Intercom: The Basics

Sleek design, multiple options!

The days of an intercom system being an eye sore in every room are officialy over. As small as a single-gang, decor style plate with a multitude of options, you can have complete integration with whole house audio and telephone to keep in touch with every part of the home or business. For new construction we always recommend going with a hardwired solution, but for most applications, we do have wireless options avaliable that are suprisingly reliable and affordable.

The basics of a residential and/or commercial intercom systems are fairly starightforward. Please read below to see some different options you have for either:

▪      Residential: Typically you have a master station that is either an actual working unit somewhere in the home or a hub tucked away in a structured wiring enclosure that interact with sub-stations to tie everything together. You can have almost as many zones as you would like in a system, but the typical is between 6 and 12 zones. Entry level system start as an "all call" system where you page the entire system and upon connection with another sub-station (the person you trying to reach answers) you have a "direct connection with that party. Most come with a baby monitoring feature. Moving up to a mid-level or highend model, you have options of LCD touch screen to select who you want contact as well as audio and video integration options.
▪      Commerical:  Most commercial facilities have intercom built-in their current telephone systems. Most of those systems have the ability to have external paging options to page outside areas or other locations. Just like the residential, commerical intercom systems on the commercial level have integration with audio, video, even securities. (intrusion, access control, and CCTV)

Proud partners!

We choose carefully the brand names we deal with based on reliability, longevity, warranty, and customer service. Below are a listing of some of our core vendors of choice:  

▪     OnQ/Legrand: is the leader in structured witing solutions for the home. They have basic and advanced intercom systems for residential customers. www.onqlegrand.com
▪     Russound: is the leader in distributed audio solutions for the home. They have "point-to-point" digital intercom systems that are stand alone or easily integrated with their whole house audio systems. www.russound.com
▪     Aiphone: is the leader in video intercom technologies for residential and commercial applications. They have mid-level audio / video intercom systems for basic applications to full integrated security solutions. www.aiphone.com