
You said you're a game developer for Activision. Can you make a video describing your thoughts on the PS5 and Xbox One as far how easy is it to program code and are the next gen features really all their cracked up to be. Me and many other people would be really interested in what your thoughts are on that. And if you make that video I will be really interested in watching it.
Chris, excellent and thanks. Is there a way to be able to turn off or mute the chime for a predefined time? A simple turn on and off will do. I'm not a programmer but your steps are pretty clear to follow. I have Windows 10 and I take it the steps and similar. Thanks 👍
I think this is possible via editing the correct json file. then create a scheduled task on some box which copies (scp) in the correct json file at the specified time.
Protect v2.0 appears to have broken this :-(
Do the sounds get deleted on hard reboot if you put them in the /var/etc/persistent/ folder (or a subfolder of)? It sounds like that whole folder would be persistent?
Thanks for the great guide!
Yes, it still does. I was hoping that folder would truly be persistent but it all seems to go away.
Christian Sakanai Ah poop! I’ll have to think of a creative way to set up an offline check then run a script to copy it back when it comes back online lol. ☺️
Hopefully Ubiquity will just add a ‘upload WAV’ option in the interface.
I might have a play with the other options in that file too as some of the LED and speaker settings seem interesting!
The fact that they made all these settings configurable gives me hope that future support is planned.
I haven't played with most of the other settings yet so reply back if you find anything interesting. I'm sure others would want to know.
@@iawa2k Any luck writing this batch script ? Please let me know, thanks. :)
@@ferdinandmunoz861 It’s on my ToDo list lol, will have a better look at it. Mostly it was the down detection without slamming my server constantly checking. I was hoping to try and use the offline alert emails as a trigger but parsing those also needs something running to wait for that to come in lol. Will sit and play some more and post it on PasteBin etc. when it’s in a working state!
NIce one , thank u .
Great tutorial! Have you also looked at the welcome text and inserting text art in there, just like the prefilled custom messages ?
The default message ("Welcome") can be changed through a psql command on the unifi-protect NVR (DMPro in my case) but I did not find any other way to change (translate ...) the two other messages, nor the cute animation. It would be SUCH a great update to be able to modify those screen. By Default, I would love to have my family name on the doorbell and then translated message for my country (we don't let package at the front door like in other countries).
great! how long before they add this i wonder. Perhaps they will release a firmware update to do this in protect.
@christiansakanai9812, I am going to use customize sounds for major holidays and want to revert back to the original sound on the doorbell. What is the easiest way to do this? Should I reboot or factory restore?
can you do the same with the smart chime ?
What’s the max length of the wav?
Worked great; however, my door bell installed an update last night and now it keeps crashing every time I load the custom wav file. Anyone else experiencing this issue? Know of a work-around?
You ever get this working? I believe I am experiencing the same issue.
I'm almost 100% certain that this is because your transformer is too weak. I replaced by 16V 10VA transformer with a 16V 30VA one and mine stopped rebooting. Still doesn't work, though...
I had the same issue, but I fixed it. See my comment in the main thread
If only there was an easy/affordable way to get the low voltage current feeding the G4 to be UPS protected...so effectively never have it run out of power. That would keep it from losing the sound if the power blips out (seems to do that regularly where I live.
Use POE - look it up - to power it, and it will be kept up by the UPS that keeps up the rest of your network equipment.
Doorbell only accepts AC PoE is DC and not correct amperage. Unless you found a way to convert. Also if using the optional Ubiquiti doorbell plug in power supply just plug that into a UPS.
It looks like this has been patched bij UBNT.
Whatever I did it never uses de custom.wav. nevertheless I used your video to get access to the camera's with SSH.
a comment below stated that you can just rename te file with the mv (move) command and upload a new chime.wav, this also worked for me.
i just followed the video and all does work fine for me. and i did this just days ago.
@@skynett81 Good to hear! We have had a few updates since oktober so maybe they changed it back
Unfortunately, it seems like this has been patched out... Messing with this config file doesn't change the sound my doorbell makes and there are references to the various wav files within /bin/ubnt_sounds_leds binary now. I don't know whether these were always there or not... Maybe you could patch the binary, and maybe you'll get lucky and you can fit a longer name in there, but if my understanding of the problem I'm running into is correct, that just sent the difficulty of this fun little tweak through the roof.
Indeed, this is disappointing. The 'Chime.wav' is the only sound mine will play. It cannot play custom WAV sounds or even the alternate default loaded into the config file 'Ding-dong.wav'. This would have been a fun halloween project.
@@erikzweigle I just did this today. I followed the instructions in the video like what was in the video which didn't work. So what I did instead is I just replaced "chime.wav" with my audio file with the same name. This removes the need to do any editing of files or pointing to a new file. Note the "chime.wav" is case sensitive. I replaced the one in the file /var/etc/sounds/
@@2zum I'm glad you got it working on your end. Unfortunately, my var/etc/sounds/chime.wav is read-only and scp will not overwrite it. I need to modify the ubnt_sounds_leds.conf file to back out of the usr/etc/sounds/sounds_ring_buttons directory because my Chime.wav is playing from that location and it is a read-only file as well. I tried your suggestion again in the var/etc/sounds/sounds_ring_button directory but run into the same read-only problem. I can only save to the var/etc/sounds/ directory using a unique name. I've tried elevating permissions with sudo to overwrite but have not had much luck. Any suggestions are welcome.
@@erikzweigle Thats interesting. I know the Chime.wav in /sounds_ring_buttons was read only as well but not in the other folder. I used WinSCP instead of native SCP from say a mac so I wonder if its any different? I copied the chime.wav and Chime.wav from both locations deleted the chime.wav from var/etc/sounds/chime.wav then uploaded my chime.wav. Sounds like I just got lucky some how.
@@2zum Thanks for the additional hints. I was finally able to get it working with your latest suggestion. Since 'scp' could not overwrite the existing read-only file I tried 'rm' removing the original chime.wav first and then placing my new chime.wav that contained the audio file I wanted to play into var/etc/sounds and that was successful. I also went back to the ubnt_sounds_leds.conf file and replaced the "../../../../var/etc/sounds" with just "chime.wave". Just mentioning that again so that anyone else who follows this thread remembers to do it.
Have you tried any path traversal by changing the wav path to be an absolute path or a full relative path rather than just a filename? You might then be able to point at a file in the persistent folder instead.
Edit: NVM just watched the rest of the video and see you are doing relative paths to the sounds directory. Seems odd you wouldn't be able to put it in the persistent directory though.
You can point to the persistent folder and copy your wave there, but in my testing all files other than the configs were still removed during reboot.