Apartment buildings present a different intercom challenge from villas. A villa has one family and a handful of entry points. An apartment building has dozens or hundreds of households sharing a small number of entrances, with residents, visitors, couriers, property staff, and contractors all arriving through the same door. The outdoor station has to serve all of them quickly, and the indoor monitor has to be simple enough that a resident uses it without instruction.

FARHD’s latest apartment intercom lineup addresses both sides of that equation: newly designed UI on 7″ and 10″ indoor monitors, paired with an apartment outdoor station featuring face recognition, card unlock, and a room list. As a Chinese manufacturer founded in 1998 with 28 years of experience in video door phones and intercom systems, FARHD produces core components—TFT LCD screens, driver boards, and camera modules—in-house, which allows the interface, access methods, and outdoor station to be designed as one coordinated system rather than assembled from mismatched parts.

Why Apartment Entrances Need a Different Design Approach

A villa intercom serves a household. An apartment intercom serves a building. That shift changes the requirements in ways that are easy to underestimate.

Volume of interactions. In a 200-unit building, the main entrance may handle hundreds of calls, card taps, and face verifications every day. The outdoor station must respond quickly and consistently under that load, not just in a showroom demonstration.

Mixed user groups. Residents want fast, hands-free entry. Visitors need to find the right apartment without staff assistance. Couriers need a quick path to a specific unit. Property staff need managed access without carrying a resident card. A single access method cannot serve all of them well.

Directory accuracy. A room list is only useful if it matches the building’s actual occupancy. In buildings with tenant turnover, a stale directory creates daily friction—visitors call the wrong unit, couriers give up, and residents complain.

Interface simplicity. Residents interact with the indoor monitor sporadically. If answering a call or unlocking the door requires navigating menus, they will not learn it. The UI must make the common actions obvious.

Management at scale. Adding a new resident, removing a departed tenant, and replacing a lost card are routine tasks that happen weekly in a large building. If each one requires a technician, the operational cost becomes significant.

The new lineup is designed around these realities.

Newly Designed UI on 7″ and 10″ Indoor Monitors

The indoor monitor is the device residents actually live with, so the UI redesign is the most consequential change in this release.

The design principle is prioritization: put the actions residents perform most often at the front, and reduce the number of steps to reach them.

Clear call handling. An incoming call presents the visitor image prominently, with answer and unlock available directly. Residents should not have to hunt for the unlock button while a visitor waits at the door.

Simplified navigation. A logical menu structure makes settings, call history, and card-related functions easier to find. The visual language is consistent across screens, so the monitor feels like a modern smart-home device rather than a technical panel.

Touch-optimized controls. Buttons are sized for fingers, reducing mis-taps—a detail that matters for elderly residents and for anyone using the screen in a hurry.

Two screen sizes, one interface logic. The 7″ and 10″ models share the same UI design language, so a building can mix both sizes—10″ in primary living areas, 7″ in secondary rooms or smaller units—without residents facing two different interfaces. For distributors and integrators, a shared UI also simplifies demonstration, training, and support.

FARHD produces TFT LCD screens in-house, which means display quality—brightness, viewing angle, color accuracy, and touch response—is controlled at the component level rather than accepted as whatever the panel supplier delivers. For a device used dozens of times a day and expected to last years, that control matters.

The Apartment Outdoor Station: Three Access Methods, One Entry Point

The outdoor station is where the building meets the street. This release combines three access methods that serve different user groups without adding complexity at the door.

Face Recognition

Face recognition gives residents hands-free entry—useful when carrying shopping, a child, or a bicycle. For buildings with high foot traffic, it also speeds up entry compared with card tapping or calling the monitor.

Practical considerations matter more than the feature name. Face recognition performance depends on lighting conditions at the entry point, camera placement and angle, enrollment quality, and the matching threshold configured for the site. A north-facing entrance in shade and a glass lobby with strong backlight present different challenges. FARHD’s in-house camera module development allows image quality and low-light performance to be tuned for these conditions, and installers should verify recognition performance at the actual entrance during commissioning—including at night—rather than assuming the factory default is optimal.

Privacy and consent also need attention. Residents should be informed that facial data will be enrolled, enrollment should be voluntary with card access available as an alternative, and the property should have a clear policy on data retention. Where local regulations impose requirements on biometric data, those requirements apply to the building operator, and the system should be configured accordingly.

Card Unlock

Card access remains the workhorse of apartment entry. It is fast, familiar, and works for residents, staff, and contractors without requiring biometric enrollment.

Card unlock at the outdoor station is valuable in several scenarios: residents entering and exiting multiple times a day, domestic and property staff requiring managed access, contractors who need temporary authorization, and residents who prefer not to use face recognition. Because the system supports both 13.56MHz IC and 125kHz ID cards depending on configuration, partners can match the card type to local market practice.

Card management is designed for easy operation. Property managers can add new cards and delete lost, stolen, or expired cards without complex procedures—closing the common security gap where a departed tenant’s card remains active because removing it is inconvenient.

Room List

The room list is the feature that determines whether visitors can use the building entrance independently. A well-implemented directory lets a visitor scroll or search to the target apartment, call that unit, and speak to the resident—without involving security staff.

For apartment buildings, the practical value is significant:

• Visitors reach the right unit without assistance at reception.
• Couriers find the correct apartment quickly, reducing delivery failures and time at the door.
• After-hours arrivals can reach residents when no staff are present.
• Multiple entrances can share a consistent directory, so a visitor entering through a side door has the same experience as at the main entrance.

Directory accuracy is the operational challenge. The room list must be maintained as occupancy changes, and the system should make updating unit information straightforward for property management. Where privacy is a concern—particularly in buildings with high-profile residents—the directory can be configured to display unit numbers without names, or to require a search rather than a full scroll.

Designing the Entry Experience Around Real Traffic

The value of combining face recognition, card unlock, and a room list is that each method handles the traffic it suits best:

The outdoor station should present these options clearly so users choose the right one without reading instructions. A crowded interface with too many prompts creates hesitation at the door; a clear hierarchy—call first, then access methods—keeps traffic moving.

Built for Large-Scale Apartment Projects

FARHD’s experience in large residential developments is directly relevant to this lineup. Supported by 28 direct sales branches across China, the company has completed over 10,000 large-scale building video intercom projects, including ultra-large communities with 1,000, 3,000, and even over 5,000 households.

That experience informs practical requirements that smaller suppliers often miss: how addressing works across multiple buildings and entrances, how the directory is structured for thousands of units, how card issuance is managed at scale, and how system configuration is documented so that a building can be maintained years after handover. A 5,000-household community is not simply a larger version of a 20-unit building—the management workflows and directory structure are fundamentally different.

IP Architecture and Installation Flexibility

The lineup is built on IP architecture, which brings practical advantages for apartment projects. Network-based communication supports structured cabling through risers and service ducts, simplifies distribution across multiple buildings, and allows the system to scale as buildings are completed in phases.

For renovation projects, FARHD’s 2-wire IP systems provide an alternative where existing two-wire cabling can be reused—reducing disruption in occupied buildings, which is often the deciding constraint on whether an upgrade proceeds.

FARHD’s broader product line covers 2-wire IP systems for villas and apartments, IP-based systems, wireless video doorbells, 4-wire CVBS and AHD video doorbells, audio intercom systems, and kits. Partners can match the architecture to each project rather than forcing one model onto every building.

Management, Documentation, and Support

Feature depth is only useful if it can be managed. A few practical points for property managers and integrators:

Card lifecycle management. Issuing, replacing, and deleting cards should be routine operations that building staff can perform without technical support. The system’s easy card operation supports this.

Enrollment records. Face recognition enrollment should be documented—who was enrolled, when, and with what consent—so the building can respond to questions and comply with applicable requirements.

Configuration handover. Directory structure, card permissions, and device addressing should be documented at handover, not left in the head of the installing technician. This is where a structured commissioning checklist pays for itself.

After-sales support. FARHD provides a hassle-free after-sales service system: upon product delivery, a dedicated technical support group is established to assist with programming, device installation, and wiring connections throughout the process. For a large apartment project with hundreds of devices, having that channel available during commissioning changes the practical experience of the job.

Certification and Manufacturing Depth

FARHD products hold international certifications including CE, FCC, RoHS, IP65 water resistance, and EMC. For apartment outdoor stations—typically mounted at exposed entrances—IP65 water resistance is a practical requirement, and EMC certification supports stable operation in electrically noisy environments.

Because FARHD produces TFT LCD screens, driver boards, and camera modules in-house, customization can extend beyond branding and packaging. OEM and ODM services cover customized software and hardware development, UI design, functional module adjustments, and tailored packaging solutions—relevant for partners who need interface localization, specific access method combinations, or branding aligned to their market. SKD solutions are available for assembly factories across Europe, the Middle East, South America, Southeast Asia, the United States, Russia, India, Iran, Turkey, South Korea, and Italy, helping reduce production and tariff costs.

A Coherent Apartment Intercom Offering

The combination of newly designed UI on 7″ and 10″ indoor monitors with an apartment outdoor station offering face recognition, card unlock, and a room list gives partners a coherent product family rather than a collection of features. Residents get a clear, fast interface; visitors get a usable directory; property managers get manageable access control; and integrators get a system that can be specified, installed, and supported with consistent documentation.

Whether you are equipping a new apartment development, upgrading an existing building’s entrance, or building a private-label product line with OEM/ODM support, FARHD can support your project from core components to global delivery.

We look forward to building a strong partnership with you and jointly shaping the future of smart living.

Email: info@farhd.com
Website: www.farhd.com

WhatsApp: +86 188 2370 9809 / +86 199 2545 1918