Research of an envisioned smart doorbell

The doorbell is a ubiquitous appliance in people's home. Present-day doorbells can notify homeowners about a visitor's appearance, but with a limitation that homeowners can only get notifications when they are at home. To fill this gap, we envisioned a smart doorbell that can notify homeowners when a visitor appears, and further build a real-time communication between the visitor and the homeowners without a location constraint. The system consists of an outdoor interactive facility, homeowners' smart phones and networks that interconnect them. It can detect homeowners, identify visitors, make proper policies, establish communications and record visits. The working process of the system is presented in this paper, and some security issues are discussed. Further research should devote more attention to the implementation of the smart doorbell system.