DECT phone based intercom?

[pkshiu]

I am looking to setup a intercom system in the house. Conceptually something that works like office phone based intercom would be the best -- i.e. easily page all or a specific handset by location. I was hoping that some of these DECT 6.0 phone system will do this, but they do not -- or rather they have the intercom feature but it is hard to use. You have to scroll or remember what handset number is where, which is very difficult to use. Rewiring the house is not an option, otherwise a wired based PBX would work. So my question is whether there is a relatively cheap way to do this wirelessly?

Thanks,
P.K.

 

[tmbrown97]

I've been toying with this idea lately; I have a large enough house that I could benefit from an intercom but don't feel like retrofitting the wiring. It would make it much easier to call up to the bedroom or call the kids down.

Take a look at some of the Grandstream products. They do have DECT and Ethernet/Wifi SIP phones. I remember I ruled out the DECT handsets because from the manual, I couldn't see how to set auto-answer. With the desk phones, you can set a phone to auto-answer in speakerphone mode. What I didn't check into yet is how to page the whole house, but that's not as important to me.

Depending on how many buttons the phone has, you can either have buttons for each room, or just eventually remember an extension number for each person. Some of the phones have wifi built in, others have a dongle available; you can even go with Video if you want which could be handy for the front door cam, etc.

I sell Grandstream so if you want to try any of those out, PM me and I can probably work some decent pricing for you if you would like.

 

[Mark S.]

Check out Siemens DECT phones. I believe they let you assign a name to each handset (e.g., Kitchen, Garage). On my non-DECT version, you press the Intercom button which brings up a menu to page the room name you want, or all. Very easy.

 

[pkshiu]

@Mark -- believe it or not, I had one of the original gigaset from Siemens. Here is my review of it from 1998. http://www.pkshiu.com/review/gigaset.html . I may look into them again - thanks for the tip!

@work2Play -- your scenerios about locating the kids is exactly what we need in our house. It's not a big house but we have too many levels. It would be great if the grandstream desk phone has a wifi option. I am going to look at the product listings and user guides and may take up your offer on some units.

P.K.

 

[tmbrown97]

@work2Play -- your scenerios about locating the kids is exactly what we need in our house. It's not a big house but we have too many levels. It would be great if the grandstream desk phone has a wifi option. I am going to look at the product listings and user guides and may take up your offer on some units.

The desk phones do have wifi - some built in, some with a USB stick. I also did some more research after this post, and it seems the page-all/intercom feature is available in most SIP phone systems now, including the free Asterisk and others - which means easy calling the whole house or just specific rooms.

The nice thing too is this will integrate with door stations, fax, household phone lines, and just about anything else - including a soft-phone on your cell phone to call and talk to the kids remotely or even video chat with them easily if you're traveling. Hopefully I'll be implementing a lot of those features over the next few months.

 

[pkshiu]

So after reading the user guides for both grand streams and gigaset I am leaning towards getting either the c610 or the hybrid IP version to try. Their UI seems better and the are going after the "family" market. Only bad thing is for some reason no one has the black base station version available, and their L410 little remote is not available in black.

PK

 

[tmbrown97]

It looked like they had one at amazon.

What was the deciding factor? It may affect my own decision.

 

[pkshiu]

It looked like they had one at amazon.

What was the deciding factor? It may affect my own decision.

It really is the user interface, and that DECT I think works better for voice than wifi. I am hoping that the handset is a bit easier to use in intercom mode. Of course this is all from just reading the user manuals, not actually trying out the unit. We'll see if it life up to the expectation once I get it. What I really want is a black C610 base station without the answering machine, The L410, and one or more C610H additional handset. But there is no combination that let me get that, in black, and in stock. The IP version seems to come with one C610H as the base unit is now the IP "box". Then ideally if I can get a L410 just to try out and buy one or more C610H that would be idea -- I do a lot of conference call at home and the L410 sounds interesting for that.

P.K.

 

[pkshiu]

Late Update to this: I finally bought the Panasonic KX-TG7745 instead. It has intercom system that let me label each extention. It works pretty well. It also support bluetooth linking to a cell phone and the cell line, but I have not tried it yet.

P.K.