Door eyes

Door peephole – a device with which you can inspect the staircase without opening the front door.

The front door, of course, should protect the house from uninvited guests. Therefore, it would be good to see who is behind the door. For this, a peephole is placed on the front door..

The main characteristic of the eye is the viewing angle. The bigger it is, the better. The widest viewing angle is 180 °: then even the rug lying under the door is visible. And the smallest is about 120 °. You also need to know the thickness of the door. It ranges from 35 to 60 mm for ordinary doors, and for good, reinforced metal doors it reaches 85 mm. Therefore, the “body” of the eyes are made of different lengths, as well as different diameters, so that you can install the peephole on any door.

In addition, each eyelet has a thread that adjusts the length. The optics of the peephole can be glass or plastic (naturally, glass eyes are better, stronger, the glass is less scratched), and the “body” is made metal or plastic. The material from which the eyelet is made affects both the quality of the eyelet and the price. According to experts, metal and glass eyes are the most reliable, but also the most expensive.
Please note: having bought a cheap Russian peephole, the diameter of which is larger than, say, Spanish, you will have to drill a larger hole in the door. And replacing it with an eye with a smaller diameter will be very problematic.

By the way, if you bought an entrance door, and the package contains a door peephole, this does not mean at all that it is already installed. They are not inserted in advance. Why? It’s very simple: so that you don’t have to stand on a stool every time or bend into three deaths, the location of the peephole is determined directly during the installation of the door.

So what do you need to know when choosing a peephole? The metal peephole with glass optics will last longer. It is best to immediately determine which viewing angle you are interested in: the choice of model depends on this. The same applies to the diameter of the eyelet – decide this in advance so that later you do not have to think about how to insert a smaller eyelet into a larger diameter hole.

Video eyes

Today, an ordinary peephole is no longer so relevant. Almost all houses now have an intercom on the entrance doors. And if someone comes to you, he first calls the apartment downstairs. In addition, a regular peephole is easy to cover with your finger. Therefore, you can put a modern video surveillance system on the door. What it is? Roughly speaking, this is a video eye. The system is arranged in such a way that the person standing in front of the door of the apartment does not even suspect that he is being seen.

Let’s talk about the most “complex” (and most expensive) model. This system completely observes and listens to the complex staircase. High-sensitivity wide-angle flush-mounted cameras, high-quality microphones are selected, and you can talk without opening the door. In addition, the areas close to the apartment are illuminated by infrared searchlights mounted in the ceiling..

Another very useful feature: there is an automatic selective video recording of suspicious events that occur in front of the front door (ICD zone). And even if you are not at home, the person in the ICD zone will be recorded. Moreover, a video fragment will record “pictures” from the other three cameras plus the date and time of the events. All elements are mounted so that they are not visible from the outside (S, Mik, AD) or very little noticeable (IKP, IKD).

A monitor measuring 25 x 25 x 25 cm, a nice intercom tube, a video recorder and several small auxiliary devices for the normal functioning of the system are installed directly in the apartment.