When we secure any property, we prioritize keeping the wrong people out of your building. While it sounds simple enough, this can prove difficult over the course of a regular workday. Locking your doors means that employees have to unlock them every time they wish to get back inside, which can prove quite inefficient. Moreover, even businesses that aren’t open to the public still often have customers and other visitors with appointments. This makes keeping doors locked even less practical. On the other hand, leaving your business completely unlocked provides a security nightmare as well! In these situations, installing an intercom provides the perfect security. These systems let workers interact with visitors and even grant them access remotely, adding valuable security and efficiency at the same time. In today’s post, we’ll break down our commercial intercom systems to help you secure your own business.
First, we’ll explain some of the parts and terminology that goes along with installing these systems. This will give you a solid foundation for understanding the rest of the material in this post. Specifically, we’ll break down the operative pieces of an intercom that both alert you to activity at your property and allow you to interact with visitors. Additionally, we’ll also detail some equipment that allows you to grant access to your building remotely if you wish to add that option as well. From there, we’ll detail the main types of intercoms you can install. These options will determine how you interact with anyone at your doors. Now, let’s dive in and show you how we build intercom systems for our customers!
Putting the Puzzle Together
Like most security equipment, intercom systems come with their own unique terms. In this section, we’ll discuss the pieces that make up any of the commercial intercoms options we’ll discuss in this post. In particular, every intercom system consists of two types of “stations.” We’ll start by explaining the purpose of both. From there, we’ll look at a popular optional feature that we can add when installing intercoms. Let’s get started with a look at the type of station responsible for an intercom’s most important functions.
Substations, such as this audio substation by Aiphone, allow a property’s visitors to communicate with employees inside the building.
Master Stations
Master stations, otherwise known as “base” stations, belong inside the property where we install the intercom. Employees use the base station to communicate with those looking to access the building. Many businesses only have one master station. In small buildings with a receptionist’s desk, this often proves adequate. However, some buildings have several master stations, depending on how many people inside a business may need the ability to communicate with visitors. This allows one of many workers to reply to someone looking to initiate contact with someone inside. Master stations can also call all of a building’s “substations” at once. Next, let’s look at a substation’s relationship to the master stations in commercial intercom systems.
Substations
Just as with master stations, we can install as few as one substation on any intercom system. We place these stations next to a business’s most important or “popular” doors. Once installed, individuals can press a button on the substation to initiate communication with someone inside. This will “call” out to the master station(s) to alert those inside to the arrival of a visitor. At that point, employees inside can use their master stations to communicate with individuals at a substation. Furthermore, some intercom systems even allow workers to remotely unlock the specific door that a guest has approached. Now, let’s examine how we can make this intercom feature a reality.
Optional Door Release Functionality
Adding the ability to remotely control access to your property represents one of the most popular commercial intercom options. In order to create this ability, we need to do two things. First, we must install electronic locking hardware on the exterior doors you wish to control. Then, we must install master stations with a door release function. At that point, the door release will interact with each door’s electronic locks to grant access to visitors when needed. The “unlock” button on the master station will unlock the door associated with the substation that initiates contact with the master station. However, “initiating contact” with the master station can take a couple different forms. In the next couple sections, we’ll see what type of communication options you have when installing an intercom.
Audio Intercoms
When most people think of intercom systems, they think of audio intercoms. These intercoms allow for audio-only communication between individuals at the master station(s) and substations. Most of us have visited an apartment building with a speaker system in the lobby and the ability to talk to tenants in every apartment. This represents a type of audio intercom system. However, most business owners install intercoms that call every master station at once, rather than choosing a specific station to call.
Additionally, employees at the master stations can “call” the other master stations if desired as well. This lets all employees with master stations communicate with each other in an efficient and convenient manner. Of course, if you have the ability to unlock a door with your intercom systems, your audio master stations can also unlock exterior doors after conversing with the visitor at the door. Because of their reasonable price point and usefulness, audio intercoms make a great solution for many commercial applications. However, some business owners prefer commercial intercom systems that offer a little bit of extra security. In these cases, we install video intercoms. Last but not least, let’s see how installing one of these systems can help secure your business!
A video intercom station, such as this Aiphone model, allows employees to interact with and grant access to a businesses’ visitors.
Video Intercoms
As the name implies, video intercoms allow you to see video of anyone activates a substation on your intercom system. Each substation has a camera that shares this video back to the master station(s). The master stations themselves have screens on them to display this footage. The size of these screens can vary, ranging from handheld master stations with small displays to 7-inch display screens.
Employees can view video a couple different ways. For starters, individuals at your doors can manually activate the intercom system by pushing a button just as they would with an audio intercom. At this point, the substations create an audible alert and display the video created by the activated substation. In turn, this allows workers to have a conversation with the person at the door. Also just as with audio intercoms, master stations with a door release feature will allow users to unlock the door at this point.
Additionally, you can manually pull up live video from any camera on your intercom system. This allows you to check on your doors before leaving for the day, making sure everything looks safe and secure. The ability to both converse with visitors and keep an eye on your doors remotely makes video intercoms the most popular of our commercial intercom systems.
Putting Our Commercial Intercom Systems to Work for You
We hope that this post helps you understand and utilize the options for installing a commercial intercom system that best fit your application. Additionally, we encourage you to contact us with any questions this post may raise for you. We will happily answer any and all of your security-related inquiries. Moreover, we also invite you to take advantage of our free site survey program. We’ve long offered complimentary security audits and equipment quotes to both new and existing customers alike. While on site, we can help you create solutions to help address your security threats and provide the user experience you desire. Furthermore, we can also make suggestions of our own based on observations of your property.
Perhaps you have a good amount of security equipment in place, but wish to add some of the intercom equipment described here. Or, maybe you don’t have much in the way of security equipment now, and want to get a complete plan started from the ground up. Either way, we are here to help! In our 37 years of business, we’ve helped over a thousand businesses create and implement a variety of approaches and equipment to secure businesses like your own. Together, we can help you keep the wrong people out of your building, making it as safe and secure as possible!