SIP Door Phone

[Zoo]

Hello,

We are building a new home with two entrances. On each entrance I want to have a door intercom with camera.

I don't like proprietary systems where the door intercom is hard wired with indoor units (which is what we have in my current home) and I would like more flexibility.

After some initial research I found some door phones that work with SIP, and, in theory at least, they should be able to communicate with any SIP enabled phone (including SIP video phone, iPhone etc).

Does anybody use such kind of system or know what equipment exactly is needed to make it work in a home?

Or, does anybody know of a different system that offers the same kind of flexibility?

Thank you

 

[Neurorad]

Similar question asked at AVS a month or 2 ago. AVS currently down, will look for the link later today.

 

[tmbrown97]

Please keep us in the loop with what you find - I am interested in this. SIP could be expanded to room-to-room communications as well (especially having a VOIP system in the house already).

 

[electron]

HAI's OmniTouch system supports interfacing SIP door phones. You might be able to tackle it with a few open source solutions as well (such as a combo of Asterisk, 3CX, etc.).

 

[Neurorad]

This AVS thread may be helpful, from June.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=20514904

Looks like the Mobotix T24 would be a decent option.

Mobotix T24 video door station

I found this link which includes a list of SIP door phones.
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+phone+door

I really like Siedle's elegant designs. Siedle is very pricey, from what I've seen.

http://www.siedle.de/App/WebObjects/XSeMIPS.woa/cms/page/locale.enGB/pid.221.224.271.364.446/ecm.p/IP-network.html

If you call eHolovision, they would probably be able to come up with a custom product for you. Looks like their 900-CR/VIK can use VoIP; SIP not mentioned specifically, but I bet they could do it.

 

[AutomatedOutlet]

All of these are SIP door stations:

http://www.automatedoutlet.com/Home/2N-Helios-Intercom-Access-Control-Systems

 

[Neurorad]

Martin, those 2N products leak very nice.

Here is the 1 button with keypad and camera:

Is she included in the price, Martin?

 

[AutomatedOutlet]

Is she included in the price, Martin?

That would be nice wouldn't it?

 

[Zoo]

Thank you for your replies!

The Mobotix was the one I was looking at most, but after searching their forums it seems that compatibility with different SIP phones is problematic (e.g. it can not work with the iPhone yet). This was disappointing because I assumed that by adopting a standard (SIP) all devices that support that standard should play nicely with each other. Apparently this is not the case, at least with Mobotix.

Siedle is indeed very elegant, but is it really SIP? It seems that it can work over IP with the addition of the "DoorCom IP interface", but even then it can only communicate with computers running specific software, and not with SIP phones on the network ... or am I wrong about this?

I had a look at 2N in the past but at that time I preferred Mobotix over it. Can 2N Helios IP work with any SIP phone (including software clients for PC, iPhone and Android)?

What kind of "infrastructure" do I need for such system?
On one end I will have the SIP Door Stations, and on the other end inside the house various SIP phones (hardware and software).
Do I just connect everything on the network switch of my home network... or do I need some other hardware in the middle somewhere?

Thank you

 

[signal15]

SIP, while being a standard seems to loosely adhered to. There are only a couple of companies/products that follow the RFC for SIP exactly. So, your mileage will vary with different equipment. However, the problem is not phone to phone communication, as you'll usually have a SIP switch in between that routes your calls and facilitates the audio to go from point A to point B. You can dial one phone directly by IP from one to another, but you don't want to do this, it's unmanageable when you have more than a couple of SIP devices.

You need a phone switch. Two free ones are Asterisk and FreeSwitch. I prefer FreeSwitch (after using Asterisk for about 5 years), and I'm using it with the BlueBox web interface from http://www.2600hz.org. They have a VM image of it that you can download and get started with right away. You just add your phones, create your extensions and you're ready to go. You can modify the stock dialplan as needed.

FreeSwitch's SIP stack is fully RFC compliant, so you should run into less compatibility problems. I haven't found any with my equipment (polycom phones, and Sipura gateways). It supports video. And it works fine with SIP trunks from providers like VoicePulse (their "Connect" service). You really want to look into using it with BlueBox, or you'll have to hand edit XML configuration files like I did for a year or so.

 

[majortom]

We are building a new home with two entrances. On each entrance I want to have a door intercom with camera.

You might want to consider a separate IP camera and a simple SIP door phone. There are many external IP video cameras, including ones with point/tilt/zoom control. These can easily be integrated with software for monitoring and recording. These are also much cheaper than the combined systems from what I have seen.

After some initial research I found some door phones that work with SIP, and, in theory at least, they should be able to communicate with any SIP enabled phone (including SIP video phone, iPhone etc).

As someone has mentioned, SIP is a very broad protocol. At this point the voice portion is pretty interoperable. From my experience, the video portion is not as well supported.

Does anybody use such kind of system or know what equipment exactly is needed to make it work in a home?

My house in Florida is on 5 acres. I have a SIP gate phone (door phone mounted in an external stand) at both the front and back gate. I also have IP cameras pointed down to see the driver or visitor and pointed at a mirror to see the license plate (mostly because I thought it was cool), as well as in several other places around the property. The cameras are monitored and recorded using EVO Cam (I have played with both EVOcam and Security Spy and they both have advantages).

If you do decide to go the separates route, I would consider Cyber Data, as they are fairly inexpensive and are pretty SIP compliant.

I agree that you would want a SIP PBX and I would suggest that you look at sipX from SIPFoundry.org as another option.

 

[SHRemote]

OP:
I'm concluding a project where I'm doing something similar. I'll have 3 SIP door phones: one at a driveway gate, one at a back gate and one at the front door. I'm using 2N's Helios IP Door stations.
http://www.2n.cz/en/products/communicators/doors/helios-ip/

Only one is installed at the moment. The driveway door phone is being installed tomorrow. The Helios IP is a single cat5 cable solution. In other words, it'll handle voice, video and power with one cable. Mine are going to be registered on my home PBX (a Grandstream) which will allow me to call to and from the door stations (with or without video) and trigger different events (e.g. opening gate, unlocking door, etc.) from the in house phones. For the house phones, I'll have two Grandstream SIP video phones and several handheld SIP video phones registered to the PBX. So, when someone pushes a "call" button on the Helios, it'll ring to all of the SIP phones in the house that I designate as part of a "call group" and the answering party will be able to talk to and see the caller.

One of the things, I'm looking into is finding a SIP phone app for iPad that will reliably transmit video. Since I will be using iPads as my home automation controllers, I'd like to register the iPad to the PBX and integrate the door phone feature with it. There seem to be some good SIP apps that can handle voice. Voice and video seems to be trickier.

Good luck.

 

[SHRemote]

HAI's OmniTouch system supports interfacing SIP door phones. You might be able to tackle it with a few open source solutions as well (such as a combo of Asterisk, 3CX, etc.).

Dan: I'm curious about this? Earlier this summer I was trying to determine if the HAI OmniTouch IP panels could fully integrate with a SIP phone (e.g. the Helios IP which is an HAI connectivity partner). While the 2n door phone could call a designated OmniTouch panel, apparently it could not call several panels at once or a combination of other SIP phones and Omnitouch panels. At the time, HAI explained that the HAI panel isn't a true SIP device that could be registered to a PBX. Has this changed?

 

[majortom]

One of the things, I'm looking into is finding a SIP phone app for iPad that will reliably transmit video. Since I will be using iPads as my home automation controllers, I'd like to register the iPad to the PBX and integrate the door phone feature with it. There seem to be some good SIP apps that can handle voice. Voice and video seems to be trickier.

Try bria by counter path.

 

[SHRemote]

Try bria by counter path.

Yep. That's the one I've been looking at. Good documentation. I just wish they'd add video support.