My Goal

["Derek Erb" <dce42@xxxxxxx>]

Let me put this a different way as I am perhaps getting bogged down
by too many details and too many possibilities.

My immediate goals are the following although I'd like to obviously
leave myself open for expansion:

Our new house has a closed front wall with a big front door on it
which currently has an audio-only intercom which connects to the
front door of the house.  The visitor pushes a button on the
intercom at the front gate and the person behind the front door
talks to them and pushes a different button to open that door.

I want to replace this with a video-based system in that I want to
be able to have a camera on top of the front gate that shows us who
the visitor is.  That's already relatively simple.  It gets more
complex:  I want to be able to see who the person is, communicate
with them (bidirectional audio-only), and open the door for them...
here it comes... from any computer on the network in the house.  In
other words I want the image on the computer screen, the sound
coming out through the sound card in the PC and the sound coming in
through the PC microphone from any computer on the internal
network.  It's a pretty big house and I don't wnat to have to go
down the hall and up the stairs from my office to the front door
every time a delivery shows up at the gate... I know I know:  lazy
sod!

The second challenge is inside the house.  I was hoping to run this
through the internal network as well as it just seems easier but the
goal is important:  There are a certain number, lets say eight, key
rooms.  I want to be able to talk back and forth from any of those
key rooms to any other key room.  Basically I want a multi-
directional intercom.  I want to be in the kitchen and call my
daughter upstairs in the bedroom; be in my office and call my
daughter upstairs or call the kitchen; be in my daughter's room and
call the living room... you get the idea.

If I have to add new cables I am now willing to do so after the back
and forth I've been going through but I need to know before I start
cabling (November 1st) as I do not want to cable through the
Ethernet (cat5e) cables and then go back a couple of weeks later to
run other cables.

I'll stop there to see if I can meet those basic goals before going
any further.

Can anyone give me any specifics which can do what I need?

Thanks.

PS:  Yet again the activity on this group is absolutely amazing and
the amount of knowledge here is incredibly impressive.  I am sooooo
glad I found this place!