I don't currently have a video ringtone. Just an old, well-wired sound, which we practically never respond to and terrifies our cats in a very "foreign / dangerous" way.

I have a docking server with multiple homebridge instances and multiple esp8266 / HAA devices and an esp8266 / tasmota device and a ton of homebridge plugins. I have zero homekit licensed devices here.

I know that things with the video ringtone have received a boost in iOS / tvOS 14. My question is quite simple - however, what defines a video sound with homekit? I could, for example, connect my existing ringtone as a switch at the moment and install a separate camera and have it homekit accept it as a "video ringtone" that would make the ringtone appear on AppleTV / iOS ? The same question applies to motion detection - as I like some of the things that say a ringtone is possible, but I'm not a big fan of a cloud provider that has a clear and clear window in my world. The fact that Ring has youtube videos posted * by * Ring of customer ringtones is at the same time kind of nice, but it also creeps me in. I know that obviously Apple has a "window" in my house to be able to push that video to me, whether it's in the app or by pressing the video ringtone, but so far, Apple's privacy history has been decent. It's not perfect, but I can consciously say it's trying.

If I could do something similar to what I just described above, this is the path I think I want to take. Get a weatherproof camera or two, plug the switch up momentarily (or trigger the movement and make the homebridge see that movement as a switch) and do so. This way they can connect everything to the network, record videos on a local video share that plays outside the place where it is protected behind encryption along the way. If this cannot be done, I would just like to know what is and what is not possible.