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Wireless Audio Visual Intercom – Hands on with the Ninja doorbell

wirelessaudiointercom

Video door phones are nothing new but with wireless video now da rigueur, adding them to your home is extremely cheap and easy. This Wireless Audio Visual Intercom is a low-cost option that not only gives you a wireless setup, but adds flexibility so that you can move the base station around to wherever you are in the house or backyard. Click through to take a look.

Overview

The units are quite simple, the mobile base-station has a battery in it and recharges via USB or the mains-to-USB adapter included. The external unit requires mains power and doesn’t have a battery, so you’ll need power at your front door to use it. They communicate over 2.4GHz.

The external camera/doorbell has a removable fascia that you can screw to a wall, and then secure the camera to it. It’s sort of secure, you need to use the included 4-sided Allen key to remove the fascia so the camera should stay where you put it. The camera unit isn’t waterproof though and needs to be installed undercover and out of direct sunlight.

The external unit has just a single doorbell button. Press it and you’ll ding-dong on the base station which will also activate the camera. You can use the base station to either let them in (if you’ve got an electric lock wired up) or talk to them. Dead simple. If you’re feeling paranoid, you can use the monitor button to see and listen outside if no one has pushed your button. The base unit will also take a photo if no one answers after the doorbell is pressed and will display the external temperature.

wirelessdoorbell

The base station battery is good for 6 days of standby mode, which it needs to be in to be used. So just leave it plugged in and go wandering if you need to.

In Use

The range of the wireless doorbell was impressive. I moved about 20 metres away from the doorbell with the receiver and it still had full bars on the display, and the picture quality was unperturbed. It didn’t seem to effect/be affected by wifi either. This is what bloggers look like when they ring your doorbell.

wirelessdoorbell

The doorbell camera has 6 LEDs to illuminate nocturnal visitors. It’s possible to have too much of a good thing as the LEDs are unfortunately, much too bright causing you to turn away from the camera. The LEDs also blow out the image on the camera as well, so even if you’re not stunned by having 6 high output white LEDs hit you in the face it doesn’t matter, the camera won’t see you anyway. Oh and if you lean in to speak in the microphone, it’s of course even worse. Picture below was taken at arm’s length.

The voice clarity was terrible, mainly because the transmission would only start after the visitor had started talking and then cut out very soon after. Leaning in to talk did help, but you had to have your face no more than 10cm from the microphone to work decently, and even then it still had a tendency to cut out randomly. The base station was no better, you had to hold it up to your mouth to stop the transmission from cutting in and out and even then it was very hard to understand.

Conclusion

The Wireless Audio Visual Intercom is neat and has a bunch of handy features. The video quality is ok for still subjects, but it won’t allow you to read say a drivers license or postal address that’s held up to the camera. Identifying faces is fine though, providing they’re in good light. The mobile base station is handy and has a long standby time however it’s let down by a very loud doorbell volume that can’t be adjusted.

That’s pretty much where the good stuff ends. The audio requires the visitor to be right up close to the microphone or it’s unusable and the low light function requires the person to be several metres away from the doorbell to be recognisable. Little bit of a Catch22. It’s a pity because for the ~US$120 price, it’s a nifty little unit. There’s a new CMOS version out though, so maybe that’s worth a look too.

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