264 units, six blocks, one intercom system that finally works

Oasis Apartments is a large residential complex in St Kilda — six apartment blocks, 264 units, and an intercom system that had aged out of usefulness. The legacy setup was audio only. Residents buzzing someone in had no way to see who was actually at the gate, and the strata committee wanted that fixed.

The challenge

This was a retrofit, and retrofits in buildings this age are decided by what’s already in the walls.

Each apartment had only two-wire connections running to its internal intercom screen. The entrance gates could support Ethernet, but the runs to individual units could not. Rewiring 264 apartments was never going to clear a committee vote, and rightly so — the disruption and cost would have been enormous.

So the technical problem was really a commercial one: find a system that delivers modern video intercom over the two wires that already exist.

The second challenge was logistical. Scheduling installation across hundreds of occupied apartments, around residents’ working lives, is a coordination job as much as a technical one.

The solution

After researching what was actually available for two-wire environments — not what we’d prefer to install, but what genuinely works on this cabling — we selected Hikvision’s video intercom system.

We installed and configured video intercoms across four of the six blocks. Residents can now see who is at the gate before granting access. Where applicable, owner-occupiers also got remote access, so they can answer calls and let people in while they’re out — which turned out to matter most for deliveries from Australia Post and Amazon.

While on site, we also addressed the car park. The existing surveillance had blind spots, so we replaced approximately 20 cameras and modernised the NVR for higher capacity and better reliability.

The results

Residents reported feeling safer simply by being able to see a visitor before opening the gate. Owner-occupiers valued the remote access — it was the feature that came up most, for the practical reason that it solved parcels.

The camera and NVR work closed the gaps in the underground car park and at building entrances, strengthening security across the site.

For the committee, the outcome was a successful retrofit that improved security and convenience without rewiring the building — and left a foundation the remaining two blocks can be brought onto when they’re ready.

Worth noting: this project is a good example of why we don’t force every site onto the same platform. UniFi is what we reach for by default and what most of our work runs on, but the two-wire constraint at Oasis meant a different system was the right answer. We pick for the building, not the brochure.