Do you want to receive alerts on your phone when someone appears in front of your house and also when they ring the doorbell, being able to communicate with this person and enjoying many interesting functions?
Today we are going to take a look at the details of the Aqara G4 SVD-C03 smart video door entry system that has been adopted in a user’s home.
Why is the SVD-C03 Aqara G4 priced like this?
Aqara usually offers devices with a good price/performance ratio, as evidenced by the G4 SVD-C03 smart doorbell, which integrates multiple functions at an affordable price.
Advantages and disadvantages of the Aqara SVD-C03
Advantages
- Ease of installation: Battery and WIFI powered, this Aqara SVD-C03 video door entry system can be installed in minutes.
- Battery or wired operation: You have the flexibility to choose between battery or wired connection.
- Picture quality: The image quality is 1080P Full HD, which is sufficient to clearly recognise a person.
- Local storage: The doorbell inside your home integrates a micro SD port that allows you to store events with a capacity of up to 512 Gb.
- Cloud storage: You have up to 7 days of free cloud storage.
- No monthly fees: You do not have to pay monthly fees to use your G4 SVD-C03 video door phone.
- Two-way communication: You can listen and talk to a person in front of the video door phone from your phone.
- Night vision: You can see a person present even at night thanks to the infrared mode.
- Masking zone: In order not to receive false alerts or to preserve the privacy of your neighbours, it is possible to define recording zones.
- Anti-sabotage: If someone steals the video door entry system, it can be recorded and an alarm will sound.
- Do not disturb mode: You can program times when the doorbell will not ring (for example, at night).
- Local Artificial Intelligence: Allows you to recognise people in front of the door and you can receive notifications on your phone and create automations according to each person.
- Customisable voice: Being able to modify the voice can be interesting, especially if you have children at home.
- Homekit compatible: This Doorbell Aqara is compatible with the Homekit ecosystem.
- Compatible with voice assistants: When someone rings the doorbell, you can receive an audible alert in voice assistants and also a visual alert with voice assistant models with display.
- Price: This smart video door phone SVD-C03 is good value for money.
Disadvantages
- Does not control a gate: As it does not have a dry contact output, you cannot open a gate with the Aqara SVD-C03 video door phone.
- No Onvif or RTSP integration: You cannot retrieve the stream in Home Assistant as it does not integrate Onvif or RTSP.
- No integrated Ethernet port: It would have been interesting to have an Ethernet port for better communication reliability if you choose this option.
Aqara SVD-C03 user tutorial
Let’s discover all the details of the Aqara SVD-C03 WIFI video door entry system.
General characteristics of SVD-C03
If we open the packaging, we have different elements.
To begin with, we can see 2 main devices: the video door entry system and the Aqara doorbell.
Features of the Aqara video door entry system
The video door phone is installed outdoors and Aqara recommends having this device under a porch or in a shaded area for longevity of use being resistant to direct sunlight, low and high temperatures from -18°C to +50°C and rainy days.
This video door entry system communicates with a proprietary protocol with the doorbell and this doorbell is connected via WIFI acting as an intermediary for the interactions with your telephone and the video door entry system.
Its dimensions are 141,5 × 65 × 30,4 mm and it is black in colour.
Aesthetically, it’s a matter of taste, but I think it’s an attractive device.
At the top, we have the camera with a 162° field of view.
The image quality is 1080P Full HD, which is sufficient to accurately view the live recording.
We can zoom in with our phone if we want to see a specific area more closely.
And we can also see at night thanks to its night vision, which is another interesting detail to take into account.
The detection angle of the PIR motion sensor is 120° horizontally and 80° vertically and this PIR motion sensor can detect at about 4 metres with high sensitivity and about 2 metres with low sensitivity.
Every time someone appears in front of the camera, you will get the notification on your phone and you can also know if it is someone you know or someone you don’t know, as we will see below.
We have a two-way audio so we can listen and talk to the person who appears in front of our house, from our phone, having a sufficient audio quality to understand communications correctly.
And a very interesting detail is that we can modify the voice, as we will see below, offering more privacy and security, especially if you have children at home and you are not present at the moment.
On the lower part, this video door entry system integrates a large-sized bell button, which facilitates the use of this device by any user.
Every time someone presses this button it will ring the doorbell inside your house.
And this button has an LED indicator that lights up blue when someone is detected in front of the door station, which is especially interesting at night to see where to press.
It also turns red when you press this button or when you are watching the video door entry image live on your phone.
Underneath, we have a QR code to link it to HomeKit if we want to use it with this ecosystem.
At the power supply level, on the side, you have to unscrew the plate.
And as you can, you have 2 options.
This doorbell can be powered by 6 AA LR6 batteries and therefore offers great flexibility in terms of installation.
But you also have the possibility to wire it to a 12V-24V AC or 8V-24V DC power supply being recommended to avoid having to do battery maintenance every x months, of course, if you have the possibility to do this electrical wiring.
Battery life is 4 months according to Aqara for 35 device activations and video recording of 6-second events per day.
Of course, it will depend on the intensity of use of the device and in the case of the user, we have installed it on 11 May 2024, so it has been installed for more than 8 months and has not yet been maintained.
These batteries can also be used as an emergency battery if you have the video door entry system connected to the mains when there is a power failure.
Perhaps it would have been interesting to have a rechargeable battery or even better, a solar panel so as not to need any maintenance, as we can see more and more with smart cameras and other smart devices.
Next to it, there is also a reset button that can be useful in some contexts.
It should be noted that this device has an anti-theft function, i.e. if someone tries to dismantle the device, an alarm will sound and it will be recorded.
We have an additional support in case we want to tilt the video door entry system for a better recording angle of the image.
Features of the Aqara doorbell
Now, let’s look at the details of the bell.
To begin with, it is 65.2 × 65 × 28.4 mm in size and is also black in colour.
It must be installed inside your home and the Aqara company recommends a maximum distance of 5 metres between the video door entry system and the doorbell, although in the case of the user, he is using it at a greater distance. But in order to be reliable, it is advisable to follow these instructions.
Communicates wirelessly with WIFI technology. You must have a good WIFI network to be able to use this device correctly. Perhaps it would have been interesting in some contexts to have an Ethernet port if we want the best reliability, although WIFI communication is convenient to install it easily in an area we want.
Every time someone will ring on the video door phone button, this buzzer will ring.
This doorbell connects to the mains via USB-C.
However, only the cable is supplied, so you need to buy an additional power adapter to plug it in.
An interesting detail is that we have a micro SD port and we can install a micro SD card of up to 512 GB which is not included. You will be able to record locally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and the recording time will depend on the capacity of your micro SD card.
However, Aqara indicates that the recordings are made 24 hours a day and 7 days a week only if the video door phone is wired to the mains, probably so that the batteries do not wear out quickly if you are using batteries.
What is interesting is that this storage is located in the doorbell that you will have inside the house, so if a thief steals the video door entry system, you will have the image recorded and stored and you will be able to know who it was.
We can see a QR code to link it to HomeKit.
It incorporates a 95dB siren that can be used as an alarm siren.
We also have an LED indicator, blue when there are no events and red when someone rings the doorbell.
We have a button at the top to link it to our application.
Now, let’s find out how to link it to our phone.
How to link the Aqara G4 doorbell with the Aqara app
To use our video door entry system, once we have connected the two devices to their power supply, we must go to the Aqara application.
We must click on “More”, “Add accessory”.
And we look for the Aqara video door entry system in the “Security cameras” section.
Now, we have to press the buzzer button for more than 10 seconds and release this button when the light turns yellow and flashes and we have an audio confirmation. We can confirm and click on “Next step”.
Now, if you have an iPhone, you can scan the QR code on the doorbell to use it with the HomeKit “Home” app, although it is not mandatory. We can customise its use with this app.
Now we have our video door entry system available in the Aqara application.
By the way, in order not to have any complications when using this video door entry system, I recommend that you check the device updates from this application as they correct different technical faults and it should be noted that when you update the firmware of an Aqara device you do not have the latest firmware, you will have the next firmware to the one you had previously, so you must repeat the update process until you get the latest version.
How to install the Aqara G4 Video Door Station SVD-C03
To install the Aqara SVD-C03 video door entry system, you have 2 options:
The first is to stick it on the wall with its default built-in sticker on the base of the video door entry system or on the tilt plate.
This has been the choice of the user who has stuck it in front of the door of his house. But after months of use, the user decided to put his door phone on the gate of his house and indicated to me that the communications are very reliable although Aqara recommends to have it 5 metres away from the doorbell.
The second option is to fix this video door entry system with plugs and screws.
And for the bell, you have a sticker on its base to fix it on a wall or furniture.
Detailed functions of the Aqara G4 SVD-C03 Video Door Station
Now let’s discover the detailed functions of the SVD-C03 video door phone.
Above, we have the communication signal icons and the video door entry system battery to know if it is working properly. We can see in real time the recording of the video door entry system from this Aqara application.
Every time a person appears in front of the video door phone, it is automatically detected and a notification is received on the phone. We also get a notification when they ring our door phone and when they wait without any response from us.
By opening this notification, we have access to the video in real time and it will be possible to put it in full screen and zoom in to see an area with better precision.
We can hit a photo when we want to take a picture of the current recording and store it on our phone.
We also have the “Rec” option that allows us to record a video this time, which will be stored in our album on our phone.
We can communicate with the person who appears in front of the video door phone and also listen to what he/she says.
And the very interesting thing is that we can keep the original voice, that is, our default voice or change our voice for a gentleman, a robot or a clown, being interesting options if we do not want a stranger to know that our children are at home without adults, being a detail that the user has mentioned to me as we have 2 children of 10 and 12 years old, being big enough to be left alone but a possible intruder could take advantage of this situation.
In the centre, we can see a history of all video door phone activities such as when someone rings the doorbell and when someone tries to dismantle the doorbell with recordings of a few seconds for each activity.
We have 7 days of free cloud storage for free, but you also have the option of local storage by adding a microSD card of up to 512 GB.
In “Timeline”, we can see the activities recorded by date in our album and we can also see a timeline of activities if we have a microSD card inserted.
And “Service” gives us access to Aqara’s premium services of video storage and more.
If we click on the top right, we access the advanced options of the device.
We can see the signal strength between our video door entry system and the doorbell to know if we have it installed at a sufficient distance.
We can configure different options of the buzzer as a more economical mode of use.
We can deactivate or not the buzzer LED.
An interesting option is to set a time when the doorbell does not ring, e.g. during the night.
We can adjust the volume of voice transmission and call volume from 0 to 100%.
We can enable or disable the forced disassembly alarm to receive a notification and have the buzzer alarm at 95 dB when someone tries to disassemble the buzzer. And you can turn it off when you want to replace batteries. And we can receive high and low temperature alarms.
Now, if we go to “Ringtone settings”, we can customise the ringtone with 3 different options. We can adjust the ringer volume from 0 to 100%.
And we can even import a custom ringtone.
Under “Video settings”, we can activate or not a time watermark, activate or not a lens correction.
Night vision can be configured.
And another very interesting detail is “Privacy masking” which allows you to hide some areas.
Either not to record these areas for privacy reasons or also not to trigger events in these areas.
Under “Detection settings”, we can activate a local facial recognition of up to 30 people. And we can customise the settings with notifications when people are detected and automatic recordings. Also, we can define periods and frequency of detection and adjust the sensitivity of face detection. We can customise these same settings with a person detected without being recognised, when someone has rung the doorbell and in case of tampering alerts.
Under “Face management”, we can add faces and name each of these faces by taking a photo.
And so, our video door entry system can alert us depending on which person it has detected, being interesting if we want to know when our children arrived home or also to create different automations depending on each person.
In “Security settings”, we can activate a password so that every time someone wants to see the image of the SVD-C03 video door phone, they will have to enter this password.
In “Albums”, we have access to our screenshots and recordings as well as videos such as when someone rings the doorbell.
“Network information” allows you to view details of your network such as WIFI strength. “Firmware update” is as the name suggests the place where we can update our device.
“Related device items” allows you to view the scenes and automations related to the video door phone.
And “Device Log” allows to know all the recorded activities of the video door phone.
In terms of integrations with other ecosystems, HomeKit is the most outstanding. We integrated it at the start when we were asked to scan the QR code with our iPhone and we have it in the “Home” app, which is an interesting option for centralised management with other Apple-compatible smart devices.
In this application, we can see the live image, talk and listen to the person in front of the SVD-C03 video door phone.
And we can customise some settings such as ringer notifications or also a streaming and recording when we are at home and when we are away from home.
The “Home” application is often more practical and of better quality, in many cases, than applications from different smart device manufacturers.
And also, we can create automations like turning on smart garden lights when someone rings on the SVD-C03 video door phone if we have it all together in this application.
It is also possible to integrate the SVD-C03 video door phone with Google Home and Amazon Alexa voice assistants to receive alerts and view recorded images from these voice assistants.
And Home Assistant integration can be done with HomeKit, but NOT directly via Onvif or RTSP even if we have this SVD-C03 video door phone connected to the mains.
And in terms of price, the SVD-C03 Aqara video door phone is available for less than 120 euros without discounts, which is an interesting price/performance ratio in my opinion.
In short, the Aqara SVD-C03 intelligent video door entry system is an easy-to-install solution as you can connect it to the mains or simply with batteries, being able to have alerts both at home with the doorbell and from your telephone anywhere in the world, and with advanced functions that allow you to personalise your experience.
