Video Switch for Intercom System

Nowadays a lot of intercom units are equipped with video cameras so that you can see as well as hear who is at the door. Unfortunately, the camera lens is perfectly placed to serve as a sort of support point for people during the conversation, with the result that there’s hardly anything left see in the video imagery. One way to solve this problem is to install two cameras on the street side instead only one, preferably some distance apart. If you display the imagery from the two cameras alternately, then at least half of the time you will be able to see what is happening in front of the door.

Circuit diagram:

Video Switch for Intercom System Circuit Diagram

Thanks to the video switch module described here, which should be installed on the street side not too far away from the two cameras, you need only one monitor inside the house and you don’t need to install any additional video cables. Along with a video switch, the circuit includes a video amplifier that has been used with good results in many other electronics projects, which allows the brightness and the contrast to be adjusted separately. This amplifier is included because the distance between the street and the house may be rather large, so it is helpful to be able to compensate for cable attenuation in this manner.

The switch stage is built around the well known 4060 IC, in which switches IC2a and IC2d alternately pass one of the two signals to the output. They are driven by switches IC2b and IC2c, which generate control signals that are 180 degrees out of phase. The switching rate for the video signals is determined by a clock signal from an ‘old standby’ 555 IC, which causes the signals to swap every 2 seconds with the specified component values. Naturally, this circuit can also used in many other situations, such as where two cameras are needed for surveillance but only one video cable is available.