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Revisiting Algo Solutions

In the recent pre-holiday period we had the usual spike in the number of deliveries. This reminds me of how much I admire that Algo Solutions 8028 SIP Door Phone that graces our gate. It’s a splendid device, the definitive solution to the problem of deliveries to a one-man office. When a courier arrives they push the button. Even in their pre-holiday panic I can be talking to them before they have the opportunity to cut-and-run.

On rare occasions when they arrive and I’m not on the property, the call routes to my cell phone. I can advise them to take the package next door, or try again tomorrow.

There have been a couple of times when I was nearby or on the way home. In those few cases the driver offered to make another run past our gate after making some other deliveries in the neighborhood. The ability to talk to them immediately helped them clear their daily load, and saved me a trip to the not-so-nearby depot. Win-Win!

The 8028 Door Phone has been installed for a while. I noted this week that there was a firmware update for the device. While I was not having any trouble with the device, it only took ten minutes to update the firmware.

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Review: Algo Communications 8028 SIP Door Phone

The necessity of a gate bell in my working life stems from the combination of a fenced yard and a home office located well in the back of the property. The lack of such capability at the front gate makes receiving deliveries chancy, often requiring a lengthy drive to a UPS or Fedex facility to pickup a missed delivery.

In researching our initial attempt to remedy the lack of a gate alert I learned about SIP door phones from several companies. These devices were targeted at very large homes or office and apartment buildings, and tended to be very costly. Most were well over $1,000, which was dramatically beyond my budget.

However, Algo Communications offers a SIP door phone for a single family dwelling with a list price around $500. At the time I had thought that something analog, for around $250, was a better option. While that choice kept me on budget, it was ultimately disappointing, most especially when the device failed outright.

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A Dead Ringer For DoorBot

DoorBot-Looking-Left.jpgThis week has seen the team behind the DoorBot pseudo-smart doorbell announce their second generation product. In so doing they’ve renamed themselves Ring.

Honestly, my experience with Doorbot and its creators was so bad that I can’t help but harbor some animosity toward their operation. Yet, I want to be fair. Design is an iterative process. Perhaps they just need a few iterations on the theme to get to more generally usable product.

On the other hand, the description of the new product seems to be an incremental improvement from DootBot. Jump from 802.11B type Wifi to the more recent 802.11N type. Jump from VGA resolution video to 720p video, the baseline for HD. Abandon push-to-talk audio, ala Nextel of old, for something more akin to telephony. It’s basically a reversal of some of the bad design decisions embodied in the first generation product.

On the other hand, they still seem completely wed to their own “cloud service.” My experience with that was expect massive latency on call setup. Expect video only on occasion. I rarely even had continuous audio. On this basis alone you probably won’t receive that Fedex Express package you’re expecting on the first delivery attempt.

I’ve come to understand that my mistake with respect to DoorBot was expecting the kind of performance that I could more reasonably expect from any standards compliant IP phone. The DoorBot team clearly doesn’t have that sort of experience or appreciate that kind of performance. Even if that’s what separates the tools from the toys. DoorBot is a toy. Nothing more.

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Algo Solutions 8028: A Door Phone Solution For Our Front Gate

A few years back when I installed the analog DoorBell Fone I considered the Algo Solutions 8028 SIP Door Phone. It was the most appropriate option that I had found, but at $500 it was well outside my budget for the project. That was the principle reason that I opted for the analog DoorBell Fon. Not long after I installed the DoorBell Fon I met Pat Byrne of Algo Solutions at ITExpo West.

When the DoorBell Fon eventually failed I was forced to reconsider the situation at our front gate. I let that situation remain unaddressed for some time, until I eventually stumbled upon DoorBot. When DoorBot failed to impress I reached out to Pat, who kindly provided one of their 8028 SIP Door Phones for me to evaluate.

It has taken some time for me to get around to installing the Algo door phone. I was delayed because I wanted to have a small metal plate welded to to the fence post to create a proper mounting platform for the device.

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Our DoorBot Has Been Decommissioned: Part 2 – How Fi is Our Wi?

PowerAP-N & DoorBotThe problem with using a less than common Wifi AP is that a manufacturer can say, “we’ve never heard of that make/model”  and hope that they are thus absolved of any possible requirement to help troubleshoot the situation.  Not that the crew at DoorBot took that stance, but I’ve heard it plenty in prior situations.

It recently occurred to me that there was a way that I could confirm the state of our Wifi at the gate location where we had the DoorBot installed. I could stage a video call over Wifi using tools that I already had on-hand. If I could record a decent quality video call from a Wifi connected mobile device that location then it would prove that our Wi is way-Fi!

Staging this proved to be pretty simple. I pointed my Nexus 7 tablet at the school yard across the street, then established a video call using Talky.io. Talky.io is a free WebRTC-based service from &yet. It runs just fine in Chrome for Android.

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Coming Soon: Rock ‘em Sock ‘em DoorBots!

DoorBot-ALGO-8028You may recall that I was eagerly awaiting the arrival our DoorBot, the Wifi-enabled, video capable doorbell that calls a smart phone app when the button is pushed. Well, our DoorBot arrived early in December. Since then I’ve been pondering if, and exactly how, to share my initial experience with the device.

To be blunt, our early experience with DoorBot has been disappointing. It doesn’t meet our needs for a couple of reasons. The software is still a little rough. To be fair the company is reported to be working on the issues reported by early users. However, they’re not doing the greatest job of reporting their progress.

All of this has me thinking back to when I first considered putting the DoorBell Fone at our gate, and the alternatives that were available at the time. The most attractive option was ALGO Solutions model 8028 SIP Door Phone. However, at $500 it was just beyond my budget at the time.

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