Door Phone

[walshy002000]

Hi Everyone,

I 'missed' a delivery today at home (the couriers here have an odd way of missing you even if you are home), so I've decided to set up a speaker phone on the door for when I'm out. I'm hoping to find something that I can re-purpose for the door (i.e. not spend $600 on a dedicated solution). I'm running 3CX for voip for the house, and I'm quite happy to use a normal PSTN phone.

Basically I'm just curious what others have done with their front doors and speaker phones, intercoms, etc. so I can see what people have done to get ideas regarding approachs and products to use

[TeleFragger]

guess having a stay home wife helps... i dont have anything setup.. i havent even automated the doorbell yet

[RAM]

Hey, I can't even get the UPS and/or Fedex guys to even ring the doorbell consistantly when the drop off something. So anything I have set up to ring extra ringers/chime throughout the house doesn't do any good.
I also have my system set up to snap a photo of the front and back doors whenever the doorbell is rung. I realize it takes a couple of seconds to do that, but all I ever catch is them at the end of 50' of driveway getting back into their truck. If I look at the video clips my Blue Iris software captures, it shows a quick drop of the package and hit the doorbell as they've already turned to start running. Good luck having them wait long enough to answer a phone/doorphone.

[mwaite]

I put a motion sensor on the porch facing the door area. When motion is detected I hear "There is someone at the front door" throughout the house. Then the IP Camera, which normally faces the front driveway area, rotates to the door, takes 4 pics at 5 second intervals, and stores them (and emails them to me when I'm away). So even if couriers don't ring the doorbell I'm covered.

[drozwood90]

I had looked into hooking up an intercom, to a USB sound card on the server. Then have skype or something like that VOIP to my phone.

Since you have the VOIP part covered, maybe the best thing for you is to get the intercom "thing" and hook it into your server??

My wife poo-pooed that idea, so I never followed through with it. This was years ago...and 2 houses ago...I think the intercoms I was looking at were something like $30-$40 on ebay.

--Dan

[Steve Q]

I put a motion sensor on the porch facing the door area. When motion is detected I hear "There is someone at the front door" throughout the house. Then the IP Camera, which normally faces the front driveway area, rotates to the door, takes 4 pics at 5 second intervals, and stores them (and emails them to me when I'm away). So even if couriers don't ring the doorbell I'm covered.

I use this approach also. Works great! I doubt the delivery guys would use an intercom even if there was one!

Steve Q

[mwaite]

I use this approach also. Works great! I doubt the delivery guys would use an intercom even if there was one!

Steve Q

Yeah, besides, you ever see how fast they 'drop' off the packages sometimes? You'd never get the chance to speak to them .