I’m actually pretty surprised how bad the intercom ecosystem is these days.
Why aren’t there more ‘semi dumb’ Ethernet or wifi products that just let you announce that dinner is ready? It doesn’t need to be a fully ruggedised commercial system like this one or a fully integrated cloud managed solution like ring.
The cheap no name wireless ones can’t handle comms between rooms, let alone across a house.
The security implications aren’t insurmountable - you could use pairing codes if there are multiple on the network.
I’ve accepted that it’s a niche market, and that the only solution is to use Asterix with a some cheapo voip phones.
We have Google Home Minis in every room and the screens in bedroom and kitchen and the only thing that works reliably to message intra-room is to say "Hey Google, broadcast message" because half of the time it will tell me it can't send messages yet. If someone knows what I'm doing wrong I'd love to hear it since this would be a great feature.
To be honest, I'm honestly sick of Google Home's approach to this since the Gemini update has turned everything really slow and I'm getting close to the point where I'd rather home-roll a full system myself that works reliably instead of the crapshoot that this is. Home Assistant seems to have a functionality bridge to Google Home connected devices like my blinds or cameras so I should be able to retain the edge devices but I have half a mind to just dump the whole thing and start over.
The first step is getting speakers in a room: there are tons of products that do this, apple, google, Sonos.
Most of them have the audio quality of a bag of instruments.
There are tons of class D amps that you can hook up to speakers: Wiim, acrylic and so on... this will run you anywhere from 100 bucks to 500 and thats before you buy the speakers. Most of these will be great for playing music and projecting your voice.
The moment you involve a TV... well things get ugly because your going to want arc for HDMI and your going to want a center channel cause with out it your likely in subtitle hell half the time. This will get expensive a Sonos sound bar is a few hundred and if you want something better well... Let's say you can get to the point of making a GPU look affordable real quick.
Now that you can play audio, how do you hear it... well your phone works and there are tons of satellites out there.
You're now going to need to run home assistant to "interrupt" what ever is playing (if something is) to play your message and then return what ever it was to its current state.
After trying out WIIM, Acrylic, some high end stereo gear I just settled on half assed audio quality and bought more Sonos gear. I kept a single WIIM unit, cheap amp, decent speakers and a sub around for when I want to really listen to music but other than that I tolerate sonos' middling quality for day to day use (and I am, by no means an audiophile).
There's Butterfly and another company I can't remember and undoubtedly more, that have expensive systems for large complexes, so the niche is the small buildings that don't have a ton of money. Maybe the softwarepocalypse can help with that.
I had the same problem and I've searched for ready made solutions for over an year before I found a guy that reverse-engineers and builds ready-made boards to install in my intercom for less than 30 euro.
Related, I'm still upset at the lies told by landlords regarding phone number privacy in buzz-in intercoms. I've been told multiple times at multiple apartment buildings, "don't worry, while the system will call your phone when someone taps your entry code, your phone number won't be revealed". And then you sign the lease, get a delivery from Instacart in your new place, and find that your 'private' number is blasted out loud, heard a whole city block away, in a loud-ass DTMF tone sequence.
I’m actually pretty surprised how bad the intercom ecosystem is these days.
Why aren’t there more ‘semi dumb’ Ethernet or wifi products that just let you announce that dinner is ready? It doesn’t need to be a fully ruggedised commercial system like this one or a fully integrated cloud managed solution like ring.
The cheap no name wireless ones can’t handle comms between rooms, let alone across a house.
The security implications aren’t insurmountable - you could use pairing codes if there are multiple on the network.
I’ve accepted that it’s a niche market, and that the only solution is to use Asterix with a some cheapo voip phones.
Apple's HomePod Mini and Google Home and Alexa all support intercom modes. I'd presume they typically handle the home case for the majority of folks.
We have Google Home Minis in every room and the screens in bedroom and kitchen and the only thing that works reliably to message intra-room is to say "Hey Google, broadcast message" because half of the time it will tell me it can't send messages yet. If someone knows what I'm doing wrong I'd love to hear it since this would be a great feature.
To be honest, I'm honestly sick of Google Home's approach to this since the Gemini update has turned everything really slow and I'm getting close to the point where I'd rather home-roll a full system myself that works reliably instead of the crapshoot that this is. Home Assistant seems to have a functionality bridge to Google Home connected devices like my blinds or cameras so I should be able to retain the edge devices but I have half a mind to just dump the whole thing and start over.
Everything involving audio is an annoying mess.
The first step is getting speakers in a room: there are tons of products that do this, apple, google, Sonos.
Most of them have the audio quality of a bag of instruments.
There are tons of class D amps that you can hook up to speakers: Wiim, acrylic and so on... this will run you anywhere from 100 bucks to 500 and thats before you buy the speakers. Most of these will be great for playing music and projecting your voice.
The moment you involve a TV... well things get ugly because your going to want arc for HDMI and your going to want a center channel cause with out it your likely in subtitle hell half the time. This will get expensive a Sonos sound bar is a few hundred and if you want something better well... Let's say you can get to the point of making a GPU look affordable real quick.
Now that you can play audio, how do you hear it... well your phone works and there are tons of satellites out there.
You're now going to need to run home assistant to "interrupt" what ever is playing (if something is) to play your message and then return what ever it was to its current state.
After trying out WIIM, Acrylic, some high end stereo gear I just settled on half assed audio quality and bought more Sonos gear. I kept a single WIIM unit, cheap amp, decent speakers and a sub around for when I want to really listen to music but other than that I tolerate sonos' middling quality for day to day use (and I am, by no means an audiophile).
*Asterisk
There's Butterfly and another company I can't remember and undoubtedly more, that have expensive systems for large complexes, so the niche is the small buildings that don't have a ton of money. Maybe the softwarepocalypse can help with that.
Frank's guests just need to get the Doorking 16120 default key and start letting themselves in.
Confessing to felonies, in writing, under one’s real name is wild.
Here’s hoping nobody decides to bother them about this.
I had the same problem and I've searched for ready made solutions for over an year before I found a guy that reverse-engineers and builds ready-made boards to install in my intercom for less than 30 euro.
I'm unsure if I should post the link or not as it's specific to Romania, but I love how janky the buids are: https://www.olx.ro/d/oferta/automatizare-interfon-electra-cu...
Was always wanting to do something like this before they swapped ours out for a SaaS+hardware butterfly mx thing.
Those Doorkings have had to get replaced at so many buildings in Seattle now that criminals figured out how easy they were to override.
Fun. I did this recently with mine. There's now a discreet USB cable running down from behind it...
Similar:
Hacking The Ritto TwinBus 7630: How to press a buzzer via TCP/IP.
https://keilerkonzept.com/blog/ritto/
Related, I'm still upset at the lies told by landlords regarding phone number privacy in buzz-in intercoms. I've been told multiple times at multiple apartment buildings, "don't worry, while the system will call your phone when someone taps your entry code, your phone number won't be revealed". And then you sign the lease, get a delivery from Instacart in your new place, and find that your 'private' number is blasted out loud, heard a whole city block away, in a loud-ass DTMF tone sequence.
BS.