See who's at the gate, talk to them, and let them in — from the screen in the hallway or the phone in your pocket. All makes, for houses, apartments, schools and commercial sites — installed on the wiring you already have wherever possible, by a licensed security equipment installer who also sorts the gate lock it's opening.
The job people expect to be expensive is getting a new cable from the house to the front gate. Often it isn't needed. A 2-wire IP intercom sends power and data together down a single pair — the same pair an old audio intercom or doorbell has been using for thirty years. The old handset comes off the wall, a video screen goes on, and the driveway stays where it is.
It's a genuinely good system once it's set up. Getting there is another story: the manuals describe each box on its own and never give the order to commission them in. After a hard day on exactly that, we wrote the missing manual — the Dahua 2-wire intercom field guide.
Because an intercom is only as good as the thing it unlocks. The screen, the camera and the app are half the job; the electric strike, the latch and a gate that actually closes are the other half — and they're the half that gets blamed on "the intercom" when it's out by a millimetre. We do both ends: the hardware on the gate and the setup behind the screen. See access control for codes, fobs and strikes on other doors.
Every install is tested the same way before we leave: the gate button rings the screen and the phone; unlock works from both; the code opens the gate; every fob opens the gate. Then you get the handover — the admin login, the app account that owns the door, the code, which fob is whose, and a one-page "how to answer the gate". It's your system, so the keys to it stay with you. The full list is in our commissioning and handover checklist.
Intercoms are quoted per job. Whether the existing wiring can be reused, how many screens you want, what's on the gate now and how you want to open it are what move the price. You get one written quote before anything is ordered, and the quote is the price.