suggest phone/doorbell/intercom system

Have existing 30 yr old Music & Sound wired intercom system that supports doorbell & radio. Thinking about retiring it since we'll have to add support for new section of house. Looking for recommendations for intercom

  • doorbell that uses standard wired phones. Don't think I'm interested in video. Have googled a little and found hits at quantrometrics & futurehomesystems among hundreds of others. Anyone have some real-life feedback with this type of product?
Reply to
Diane
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No real life, just watching trends: Seems like *everything* communications/security-wise will be do-able over the (wireless) pc. Explicit systems, if not already obsolete, will be. Dudn't mean, tho, that an existing working one should be retired. But when replacement time comes....

Portable phones already have intercoms built in, etc. I cain't figger out how to use them, but they got'em.

Doorbells are already electronic/wireless. No-brainers, wiring-wise. Ahm thinkin, tho, of an actual mechanical gong, actuated outside the door, Addams Family-style.

Reply to
Proctologically Violated©®

Thanks for the reply, Mr. P.V.'d . I know the trend is wireless, but I'd prefer to use wired for this. Partially to avoid the potential of frequency conflicts, but mostly because wireless "things" seem to mysteriously get up and walk around the house by themselves when nobody is looking. Had a wireless mouse & keyboard - kept losing the mouse, so now use the wireless keyboard but a wired mouse. I already have the phone wires in the wall and the wired phones. Want to be able to dial a code to ring a specific phone or all phones for intercom; the couple of units that I saw on the web have the doorbell tied in so that all (or only selected?) phones ring with a unique tone. Potentially sounds like what I'm looking for, but how's it in real life? :-) Existing intercom will probably be pulled.

Diane

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Reply to
Diane

You may be able to hang on to two pieces of luck.

  1. If you already have existing intact functioning wiring, it may be usable. Ahm no spert, but given that communication signals are now modulated/on frequencies, you need fewer wires than before and can be able to do a lot more stuff with them, communications-wise.
  2. If for some reason those wires are not adequate or fully functional, God willing they can be attached to new wires, and used to pull the new wires into place. In some houses, these low voltage wires are in tubes, and pullable. Most likely, tho, they will not be very pull-able. But you got mebbe a
25% shot.

But you also have a good shot at (1), proly a 75%.

Which adds up to 100%, dudnit? Well, no, not from what I remember on my SAT's..... :) :(

I think, tho, that all this is quickly going the way of the dinosaur, and even though you have the infrastructure in place, you may find your arm proverbially twisted to go wireless/pc. And partially twisted due to price considerations, as well. Lost mice notwithstanding. :)

Reply to
Proctologically Violated©®

Guess it's time to mention that we did the wiring ourselves for most of the house & rewiring, if needed, doesn't bother us that much. Example: rewired to go from thinnet to Cat5e. Just expect that the type of system I'm investigating now won't need much rewiring. What I'm looking for now is what's "good" in the wired phone-as-intercom/doorbell answering type of system... Don't want to go wireless.

Anyhow, thanks for taking the time to answer.

Diane

Reply to
Diane

Panasonic makes small wired office phone systems cheap enuf for a house. They can use regular phone or panasonic phones with special buttons. That will give you your intercom and phone system. I am pretty sure it has a doorbell option. Don't know about radio.

Reply to
Art

Panasonic makes above-average quality stuff. Decent reliability.

Reply to
Proctologically Violated©®

Thanks, Art. That's the type of info I'm looking for: brands, etc to help refine my goggle search and real-world usage. Don't care about the radio - thought we'd use it when we installed the original system 30+ years ago, but I don't think we've used it a dozen times.

Went to the Panasonic site & found "These Systems and Components are sold, installed and serviced exclusively by local Panasonic KX-TDA Certified Dealers.". Since we've done the wiring & setup on everything else (electrical circuits & subpanels, cat5, phone, intercom, security, etc.), it's not realistic that we're going to buy something that we have to have installed. So unless I'm missing something here, this is a dead end. Nuts, 'cause the products looked promising...

Diane

Reply to
dianedebuda

I bought mine 15 years ago and am still using it. Use

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to find a web dealer who is cheap. Also you might want to check ebay for a used one. I bought a used spare but never needed it.

I've never dealt with these guys

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but they may be worth a call.

Unit looks identical to my old one in pictures.

Reply to
Art

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