Last March the build of our home office was completed.  It sits at the end of our , not very long garden and is s our primary place to work now.  We love it.

About 20m from the back of the house

The only downside to the office is that it’s the full length of the house and the length of the garden away from the doorbell.  We order plenty of things for home delivery and our poor neighbours were having to take things in because we never heard the bell ring.  So we tried a few things

1. Buying the most expensive doorbell in Homebase that claimed the furthest range (25m).  Didn’t work at all

2. Importing a doorbell from the US that cost 140 USD plus import charges that claimed a 100m range.  Worked intermittently but not well enough

Finally Carl sent me a link for a new product that hadn’t yet launched called the Doorbot. The Doorbot connects to your wireless internet and has a mobile app that works on iOS and Android , when someone rings the bell the app launches.  You register the app with the serial number of your doorbot(s)) and you can “answer” the bell which triggers the video camera and a microphone. For me it means I’m able to trigger the mic and talk  to the person at the door as well as   see who’s there and if I even want to answer it (hello 6pm Jehovah’s Witnesses)

Since it uses push notifications there’s a small delay but at home it’s not even  a couple of seconds. Maybe when I’m away from home and on 3G it might be longer but my use case for talking to someone at my door when i’m away from home is small.  We received it Monday (14 quid import duty) and set it up and had 3 deliveries Tuesday and 3 visitors Wednesday all worked beautifully.  For some reason other people aren’t as excited as I am when I open the door and explain how thrilling our new doorbell is, I guess if you don’t know about it, it’s just a doorbell.

I had no solution for what we’d do if the Doorbot didn’t work so very glad it does and highly recommended for anyone who has trouble getting to the door on time or wants to keep an eye on people who ring their doorbell.