Dad uses Ring doorbell camera to say hi to daughter at college every day

A dad in Pennsylvania is getting praise for the creative way he stayed in touch with his daughter while she was away from home in pharmacy school.

Colin Brand, a dad of two daughters from Whitehall, Pennsylvania, used his home's doorbell camera to say hello to his youngest daughter, Emily Brand, a 23-year-old who just finished pharmacy school this month.

The daily hellos, which Emily Brand shared in a now-viral TikTok video, started last fall when the Brand family installed a Ring doorbell camera at their home.

Emily Brand downloaded the Ring app on her phone while away at college in Philadelphia so she could have access to the doorbell camera when she was home. She quickly discovered though that the app gave her a way to check in on her parents from afar.

"I started looking at it pretty much every day just because I wanted to see what was going on at home. I guess I was kind of nosey," Emily Brand told "Good Morning America." "I started to text my dad every time I would see him doing something. Like if he went to the grocery store, I’d text him, ‘What’d you get at the store?' and he dropped a piece of paper on our porch one time when he was leaving him so I texted him that he dropped it."

When Colin Brand realized that his daughter was checking the activity at the front door so often, he started sending her a message every time he passed through the door.

"I knew she was watching and I thought it was a good way for her to know I was thinking about her and hope she was doing well," he told "GMA." "I could say things that were funny or just tell her to have a great day."

"I know she’s under a lot of pressure and has a lot of stuff going on with school, so I’d encourage her and try to break the tension and let her know that we were thinking of her and hoping everything was going well," he added.

In one of Emily Brand's favorite videos, her dad told her he couldn't read her texts because he had been driving and then returned to the front door and read and responded to her texts through the camera. In other instances, she said her dad would jokingly remind her through the camera, "You can call me. There’s this funny thing called the phone."

Emily Brand saved the videos from her dad on her phone and started asking him recently if she could post them on social media for her friends to see.

"I didn’t want her to," said Colin Brand. "I thought nobody wants to see me talking into a doorbell and I looked at them as personal things where I could interact and connect with my daughter."

Colin Brand, whose older daughter works in a hospital emergency room, said he changed his mind as the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. and he realized the videos may be able to bring some cheer to others.

Emily Brand posted the video of her dad's doorbell greetings on TikTok, where it already has more than 840,000 likes.

Both father and daughter said they were blown away and very touched by the response their video has received.

"Honestly, it was kind of emotional to read all the comments that people were leaving," said Emily Brand. "I was really happy that it was bringing people joy just like it brought me joy."