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English Teenager Invents a Better Doorbell

Posted by timothy on from the it's-coming-from-inside-the-house dept.

Several readers have written with word of a new doorbell, invented by 13-year-old Laurence Rook. What's so special about a doorbell? This one lets you answer the door from wherever you can receive a call from its embedded 3G chip; to your in-person caller (facing the doorbell), that means it sounds like you're answering the door over an intercom system, even if you're really across town. Pretty clever way to make it harder for a thief to know if a home is actually occupied, though Rook says that he initially just wanted a system to avoid missed packages.

44 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. Horatio sez... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    When it comes to the working world, it seems that Lawrence Rook... *sunglasses* ...has got his foot in the door.

    YEAAAAAAAAAAH!

    1. Re:Horatio sez... by Seumas · · Score: 2

      In Soviet Russia, reddit fucks off back to you with this shit.

  2. UPS Rings Doorbells? by corsec67 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have had extremely good luck with UPS, but most peoples complaints are that the delivery driver doesn't even attempt to ring the doorbell, and drives off.

    --
    If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
    1. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by guybrush3pwood · · Score: 5, Funny

      What does he do, instead? Just parks and gives you 60 seconds to notice him and storm out of the house?

      --
      Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
    2. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by Pennycook · · Score: 5, Interesting

      We've actually caught delivery guys posting us "You weren't in" cards in the past. Some of them are just really lazy and don't want to get your package out of the van if they can avoid it.

    3. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by isopropanol · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In our neighbourhood, they stop looking about a block away because there is not a house with the right address where the GPS coordinates say it is (but all the houses on the street are clearly marked).

    4. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Our local driver(s) have on several occasions not come to the door, but mark in their system that I wasn't home. I've even been sitting out on my front porch before and gotten a notification in my email that UPS missed me. However upon calling it they said "we're sorry but if you missed the driver he'll try and redeliver tomorrow". Basically they treat residential customers like shit because they can and most people simply put up with it. Once or twice they've left a package for me at the front office of my apartment complex without bothering to leave a note on my door meaning they just drove as far as the office and then left. Being that the front office is nearly a mile from my door, I made the driver go pick the package up and bring it to me the next day. It was about 75lbs of bulky box, and since I have no car there was no sane way of me going to pick it up. Seriously fuck UPS right up their fucking asshole.

    5. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by DriedClexler · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've caught a UPS deliverer just dumping it and running off even though the sender had requested a signature, and the only reasoning I caught him was because I was eagerly expecting the package, happened to be home, knew it would arrive soon, and knew a signature would be required. "Huh, oh yeah ... it does say signature required... oops, yeah, sign there"

      Another time a UPS deliverer just put a "you weren't there" notice while I was at home late one evening, never heard a knock and I would have.

      --
      Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
    6. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by dnorf87 · · Score: 2

      Back in 2005 when I finally decided to upgrade to a 250gb SATA drive, I first saw it being flung over my fence into the front yard in what looked like a trash bag (possibly because it was raining?). I only knew to look outside because my dog went crazy. He goes nuts when he hears Fedex and UPS trucks--or anything that sounds like one. They did the whole black plastic bag with a box inside of it again sometime later that year, leaving it next to our mailbox, which happened to be right next to our trash pile. Good thing the trash guys didn't come before I found it :| Fedex from now on. UPS around here is terrible. On Topic: Nifty idea from a techy-teen. Wonder how this kind of tech could've influenced movies such as Home Alone? Sneak attack from behind?

    7. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by geoskd · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think more people knock than ring doorbells, even when they are available.. UPS has over the years gotten bad about just dumping the package on the porch.. I think most do attempt a knock (or ring), but they are trying to get on to the next address so they are not going to wait too long before they just leave it.. If you are really concerned and unable to be there to make sure you get you package, Fed Ex has a hold for pickup and you can get your package at the nearest office.

      Many people don't realize that UPS and FedEx now offer a shipping option called "shipper release". It is a discounted shipping option that guarantees that the driver will leave the package, no matter the neighborhood, weather conditions, etc. The building could be on fire and they will leave the package. The catch is that the carrier is not responsible for lost or stolen packages. Many shippers use this option because it is cheaper to replace any packages lost, than it is to pay full shipping price (The shipper release discount is pretty big). Many, many shippers now use it. This in large part why packages are left. Often a driver wont even knock when the package is shipper release, they just drop and run.

      --
      I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
    8. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by greentshirt · · Score: 5, Funny

      I caught one once too. I still have him.

    9. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 2

      On two occasions I have had courier drivers post a "you weren't here" card on the front door exactly two inches away from the "For Deliveries Ring Bell at the Back Door" sign.

      --
      If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
    10. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by mikkelm · · Score: 3, Informative

      You might know the dogs, but the delivery guy does not. Why should he take the chance, or brave phobias to deliver a package into the property, rather than just to the property? Think before you compose.

    11. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by kurzweilfreak · · Score: 2

      If you're seriously afraid of dogs, why would you take a job that requires you to travel to and on stranger's property where there's a pretty good chance you're gonna come across dogs pretty often?

      --

      kurzweil_freak

      5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student

      Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.

    12. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by ace123 · · Score: 2

      Of course, UPS doesn't ring the doorbell. They knock. Three times.

    13. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by sribe · · Score: 2

      We've actually caught delivery guys posting us "You weren't in" cards in the past. Some of them are just really lazy and don't want to get your package out of the van if they can avoid it.

      Yes. Through my window I watched a FedEx driver walk up without the package, slap the notice on the door, and walk away. I called the local office and raised hell.

    14. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you're seriously afraid of dogs, why would you take a job that requires you to travel to and on stranger's property where there's a pretty good chance you're gonna come across dogs pretty often?

      I dunno; hunger, rent, car payments ... lots of things I suppose.

      I never get why every single person's dog is "harmless" if you ask them.

    15. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2

      Usually my dog chews 'em up so bad I have to get rid of them after a couple of weeks.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    16. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by Machtyn · · Score: 2

      In a lot of places I go, the GPS coords are horribly off. I've stopped bothering to inform mapquest, google maps, etc. because when I look for a condo I lived in 6 years ago, that had been there for 3 years before that, still doesn't show up on google maps and is unroutable.

    17. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by Seumas · · Score: 2

      The "major fuckwad" is only that, because he is using poor discretion. I would be *more* pissed if my delivery guy refused to leave packages simply because I didn't answer the door. If you live in an area where theft is a concern, then you'd be pissed because it'll get stolen. If you live in an area where theft is unlikely, you'd be pissed if they didn't leave it, because it means you either have to wait another day and be awake and near the door to hear and respond quickly to it and/or make a long trip to the UPS office to pick it up, negating the entire fucking reason that you had it shipped in the first place.

    18. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by Seumas · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This used to happen to me all the time.

      One amusing incident, I had ordered about $10,000 worth of equipment from the Apple online store. I was eagerly awaiting it, for fucking obvious reasons. I was waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Hours were ticking by. The end of the day was coming. I was getting worried. Eventually, I checked online again. It claimed it had been delivered. It had not. It wasn't outside and nobody had knocked or rung a door bell or called my phone or anything.

      I called the leasing office to see if it had been left there (often UPS or FedEX will claim I wasn't at my apartment, so that they could just dump the package in the leasing office and skip delivering it to me). Nope, nothing there.

      So, I called FedEX. They looked into their information. Confirmed - yep, we delivered it!

      Um . . . . no, you didn't. You definitely did not deliver a bunch of shiny expensive stuff to my door.

      They said they would have to look into it and call me back, later.

      In the meantime, I took a wild fucking hung and called up the physical Apple Store at the local mall. I asked if they had received a delivery today. They confirmed that it was delivery day and they'd received pallets of stuff. I explained my situation and asked if they could look for any out of place deliveries with my name on them.

      Yep, they found them.

      I went to the store with my ID and receipt to prove that it was my stuff and they gave it to me.

      Two days later, I got a call from FedEX to let me know that they believed they might have delivered the items I bought from the Apple Store to the Apple Store.

      I told them that I knew that and that I'd already driven there and picked it up earlier in the week.

    19. Re:UPS Rings Doorbells? by nateand · · Score: 5, Informative

      This. I worked for them over a holiday season as a "driver helper" once, and the whole experience was pretty eye opening. Pretty much every package is "shipper release" if it's residential. A lot of good drivers would tell me that if it looked expensive (laptop sized box from Best Buy, for example) that I should try to get a signature even though the package didn't require one. But basically, drivers don't need to get your signature anymore. They should still try to deliver something, but if it's 3pm in the afternoon (the routes are designed to have them doing residential in the evening, but if they have an easy day...) they are going to assume no one is home, and might make the bad choice there. UPS makes all their money from commercial stuff anyway, residential is just a side thought that is a total pain in the ass to deal with.

  3. Overkill by frovingslosh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OK, I'll acknowledge that some people are abandoning their land line and going only wireless, but putting a doorbell on a 3G system strikes me as somewhat absurd. Maybe it will be useful in places where the cell carriers don't rape their customers, but using it in the USA, with the extra account it would require, would be crazy for most people. At the very least it should also have the option to tie into the home's land line rather than use the cell network.

    I could "invent" a lot of things, if practical costs of using a wireless network were not a consideration.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:Overkill by Sarten-X · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Let's all stop innovating because of cost, then! This silly progress thing is just plain too expensive!

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    2. Re:Overkill by DMoylan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      well here in ireland a prepay sim can be picked up with no paperwork and i think 5 euros every six months will keep it active and in credit. so 10 euros a year to run it?

      it would be nice with a wifi model running voip to your mobile though.

    3. Re:Overkill by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Except this isn't anything 'new'. One of the newer apartment buildings built on campus (finished in ~2005) lets you buzz in anyone from anywhere using your phone. I believe the place also had washer/driers that would text you when they finished their cycle.

      It may be cool, but definitely not a new 'invention'.

    4. Re:Overkill by 11_biznatch_11 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Most apartment building I've lived in, including my current 20 year old one, have the main entrance intercom system just dial a pre-programmed phone number. In the past you would give it your land line and buzz people in from that, but since you can have it call any number most people I know now have it call their cell, since they don't have land lines. I've been answering my buzzer/intercom with my cell phone for 8 years.

    5. Re:Overkill by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      The trend toward "every gadget with its own bloody cell contract" is rather annoying, especially when the house in which this item would be installed probably has a perfectly good internet connection already or, even if unwired, a number of devices that could be sharing the single comparatively expensive cellular modem and contract.

      Unfortunately, home automation still seems to be in a rather ghastly state. You can get something polished if you pay reasonably serious money or sink considerable time and effort, and the options for cobbling stuff together out of miscellaneous geek gear are better than they used to be; but I do suspect that the rise of unnecessarily cell-driven widgets is (aside from the obvious rapacious greed of the telcos factor) driven by ease-of-use considerations. Embed a cell modem in something and, like magic, you don't have to pay support people to explain the mysteries of whatever horrid mixture of incompetence, cut-rate gear, and sheer mystery lies between the device they just purchased and the internet.

    6. Re:Overkill by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Think further. Think company doorbell.

      Imagine you have a small one-man shop and you just step out for groceries or something, wouldn't you want to be able to tell your delivery guy that he should wait for 5 minutes (and receive a nice tip if he did) instead of having to wait all day in your office for him?

      Imagine you're a big company and you try to avoid having a phone system. It's not as absurd as it may initially look, considering that the setup cost of phone systems (even aside of the system itself, cables, phones, etc) is easily overcome by handing cells to all your employees, which has pretty much become the standard in some companies anyway. How about every secretary (or a few of your personnel) receiving a call when someone rings the doorbell and they can even open the door for them? Even if they're not in the company (granted, opening the door should be reserved to certain special occasions in such a case).

      I could even see an added security feature, akin to a four-eyes principle, where the security head receives a call when a certain security door is to be opened and only his code, sent via cell, can unlock the door in addition to the guard's button.

      I could see a lot of interesting ways this could be used in business.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    7. Re:Overkill by iamhassi · · Score: 2

      Wonder how hard it would be to wire a doorbell to a Droid running Skype? Oh, wait, nevermind, I never answer my doorbell anyway since friends and family call before they arrive. Only people ringing the doorbell are salesmen who can't read the giant no soliciting sign.

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    8. Re:Overkill by iamhassi · · Score: 2, Informative

      Everything you just described could be done over wifi VoIP without the expensive monthly 3G bill.

      Why not just tape a prepaid cellphone to the door with your number in the speed dial and a note that says "hold 1 to call someone to the door"? Wow... did I just invent something?! Now I just need a 13... no, make that an 11 yr old kid to peddle it....

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
  4. He invented this? How come I had one before he was by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    He invented this? How come I had one before he was born?

    I think I still have it saved somewhere in my old "Cool"
    alarm equip. I used to do installs in the pre-computer
    (pre 386 days). This was a box, with triggers and a phone
    module. Event triggers, allowed for voice out, mic in.

    Exact same thing. So... innovation?

    Kudos to him for a great innovation.

    -@|

    AC til I find it...

  5. Re:Slashdot could do better! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Then when people show up at your door, they download the app?! Brilliant! Android users can keep iOS users away, and iOS users can keep Android users away, and no one has to deal with the remaining riff-raff.

    You know what might be better though? If you gave every doorbell a number, and then you could just enter the number of the person you wanted to talk to.

  6. Re:"even if you're really across town" by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2

    If you're capable of physically ringing the doorbell to cause abuse then you already have a million and one ways at your disposal to do it. You already know they're not home.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  7. Re:What's to invent? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Before I got it changed, I used to get calls from my old condo intercom from half way across the country. My unit had a separate entrance so I never buzzed people in, even when I lived there. If the system responded to touch-tones then there is not much to invent here. It's just a feature-add.

    No, it's not.

    Your condo was using the phone system to act as an intercom, this kid's invention is a phone and doesn't require one already be installed. That means my apartment, which doesn't have an intercom system like your condo does, could have this system with minimal installation work.

    RTFA.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  8. Skype by Inschato · · Score: 2

    Couldn't you just hook the door bell up to your LAN and make it call through Skype or whatever instead of this 3g chip nonsense?

  9. Had the same set up years ago by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 2

    Nothing new here, aside from maybe the 3G chip. When I rented out a loft in SF 10 years back, the landlady gave me the manual to the door intercom and I was able to program it via it's dial in touch-tone API to dial my cell so I could answer the door from wherever -- which was very handy.

  10. Meh ... by lennier1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Call me once it's possible to remotely zap Jehova's Witnesses and other annoyances.

  11. Bueller? Bueller? by Brewmeister_Z · · Score: 2

    This reminds me of the hack used in the Ferris Bueller movie when the door bell was pressed and a recording would playback over the intercom. If Ferris had this then, he could do his improvise the "sick and can't come to the door" routine from anywhere using a cell phone and not get busted by the recording repeating.

    --
    I Cater to the Needs of Stupid People. - from a coffee mug Christmas gift
  12. Re:He invented this? How come I had one before he by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes, the spectrum was nice and clear back then.

  13. Re:Slashdot's UK icon by Miseph · · Score: 2

    Clearly it's a ginger.

    --
    Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
  14. Re:only your word against theirs by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 2

    "Hi. You claimed to deliver a package but didn't. I have my 12 hour front door footage to prove it."

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
  15. Re:Nothing new, an 19th century invention by green1 · · Score: 2

    I work in the telecom field and we call them Enterphones. 90% or more of apartment buildings use them, of those, over three quarters of them are able to call any number you program in to them, the remaining ones are much older systems (more than 20 years old) that actually are inserted in to the phone line going to the particular suite, most of these are slowly being replaced by the newer version.

    Interesting mention on the police stations, I had forgotten about those, at all the rural police stations around here there is no doorbell, instead there is a telephone handset beside the front door, when you pick it up you are automatically connected to the police dispatch centre, who then radio the local police to see if they are in the station to let you in.

  16. Re:UPS delivers out of office hours?????? by anglico · · Score: 2

    When I worked for UPS (In USA) back in 2001 we worked up to 13 hours, 12 with lunch was all the law would allow, and we weren't allowed to return to the building until we attempted delivery on all packages. There were many days I clocked out at 8pm, it's expected at Christmas time, but if your loader screws up then it could be anytime throughout the year. I'm not gonna say all drivers are perfect but I would try to get rid of every package, just so I didn't have to see it the next day.