I feel like there is are pretty compelling use-cases to be able to talk to someone at the front-door.
1. I'm at home, its late at night and the doorbell rings. I'd much prefer to talk to them without having the door opened.
2. I'm not at work and someone rings the doorbell (e.g. package delivery) and I want to coordinate them dropping the item in the garage (which I'd like to be able to open remotely with my smartthings automation).
3. I'm not at home and someone starts ringing the doorbell to case the joint for a break-in. I've been home at night when someone did this when I was younger and naively decided not to answer the door thinking it was the neighborhood drunk wanting to share his latest woes -- narrowly averted a home invasion there by turning on the light and scaring the thief off. In any case, the thief rang the doorbell incessantly to see if anyone was home. If someone had responded on an intercom at the door, I feel that at the very least you'd put the seed in the thief's mind that someone is home and cause them to bolt or make up an excuse.
Do you think a non-integrated doorbell intercom like the Ring is a better solution? Perhaps paired with a high quality camera to record people's face at the door?
1 & 2, you presume someone will always ring door bell? Ive got a doorbell, its a 50/50 chance if the'll drop the package and knock, drop the package, ring the doorbell, or sometimes they just drop the package and dont do anything.. they also wont wait for you to answer your phone, let alone for your garage door opening.
3. If a normal residential house was talking to me through a doorbell intercom; I would automatically assume the house was empty once you hung up knock a few times then kick in the door.
You should tlak to some people who've actually tried to use these things in production; the perfect world you imagine in your head dont exist.. put a fixed camera at your front door recording audio, your wasting your time and using inferior equipment to get a featue thats IS worthless..
just like all the whole home intercoms that were installed in the 90's, and were never used and eventully had to be yanked out and replaced.. its a gimmick for suckers with too much money.