Garage Intercoms

[Lippyp]

I'm already planning the work on my new garage for when we move house. At the moment it has power that appears to come from the barn next to it, the barn is not included in the sale so we'll lose the electricity supply (not a bad thing tbh as it looks like a pretty small supply. To sort this out one of the first jobs will be to run a new supply from the house. This will be done underground using SWA (steel wire armoured) cable, at the same time as I'll have a trench open I want to run whatever service I can in the same hole, so I'll probabably stick in some HDPE pipe for water and run a load of cat5 cable across so I can hardwire into my router or have a wireless access point in the garage, I might even put a phone extension in as well.

One of the other things thats crossed my mind is putting in some kind of intercom system so the wife can for example buzz me and tell me that my dinner is ready (fat chance) that she's waiting upstairs all nekkid (even less chance!) or more likely that theres a large spider that needs removing from the bath or the cats been sick on the carpet. Does anyone on here have any kind of intercom between their house and non attached garage? If so what have you got? Just thought it would be kind of cool to be able to ping the house and say " I'll be in in five minutes so put my slippers in front of the fire and slip into something more revealing"

 

[Kabina]

I have a wireless intercom from Radio Shack. It is the same as the one in this link.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2464775#

Pretty good unit for the price. I have no complaints.

 

[jeffmoss26]

Not sure what they have in the UK, but there are intercoms that run over Cat5e cable. Take a look at Aiphone.

 

[dirttracker18]

The last set of phones we purchased have a base and extra units that do not need a plug. I was sure to check that they had an intercom and call transfer. Anyone anywhere can pick up a phone and intercom to another phone. Also if my wife answers the phone and it is for me she can transfer to the garage phone.

Easy system to use with no cables.

 

[Steevo]

You mean your wife doesn't deliver your dinner to you in the shop, nekkid?




Neither does mine
Not that I'd want her to.

 

[regguy1]

I have an At&T cordless phone system and it works in the garage, approx 100 feet away from the base unit in kitchen We just use the intercom feature to buzz back and forth

 

[ibedayank]

why the hell would you want one for? BEEP honey since your in the shop/garage can you bring me a..... BEEP...what you doing honey...how long you gonna be??



Not me...that MY me time...

 

[47p2]

No.....don't do it....your other half will be calling every two minutes and you will never get any peace.

 

[volvo]

..
Use Cat Six wiring, same or cheaper cost, flows more info/less lost. Went to purchase some cat five last weekend and it was more than cat six ( had same ends with some additional twisted wires) and was explained to me as old school these days.
I am sure a real computer expert can weigh in.

 

[54FordPanel]

I have an At&T cordless phone system and it works in the garage, approx 100 feet away from the base unit in kitchen We just use the intercom feature to buzz back and forth

My Panasonic cordless has a base and 5 satellite phones, and you can intercom between them.

 

[Train]

I had a set from Radio Shack that you just plugged into the wall socket and it actually used the house wiring instead of a separate cable. My shop is about 100 feet from the house and the system worked excellent ..... until I swung a 2x6 into it and knocked it off the wall.

 

[Falcon67]

We both have iPhones, so text works fine.

 

[NitroPress]

You can pick these up on eBay for a fraction of new cost. As long as the seller is reliable and says they work, you should be okay. Their main fault is to get noisy on one channel.

I picked up 3 a few weeks ago to facilitate 3-level communications, may pick up one or two more.

Our AT&T cordless set has an intercom feature, but you have to know which handset to ping and they move around the house. It also takes about five button presses to ping, so the wired intercoms are a lot more convenient.

 

[cowboyjosh]

Either put in a phone system or do like someone else mentioned, but a cordless with intercom capability. Wiring in a specific intercom is so 1978.

 

[rwhite692]

Big +1 here, for getting a set of wireless phones, w/Intercom feature.

We recently bought a set of Panasonics on sale at Costco for a whole 78 bucks, for five phones!

I can't imagine what advantage a traditional wired intercom would possibly have over these, save for the ability to use phone and the intercom at the same time...whoopee.

Works with perfect clarity when I'm out in the (detached) garage.

And, line-of-sight, my garage handset is about 60 feet from the base station in the house, and the signal is traveling through two exterior, and two interior walls.

Another plus, now you will have a phone out in your garage, if you did not already.

 

[SgtRauksauff]

..
Use Cat Six wiring, same or cheaper cost, flows more info/less lost. Went to purchase some cat five last weekend and it was more than cat six ( had same ends with some additional twisted wires) and was explained to me as old school these days.
I am sure a real computer expert can weigh in.

cat6 is only really necessary if you know you're going to be streaming a LOT of data at GigaBit or higher speeds. cat5e will work at GigaBit speeds just fine for most people.

gigabit switches use all four pairs for data send/recieve instead of only two pairs like 10/100MegaBit switches. The primary difference between cat 5 and 6 is just the heavier insulation to help eliminate crosstalk and system noise. cat5 is generally 24ga, while SOME cat6 is 22 or 23.

I've been toying with the idea of some sort of intercom system also. I've got no hardline, only my mobile, but the garage already has a couple runs of phone cable.

--sarge

 

[ghnl]

I have a wireless intercom from Radio Shack. It is the same as the one in this link.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2464775#

Pretty good unit for the price. I have no complaints.

I bought the same unit (but I don't think it cost that much...) for the bonus room room above the garage. The grand kids can play up there and call for Nonnie when they need her.

If my wife wants to tell me dinner is ready she just sends one of the grand kids out. (they are here a lot...)

 

[NitroPress]

Another plus, now you will have a phone out in your garage, if you did not already.

And the real big plus with cordless phone sets, when you lose power, you won't be bothered by any ringing noises or get hung up on the phone with your ijjit BIL.

 

[mytimeyet]

We use some walkie talkies sort of like these:

http://www.motorola.com/Business/US...mers/MH230R_Talkabout_Two-Way-Radio_B2B_US-EN

There are cheaper models as well...

 

[SweetD]

My wife texts me when I'm in the garage, or just calls my cell phone.

That way, I can screen it.

Dave

 

[Cardboard Man]

One of the other things thats crossed my mind is putting in some kind of intercom system so the wife can for example buzz me and tell me that my dinner is ready (fat chance) that she's waiting upstairs all nekkid (even less chance!)

Just thought it would be kind of cool to be able to ping the house and say " I'll be in in five minutes so put my slippers in front of the fire and slip into something more revealing"

Since none of this stuff is likely to happen, why bother with a ****** intercom at all? Seriously, my wife will just text my phone when I'm in the shop, then I can answer when and if I want. The added benefit is that I can "forget" to take my phone with me...

 

[TWX]

Run every kind of cable you could possibly use. A coax better than RG-6, a several CAT-6 (thicker, CAT-5 compatible), hell, RS-232, phone, and even fiber if you can afford it. There's no reason to skimp, and you never know what you'll need later.

 

[rwhite692]

And the real big plus with cordless phone sets, when you lose power, you won't be bothered by any ringing noises or get hung up on the phone with your ijjit BIL.

We still have a few conventional phones plugged into the landline jacks, so that isn't a problem.

We also have cell phones, and, should the power interruption be of a substantial duration, generators.

So, I think the intercom angle is pretty well covered.

 

[jeffmoss26]

We run a full gig network at my work, all over Cat5e.
Cat 6 is a lot less forgiving...terminations, twists, bend radius. The cable may cost about the same but the jacks and patch panels definitely cost more.
Sgt, take a look at Aiphone, their traditional intercoms work over normal twisted pair wire. Not with active dialtone on it, just a dry pair.
http://www.aiphone.com/products/alpha-list/detail/lem-1dl

 

[Hawk Thor]

Why not lay 2" PVC piping in the trench with a few nylon strings inside?

The strings stick out at each end and are numbered by punching a number on a washer and tying it to each end of the string. You can then draw a up to date cable through the pipe when needed.

 

[Kabina]

Texting and calling on the cell phone is ok for some I guess.

The reason I got the intercom was to get away from using the cell phone.

It's much easier and faster (for me anyway) to push a button on the intercom and talk than it is to text or talk on the phone, when your hands are covered in filth from whatever your working on.

 

[nehog]

You can go extreme and get a private telephone system like I did. We got it when our three girls were teenagers, and there was no way I was going to wander around looking for them when they got a phone call.

We have a lot of features, including the ability for me to answer any phone line (we have four right now, but I'm going to kill off three of these soon) anywhere, the ability to call room-to-room (or room to garage), and do paging if you don't know where someone is and you need them. My music on hold is the National Weather Service so when you get on hold you get a weather report!

Wasn't that expensive, about a grand or so, IIRC.

 

[NUTTSGT]

A buddy of mine had a set. He thought it be great for the kids if they needed something. . . .yeah right. BEEP...dad so and so is bugging me . . .BEEP . . . so and so won't give me this. . . Then his wife comes home at lunch...BEEP (he climbs out from under the car AGAIN . . .yes ? What are you doing ? . . . .BEEP. . .(his wife again). .I'm home from work.

He started to call it a NAGcom and no longer in use.

 

[NitroPress]

Our house in California was inconveniently laid out because it had been almost doubled in size from its original footprint, from a compact L to an extended U. It was a long walk from my office in one bedroom wing to the master at the end of the other wing (not to mention the loft bedroom). I experimented with several "intercom" options over the years but none worked well for various reasons, mostly human ones. In the end, the Panasonic business phone system let us put calls on hold and pick them up elsewhere and even do what little intercomming we needed.

This house is three-level, since I work in a basement office, and after a couple of months of treading up stairs far too much and having to holler back and forth from the basement door, I bought a set of the Radio Shack 3-channel FM intercoms like those we'd had before. They are GREAT - with one on my desk, one on my wife's desk on the second floor, and one on the kitchen bar, my wife and I can chat as we used to do with face-to-face desks, the kids can whine about computer time or dinner and I can even yell at the dogs in the living room to SHADDAP! (They ignore me down here; but when His Master's Voice is right there...)

I did not reinstall the Panasonic system (I have two for sale, BTW) because we are down to two phone lines and I didn't want to muck with any more complex wired systems. So we have an AT&T cordless set with the base unit in the kitchen and five handhelds scattered through the house. It does a great job as a phone system but ***** for intercom use - it takes four or five buttons to ping another handset, and you have to know which handset you want. As the units get moved around randomly by the household, it's useless to ping Handset 2 if it's sitting by itself in the dining room instead of on my wife's desk. Some cordless systems are better at this function.

We also have an IM app (Trillian) on all our computers, and my wife and I can exchange text info (URLs, account numbers, etc.) all day long. When the kids are home and on screens, it's often a four-way conversation while we all get other things done.

Point being, there are a lot of solutions and plain old wired intercoms still have a place.

 

[TWX]

My house actually has an M&S Systems MC350 intercom system, with one panel in the workshop. Unfortunately, the system is ancient, and the room panels all had unsealed switches, which are malfunctioning. When they malfunction, the system itself doesn't work right as it goes into Listen mode on the main panel and won't come out of it until the errant switch is replaced or repaired.

Even more annoying, one is a single-pole-double-throw slider switch, and the other is a double-pole-double-throw slider switch.

The room panels are ****** simple, the two switches, a pot, a 3 or 4" 8ohm speaker, and a couple of resistors. Throwing a switch from listen to talk turns the speaker into a mic. I'm actually considering building entirely new panels completely bezel and all, but possibly using an actual mic instead of repurposing the speaker like that.

 

[jeffmoss26]

My intercom solution is simple. I put a doorbell button at the top of the stairs. When pushed it sounds a buzzer and lights a lamp on a spare button of my 6-button keyset phone! That normally signals me to TURN THE DAMN MUSIC DOWN! lol
Phone looks like this:

 

[TWX]

My intercom solution is simple. I put a doorbell button at the top of the stairs. When pushed it sounds a buzzer and lights a lamp on a spare button of my 6-button keyset phone! That normally signals me to TURN THE DAMN MUSIC DOWN! lol
Phone looks like this:

An intercom variant on the Western Electric 1500 series. Nice!

 

[regguy1]

Here's a good remote system for spouse commands.........

 

[jeffmoss26]

TWX, the 1500 is a standard touchtone phone without * and #. The 2500 is the normal phone everyone is familiar with. The 2564 and 2565 like I pictured were for 1A2 (multiline) systems

 

[TWX]

TWX, the 1500 is a standard touchtone phone without * and #. The 2500 is the normal phone everyone is familiar with. The 2564 and 2565 like I pictured were for 1A2 (multiline) systems

Ah. I stand corrected.

I'm looking for a 2554 for my workshop. I figure a nice big wall hanger with a mechanical ring would actually be audible while I'm working, and I want a separate handset from the controls so it's easier to clean off.

 

[jeffmoss26]

Let me see what I have.
Does it have to be Western Electric?

 

[472scout]

All you guys saying no way are doing it wrong. When I'm in the garage my wife doesn't bother me unless she has just returned from Victoria's Secret. And she brings me ice water, sandwiches, etc. like clock work. Life is good.

 

[magilla]

there's no way in hell I'd want an intercom (NAGcom) system in my garage. The Mrs can always call me on the cell phone, and if I'm too busy or dirty to answer it, she can leave a voicemail. And if it's something IMPORTANT or URGENT, she can just walk on out to the garage and tell me f2f.

 

[Ray-CA]

We just our "Okie" intercom: open the door and yell.

Ray

 

[jeffmoss26]

Lol!!