Choosing Intercoms for Automatic Gates

Gate Intercoms replace the front door bell seeing as a gate will stop anyone from getting to the front door. They consist of a weather proof outdoor station with a button that calls an indoor station so a resident may talk to or see (if its a video intercom) a visitor to identify who they are before letting them in. A pedestrian gate may have an electric lock that can be unlocked from the indoor station or an automatic driveway gate can be opened.

Intercoms come in various forms including: wired or wireless, handset or hands free, audio only or with video and those that call Smart Phones anywhere in the world. These intercoms can normally be used for front doors too.

Wired verses Wireless

Hard wired intercoms tend to be more reliable than wireless because they cannot be affected by interference from other devices and don't rely on any network that can go down. Wiring is required between the indoor and outdoor stations and quite often forgotten wiring is also needed between the outside station and gate motor or control box. The installation of this wiring between the outdoor and indoor stations can be expensive particularly if they are a long way apart and getting wiring through a building is difficult. The indoor station normally needs a power source too so wiring is required for this, either a power point next to the intercom or low voltage power cable run to where ever a power point is available. READ MORE about Installing Intercoms

If you are able, you could install the low voltage cabling yourself to save money as you don't need any license to do so but will still need to use the correct cable and installation techniques for it to work reliably.

Going wireless normally means the connection between the indoor and outdoor station is wireless only, the outdoor station still needs to be connected to a gate motor or control box and there still needs to be a power source connected to both the indoor and outdoor stations, which means there still needs to be some wiring although usually this wiring is much easier to do than the connection between the indoor and outdoor stations.

If the intercom works with an automatic gate there is normally a power source in the motor and the intercom connects to the motor anyway so this makes power supply to the outdoor station easier. If the Outdoor station is connected to a pedestrian gate lock only then it will need another source of power, which normally comes from a low voltage wire from the house or where ever power is available. Outdoor stations can be solar powered but aren't normally optimised for solar so a larger solar system is needed.

There are various different types of wireless intercoms including:

Direct Wireless Intercoms - these are normally video and have a direct wireless link between outdoor and indoor stations so don't rely on any other networks such as the mobile phone network or home WiFi network. They normally open a gate from the indoor monitor, although some don't ... READ MORE
4G Intercoms - these are normally audio only and have an outside station that calls a mobile or ground line phone using the 4G mobile phone network, so have no Indoor Station, the indoor station is the phone. These have no range limit and can call a mobile anywhere in the world so long as there is mobile phone reception. They can also remotely open the gate from a phone ... READ MORE
WiFi and Network (IP) Intercoms - these normally are video and connect to the home or office network with a cable or can be wireless using WiFi. The outdoor station can call an indoor monitor or Smart Phone and if connected to the Internet it can call a Smart Phone anywhere in the world and the gate can be opened from the Smart Phone too. Other advantage are they can easily be expanded to include many outdoor and indoor stations even for many residences sharing one or more gates, can be integrated with video surveillance camera's and can be made wireless where necessary. The only disadvantage is the installer needs Networking experience to get it to work ... READ MORE

More Than One Inside Station

The option of more than one inside station gives a choice of inside locations to answer a call from. These intercoms normally have a call button to call other inside stations allowing communication between rooms. The internal call button can have a different ring tone from the outside station so it is known if its the gate or an internal call. Some inside stations have selective calling to individual rooms.

Hard wired and Direct Wireless intercoms normally have a limit to how many indoor stations they can have. 4G Wireless Intercoms normally call one phone and if there's no answer it will call a second or third. IP Intercoms normally have no limit although there's no point to calling more than five indoors stations.

More Than One Outside Station

If there's more than one gate, some intercoms allow more than one outside station that can call one or more of the same inside stations. Each with a button to open either of the gates.

Hard wired and Direct Wireless Intercoms normally have a limit as to how many Outdoor Stations can share Indoor Station(s). 4G and IP Intercoms can have as many Outside stations as needed.

Handset verses Hands free

If you don't like the idea of picking up a handset to answer then hands free intercoms allow a call to be answered with the press of a button and work much like a speaker phone, very handy if you have hands full or have more than one person wanting to speak to a visitor. Another advantage is it cannot be "left off the hook" by mistake, leaving it out of action, as hands free intercoms automatically turn themselves off when not being used, ready for the next call.

Hands free intercoms generally look nicer too because they don't have that old fashion handset hanging on them so can be more compact. The very first intercoms were hands free, well you had to press a button to talk and release to listen so you still had to use your hands, well one finger, whereas today's hands free intercoms work like a speaker phone where a button is pressed to answer a call and just talk and listen, no need to press the button to talk, which is truly hands free.

Audio only OR with Video

Audio only intercoms are generally more economic to install and can work at greater distances if hard wired. Video intercoms have an outside station with a built in camera and the indoor station has a small colour flat screen monitor so who ever is at the gate can be seen. The advantage of this is the occupant can see who is at the gate before even letting a visitor know they're home. Normally the video only goes one way so a visitor can't see if anyone's looking or not. The cameras are also very discrete so the visitor may not even be aware there is a camera. The outside station normally has a small light so it will still work at night.

Video Intercoms can have extra cameras added and a recorder, which can be expanded to include motion detection to alert you if someone is there or has jumped the fence etc... or record.

Calling more than one Residence

If more than one residence shares a gate then an Intercom can have more than one button to call different residences individually or if there are a lot of residences the Outdoor Station can have a digital keypad for entering the residence number, which a visitor should know and pressing a call button.

Hardwired multi-residence Intercoms are usually only economic for new builds where wiring can be run in trenches and walls of building before driveways and wall linings are put in. There aren't any direct wireless systems for multi-residences although there are 4G systems that call the land line phone or mobile of each residence and IP Intercoms that connect with WiFi.

Calling a Smart Phone anywhere in the World

4G Wireless Intercoms call any phone anywhere in the world although are generally audio only where as IP Intercoms or Hardwired Intercoms with IP connectivity can call any Smart Phone in the world if there is an Internet Connection and these are Video too.

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