English Teenager Invents a Better Doorbell

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.

Comments

Horatio sez...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

YEAAAAAAAAAAH!

UPS Rings Doorbells?

[corsec67]

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.

Re:UPS Rings Doorbells?

[guybrush3pwood]

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

Re:UPS Rings Doorbells?

[Pennycook]

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.

Re:UPS Rings Doorbells?

[isopropanol]

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).

Re:UPS Rings Doorbells?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:UPS Rings Doorbells?

[DriedClexler]

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.

Re:UPS Rings Doorbells?

[geoskd]

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.

Re:UPS Rings Doorbells?

[greentshirt]

I caught one once too. I still have him.

Re:UPS Rings Doorbells?

[mikkelm]

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.

Re:UPS Rings Doorbells?

[Seumas]

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.

Re:UPS Rings Doorbells?

[nateand]

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.

Overkill

[frovingslosh]

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.

Re:Overkill

[DMoylan]

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.

Re:Overkill

[0100010001010011]

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'.

Re:Overkill

[11_biznatch_11]

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.

Re:Overkill

[Opportunist]

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.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:Slashdot could do better!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What's to invent?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

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.

Meh ...

[lennier1]

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

Re:He invented this? How come I had one before he

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the spectrum was nice and clear back then.