Patent ID: 8744523

Claim:
A home monitoring method, comprising: receiving encoded multimedia content corresponding to scheduled programming from an access network via a network adapter; decoding the multimedia content received from the access network to generate a decoded audio signal and a decoded video signal; receiving an image and audio of a visitor from an intercom unit via a wireless telemetry interface; determining, based on the image received and a collection of stored visitor profiles, a visitor status selected from: known or unknown; generating, based on the visitor status, a visitor prompt, wherein the visitor prompt indicates an identity of the visitor when the visitor status is known; responsive to determining that the visitor status is known, retrieving a visitor profile for the visitor; responsive to determining that the visitor status is unknown, adding, to the collection, a new visitor profile including the image and audio received and the visitor status; generating, based on the visitor profile, a visitor prompt appropriate for the visitor status, wherein the visitor prompt indicates an identity of the visitor when the visitor status is known; and establishing a communication connection between a network user and the visitor via the wireless telemetry interface.