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Integration guide / Camera audio

Ring Camera Messages

My integration for playing your own spoken messages through the speakers on compatible Ring cameras and doorbells, using Home Assistant text-to-speech and a Ring-MQTT bridge.

Install and connectProject and setup guide (opens in a new tab)
Installation
In the Marketplace catalog
Connection
MQTT to a separately running Ring-MQTT bridge
This guide
Describes the published v0.1.0 release

Updated . Documentation checked .

What it is

Ring Camera Messages sends your own spoken messages through the built-in speaker on a compatible Ring camera or video doorbell. Home Assistant turns the text into audio with the text-to-speech provider you choose, publishes it over MQTT, and a Ring-MQTT bridge plays it through the camera you picked.

The bridge has to be a Ring-MQTT build that includes speaker playback requests. The project publishes one as a standalone Docker build, the Ring-MQTT Speaker Bridge, based on Ring-MQTT 5.9.3 with an opt-in speaker request feature. That bridge uses Ring's cloud services and needs a Ring account.

Design notes

This guide covers the published v0.1.0 release. It does not describe a personal installation. The project's README says playback was tested on a Ring Doorbell Pro and a Floodlight Cam Pro.

  • Saved messages as buttons

    Each saved message becomes a button entity with its own camera, text and optional volume boost, so it can sit on a dashboard or be pressed from an automation.

  • Messages from automations

    The speak action takes a camera ID and plain text or a template. A Frigate face or object event can trigger it, as the project's example greeting shows.

Why this design matters

A Ring camera already has a speaker for Two-Way Talk. This makes it possible to use that speaker from Home Assistant without opening the Ring app.

What it can do

  • Saved message buttons

    Add, edit and remove messages from the integration's Configure menu. Each one is a button entity you can test before adding it to a dashboard.

  • Speak through Ring camera

    An action for automations and scripts that takes a stable camera ID and the message text, which can be a template.

  • List cameras

    An action that returns the stable camera IDs the bridge can play through, for use in the speak action.

  • Volume boost per message

    An optional boost from 0 to 18 dB for quiet presets. A peak limiter caps the signal, so the audible increase may be smaller.

Install and connect

Anyone who can publish to the speaker topic can speak through your cameras

Restrict write access to the bridge's speaker request topic on your MQTT broker to trusted publishers, as the project's README says, and keep the bridge's data directory private: it holds the Ring session.

Before you start

  • A running Ring-MQTT bridge with speaker playback requests, such as the Ring-MQTT Speaker Bridge v0.1.0, authenticated to Ring, with camera support enabled and "enable_speaker_requests": true in its configuration.
  • Home Assistant 2026.11.0 or newer, with Marketplace access and a configured text-to-speech entity. The optional volume boost uses FFmpeg on the Home Assistant host.
  • One MQTT broker connected to both Home Assistant and the bridge. A clip at the maximum length needs an MQTT payload allowance of about 4.36 MB.
  • A Ring camera or video doorbell with Two-Way Talk and Live View enabled. Frigate is optional and needed only for automations that use its events.

  1. Set up the bridge

    Download the Ring-MQTT Speaker Bridge image and example configuration from its release page, set the broker address and "enable_speaker_requests": true, and start the container. Open its web page on the Docker host to sign in to Ring. Run only one bridge with the same MQTT prefix.

  2. Install from the Marketplace

    In Settings > Marketplace, search for Ring Camera Messages, install it and restart Home Assistant. If it does not appear in search yet, use Add from link with the project's GitHub repository.

  3. Connect the integration

    In Settings > Devices & services, add Ring Camera Messages, choose the text-to-speech provider and enter the bridge's MQTT topic prefix, usually ring.

  4. Add and test a message

    Open Configure, select Add message, choose a camera and enter the text. Press the new button and listen at the camera before adding it to a dashboard.

Limits and caveats

  • One Home Assistant instance connects to one bridge. The bridge can serve several cameras but plays one clip at a time, up to 17 seconds per clip.
  • Playback has been tested on a Ring Doorbell Pro and a Floodlight Cam Pro. Other models have not been verified.
  • A successful action means the Ring playback session ended, not that anyone heard the message. Check speaker volume and audibility at the camera.
  • A Frigate face update can be published more than once and can be below the recognition threshold, so greeting automations need a name check and a cooldown.
  • The prebuilt bridge image is for Linux x86-64 (amd64); other platforms build it from the tagged source.

Sources and next steps