Slowly over the months, and now years, the final vision started to take shape. 

Below is a list of the most-exciting features of the Phonein smart intercom. However new features are always coming, and some of our best have come from our test users and supporters. If you have any ideas about what would be great to see, please send them over by email, we would love to see them.

If you are excited about helping make this product a reality, please join our Kickstarter backer list to be notified when the project goes live and get in on the early-bird discounts! https://fire.phonein.io

Features

Remote speaking & remote open

Got someone coming over and you won’t be home, or just don’t want to bother running to the intercom? When someone rings your flat, your phone will get a push notification. Open the app, and you can either speak to the visitor, or skip that and just open the door!

Digital keys (our bread and butter)

Not sure if you’ll even be near your phone when the visitor arrives? Maybe your grocery delivery comes when you’re in a meeting, or Airbnb guests arrive late at night. Create and send a key that is only active when clicked. The key is just a link, so the visitor doesn’t even need to download an app. 

Other products have ways of sending keys around, but Phonein is the most secure. The door is only active for 30 seconds after a link is clicked, and the link itself has start and end dates. 

The keys can also be recurring, meaning you can create one key that’s active every Tuesday afternoon for a cleaner, or every afternoon for the babysitter, for example.

Welcome flow instructions

The digital key can be followed with a series of pictures guiding the visitor to your apartment. This way you can show them with pictures which stairway to use, which switch turns on the lights, where a hidden key is stored, or where you’d like the delivery to be left.

Send a pre-recorded message

You’re busy on a zoom call, in a movie, playing soccer, living life! You’re really not in the mood to answer the intercom, even from your phone. 

But there is some information that just needs to be explained with words… For instance, my building has two entrances from the courtyard. Choose the wrong one, and finding my apartment is nearly impossible.

For this, we support pre-recorded messages! You can explain how to find your flat once, and replay that perfect message for visitors automatically. When a call is coming in, just click to send down a pre-recorded message, or you can link a pre-recorded message to a digital key ahead of time!

Speak to the user

Another feature only found with Phonein, you can speak to your visitor from your mobile phone straight through to your intercom system.

We imagine this is for when you get an expected visitor, and you want to check who it is. Or if you want to give this visitor special instructions for when they enter the building.

Manage the volume

One complaint we hear all the time is about adjusting the volume, or silencing the intercom phone. They are incredibly loud, and will wake anyone and anything sleeping in the flat. 

With phonein, you can adjust the volume of your intercom from your phone anytime. So when the baby falls asleep, make sure to turn it off. Your phone will still buzz, but the device on the wall will remain silent.

Add more users

Live with others? Run an Airbnb business or small office?

With phonein you can easily share control of the device to others, so they can answer the intercom and create keys. 

View the history

Last but not least, you can view the history of events. So you can see when keys were used, and when calls were missed.

I hope this is a useful overview of all the things the Phonein smart intercom can do. We’re always thinking of more clever ideas. Things like integrations, iWatch support, and more.

Share your ideas with us, and if you want to learn more and be among the first to get your hands on a Phonein smart intercom, please join our Kickstarter mailing list. We’ll keep you up-to-date with our progress, and let you know when the Kickstarter is approaching, so you can get in on the early-bird discount.

https://fire.phonein.io

Thanks!

The post What The Phonein Smart Intercom Is All About appeared first on PhoneIn.

I’d like to take this opportunity to describe our app, and discuss a little about our vision for it. 

It’s true, the Phonein smart intercom is the crowning achievement of our young team. We introduced it in our previous post. It is universally compatible, very battery friendly, and looks absolutely great on your wall.

But without the app, it would be all for nothing. The device is really just a way to let you do all the amazing things that apps let you do. Let’s dive in.

I won’t review ALL the features of the app in detail here, but I’ll follow up in the next months with more posts.

At a high level, it’s from the app that you can…

Features

1. Open the building gate! Depending on your building, this might mean you can activate the building gate so when the user rings your flat, it just opens.
2. Send digital keys – Create a link and send it, so others can open the door on their own.
3. Set times and days for your keys.
4. Answer the ringing and speak to whoever is visiting, right from your phone!
5. Change the settings of your device, including silencing the intercom when you don’t want to be disturbed (or when the baby is sleeping).
6. Whenever anyone uses your intercom, you get a notification!

Let’s talk about one of these features.

Sending Digital Keys

Imagine the groceries waiting for you at home, or on your doorstep, when you get home from work, or when you step out of the shower. Or imagine have much time you can save if you don’t have to be home to let in the AirBnB guests. All this is possible with Phonein, because you can send a scheduled digital key only valid during the exact time of the stay or delivery window. 

In a future post, we’ll talk about our vision to lower the carbon footprint of delivery, and make your favourite hot services like grocery delivery faster and better. 

Coming soon to Kickstarter

Let us know what you think about our features, which one is the most important to you?! Feedback like that is always welcome as it helps us tune our product to what you really want.

We have a Kickstarter coming within a few months, so please learn more about Phonein and join our Kickstarter community list here! https://fire.phonein.io

Jesse Eisenberg, CEO

The post The Phonein Mobile App appeared first on PhoneIn.

Then I can happily carry my package home on the bus. What a fun way to spend an hour or two of my day! I miss Amazon.com so much.

Today I’m proud to re-kick off the Phonein blog with a tale about how we got started, and what we’re trying to improve in the world.

To cut to the chase, you can join our community, get updates about our smart apartment intercom, and be the first to know about our Kickstarter by signing up here fire.phonein.io

It was about a year ago that I moved from San Francisco to Budapest to get a new lease on life. Budapest is an amazing city and I encourage everyone to come visit and experience all it has to offer. A beautiful river running through the incredible urban scenery, fancy and hipster bohemian neighborhoods, incredible Turkish-style bath houses, great coffee shops and cafes nestled in hundred year-old east-meets-west buildings.

In fact I decided to make a building like that my new home, which is where I ran into some friction. The old building entry system was almost as old as the building, and there are no plans for an upgrade.

The Problem

The more I thought about it, the list of problems that needed solving grew.

• Amazon deliveries, all kinds of deliveries, when I’m not home.
• Friends are coming over for a birthday party and I don’t want to keep getting up to answer the intercom phone.
• Cleaners or other services are coming over and I’m not home.
• Airbnb hosts are remotely managing their flat.
• Businesses want to host clients and even manage their employee access.

I researched the idea and found a great community of hackers who had been solving this problem for their one-off case. There needed to be a solution that would work for all of us.

The Plan

I took the idea to a startup weekend in Budapest, hosted by Mosaik Coworking and organized by Tech Stars Startup Weekend. We learned a lot, got great feedback, won the competition and the real work began.

We’re aiming to be the only stand-alone, universal, smart intercom on the market!

We’re going to solve all the problems listed above and more, with a beautiful product that has an obsessive focus on customer experience and solves these electronic access problems with software.

Please join our community to hear about updates with our product, and to know when our Kickstarter goes live (just a few months away!). https://fire.phonein.io/

Jesse Eisenberg
Founder

The post Introducing the Phonein Smart Intercom appeared first on PhoneIn.