Doors, Intercoms & PoE Switches

How to open and lock your buildings’ doors from Seayora, answer the doorbell with the live camera, send a guest pass to a cleaner or a contractor, lock a building down, read the record of every entry, and keep the PoE switch that powers your cameras and doorbells healthy.

Doors & network puts the doors at your properties next to the cameras that watch them and the switch that powers both. You can open a door for somebody standing at it, answer the doorbell from your phone while you watch the camera, let a cleaner in on Tuesdays with a link instead of a key, lock a whole building down in one press, and see who opened what and when. It lives under Operations → Doors & network on the website, and under Doors & network in the Seayora app on iPhone and Android. Residents find their side on My Home → Building entry.

What you need first

A door is hardware Seayora talks to, registered under Operations → Devices like any other device. Register whichever of these the door has:

• A door controller or smart lock — the thing that actually unlocks the door. An intercom with its own relay counts. Without one, Seayora can ring you and keep a record, but it cannot open the door.
• A video doorbell or intercom — so a press rings the right people. A camera that reports doorbell presses works too.
• A card reader or keypad — so every card, code and refused attempt lands in the same record.
• A PoE network switch — the switch in the comms closet that powers the cameras and doorbells over their network cables. Seayora shows every port, what it powers, and can power-cycle a frozen camera.

Then open Doors & network, press “Add a door”, choose the property and wire the door to its hardware: the controller (and which relay on it drives this door), the doorbell, the reader, and the camera that shows who is there. Seayora only offers hardware already on that property.

Opening and locking a door

You can also lock down every door on a property at once from the Overview. The answer names any door that did not lock down — a controller that is offline, for example — rather than reporting the whole building locked when it is not.

An instruction goes to the controller, which collects it a moment later. Seayora shows what the controller reported back: done, sent, or never collected. A door that says “unlocking” has not necessarily unlocked — the log says which.

A door can ask for a reason every time it is opened (“Delivery for 4B”). The reason goes in the access log.

When somebody rings

A press on the doorbell rings the people the door names, wherever they are in Seayora — on the website, on iPhone and on Android, with a notification if the app is closed. The answer sheet shows the camera at the door live, which door it is and, for an intercom, which apartment was called. Press “Open the door” to let them in, or “Not now”.

• Who is rung is the door’s choice: you and your team, the apartment that was called, or both. Add anybody else by email under the door’s settings.
• The first person to answer wins. Everybody else sees who answered and the sheet closes on every device.
• A ring stops after the time set on the door (15 seconds to 3 minutes). For five minutes after that you can still open the door from the record of the ring.
• “Not now” on the notification on your lock screen declines the ring without opening the app. Opening the door always takes you into Seayora first, behind your app lock — a lock screen is never enough to open a building.
• Press “Test the doorbell” on a door to check that everybody who should be rung is.

Residents

A resident sees Building entry on My Home only when a door on Seayora serves their home. There they can see the doors, who rang for them, and make guest passes for their own visitors. If you turn on “Residents can open it from their app” for a door, residents of the units it serves can let somebody in too; every opening is recorded with their name and apartment, and a resident can do it a handful of times a minute at most. They never see the access log, other residents, or anything about the door’s wiring.

Guest passes

A guest pass is a link that opens the doors you choose, during the window you choose — the cleaner on Tuesdays from nine to five, a plumber for an afternoon, family arriving before you get home. The visitor needs no account: the link opens a page on their phone with a button for each door — or, if they have the Seayora app on iPhone or Android, it opens straight in the app, signed in or not.

• Turn guest passes on for a door in its settings first.
• Set when it starts and ends, the days and hours it works, and how many times it can be used. Every use is recorded with the pass’s name, and you can be told each time.
• The link is shown once. Seayora keeps only a fingerprint of it and cannot show it again — copy or share it straight away.
• Withdraw a pass and it stops working at once.
• A pass never works on a door that is locked down, and the visitor is told why in plain words: not started yet, outside its hours, used up, withdrawn, or the building is locked down.
• A resident can make passes for up to 30 days, and have 20 live at once.

Key fobs and cards

Register the fobs and cards your residents and staff carry so the building’s readers know who is coming in, and switch one off in a tap when it is lost. Open Doors & network → Key fobs on the website, the iPhone or Android. There are three ways to add one, because no single way reaches every fob:

• Name the holder, give their email so they can see the fob in their own app, tie it to an apartment, and choose which doors it opens — none picked means every door at the building.
• Limit when it works: a start and end date, days of the week and hours, for a contractor’s fob for a month or a cleaner’s for Tuesdays.
• Suspend a fob to stop it for now and turn it back on later. Report it lost and it stops at once and can never be turned back on — anybody may have found it. Remove a fob you have taken back. Every change is in the access log.
• A resident who loses their fob can report it lost from Building entry in their own app. It stops working straight away and you are told.
• A phone and a door reader sometimes describe the same fob with different numbers. Seayora matches the common forms automatically; if the door still refuses a fob you added by phone, add it again at the reader.
• The fob’s number is kept encrypted and never shown again — screens show its last four. A lockdown refuses every fob.

How a reader uses the list. On the device’s own token (the same one it reports readings with), the reader sends each card it reads to https://seayora.com/api/iot/ingest/access/check as { card, format, channel } — format is number, hex or facility_card and may be left out. Seayora answers { allow, door_id, seconds, release_by, label, sentence }: when the reader is not itself wired to the lock, release_by is “seayora” and Seayora has already told the door’s controller to open. For when the internet is down, the reader keeps a copy of the list from GET https://seayora.com/api/iot/ingest/access/credentials, which carries every form of each number a reader may report, only for the doors that reader serves. Seayora tells the readers to fetch it again whenever a fob changes, and a reader that reports card events can send the number as card so the access log names the fob.

Unlock schedules

A door can unlock on a clock — the lobby open from eight to six on weekdays. A window cannot cross midnight; add two. Turn on “Wait for the first person in” and the schedule only unlocks once somebody has come through that day, so the lobby stays locked on a snow day. List holidays the schedule should skip. A lockdown overrides the schedule.

The access log

Every opening, lock, hold, lockdown, ring, card, refused attempt, forced door and propped door is recorded with who did it, from where (the website, the iPhone app, the Android app, a notification, a guest pass, a schedule or the hardware itself), the reason if one was given, and what the controller reported. The log can be searched, filtered by door and by what happened, and exported as a spreadsheet. Nothing in it can be edited or deleted by anybody; entries are kept for 400 days and then removed.

Connecting a PoE switch

A switch cannot reach Seayora by itself — none of them speaks to a cloud — so the Seayora Bridge at the property reads it and reports for it. Any PoE switch keeps powering its cameras whether or not Seayora can read it; reading it is what adds the port map, the power-cycle and the watchdog. It needs a managed switch with SNMP switched on in its settings, and a bridge on the same network (see Security Cameras → Install the Seayora Bridge).

• Under Operations → Devices, register the switch as a “PoE network switch”. Its token is shown once, with the command to run on the bridge.
• On the bridge’s computer, read the switch first: sudo seabridge switch test 192.168.1.2 (with the switch’s own address). It prints every port — link, speed, PoE status and class, VLAN and the device on it — and sends nothing anywhere. On Windows, run seabridge in an Administrator terminal, without sudo.
• Then add it: sudo seabridge switch add 192.168.1.2 --token sy_dev_… — the bridge checks the token with Seayora, then reads the switch every minute and reports it. Add --write-community with the switch’s read-write community (or --write for an SNMPv3 user) to let Seayora switch port power; without it the switch is read-only.
• SNMP v1, v2c and v3 are supported. The community and SNMPv3 passwords stay on the bridge’s computer and are never sent to Seayora.
• seabridge switch list shows the switches a bridge reads, seabridge switch find looks for switches answering SNMP on its network, and seabridge switch remove stops reading one.

PoE switches

A PoE switch is drawn the way it hangs in the closet: numbered ports, odd over even. Each port shows whether it is linked, whether it is delivering power (and how much, where the switch reports watts per port), and whether something is wrong. Tap a port to see its link speed, power class, VLAN and the device it sees, label it (“Lobby camera”), and link it to the camera or device it powers — Seayora suggests one when the switch reports a device it recognizes.

• Power-cycle: turns the port’s power off and on again — the fix for a frozen camera, without a ladder.
• Turn power off: the device goes dark until somebody turns it back on. You type the switch’s name to confirm.
• A port the switch has never described is shown as “not reported”, never as down.
• The overview shows the switch’s power budget, so you know before adding a camera whether the switch can power it.

The camera watchdog

Arm the watchdog on a port linked to a camera or device and Seayora power-cycles that port by itself when the device stops reporting — after the minutes you choose, at most the number of times a day you choose, waiting longer between each try. If the device does not come back it stops trying and tells you, because by then somebody needs to look at the cable. Arming it is your consent to Seayora cutting that port’s power on its own; the owner of the building is told when it is armed.

Who can do what

• Owners and management companies, and their team members with the “Doors & intercoms” permission, can open, lock, hold, lock down, answer, make passes, register key fobs and manage switches.
• An owner watching a building through the owner portal sees the doors’ state but cannot open them.
• Seayora staff can see your doors to help you, but can never open one.

AI assistants

Doors and key fobs are deliberately not available to an AI assistant connected to Seayora. Opening a door — or registering a fob, which is handing somebody a key — is a decision about who gets into a building, made by a person standing behind it, and it is not something to hand to a model however carefully the request is checked. An assistant can still see your PoE switches as connected devices.

What Seayora does not do

• Seayora is not a fire or life-safety system. Doors must still open from the inside as your fire code requires, whatever Seayora says, and nothing here replaces a fire alarm’s door release.
• Seayora is not a monitored security service. Nobody at Seayora watches your doors or rings, and Seayora will never dispatch anybody.
• Seayora sells and installs no hardware. An instruction to a controller can be late or not carried out; the log shows what the controller reported.

Frequently asked questions

Can I open a door from my phone when the app is locked?

No. “Not now” works from the lock screen, but opening a door always takes you into the app first, behind your app lock. A lost phone must not be a key to the building.

What happens if two of us answer the same ring?

The first to answer wins and opens the door once. The other sees who answered and the ring closes on every device.

Why can my iPhone not scan our fobs?

Your fobs are probably MIFARE Classic, which iPhones cannot read, or 125 kHz proximity fobs, which no phone can. Add them at the door’s reader instead, or type the number printed on them. An Android phone reads MIFARE Classic.

Can I turn a lost fob back on if it turns up?

No. A fob reported lost stays off for good, because anybody may have had it. Add it again as a new fob; the record of the old one stays.

Can I see a guest pass link again later?

No. Seayora keeps only a fingerprint of the link, so it is shown once when you make the pass. If you lose it, withdraw that pass and make a new one.

Does a lockdown stop the unlock schedule?

Yes. A locked-down door refuses every card, code, guest pass, resident and schedule until somebody lifts it.

Why does a port say “not reported” instead of “down”?

Because the switch has never told Seayora anything about it. “Down” is a fact the switch reports; “not reported” means Seayora does not know, and it never guesses.

How long is the access log kept?

400 days. Nothing in it can be edited or deleted before then, by you or by Seayora.

Related guides

• Security Cameras
• Connected Devices & Sensors
• Team Permissions
• Notifications, Email & SMS

Related features and guides

• Security Cameras — Documentation. How to connect the security cameras at your properties — install a Seayora Bridge with one command, connect DW Spectrum or a camera that sends to Seayora — then watch them live, record and play back, act on what they see, and export footage as evidence.
• Connected Devices & Sensors — Documentation. How to connect meters, leak sensors, thermostats and other building devices to Seayora, what they can alert on, and how readings flow into work orders and Local Law 97 reporting.
• Team Permissions — Documentation. How a management company or a contractor decides, per employee, which parts of the account are hidden, read-only or fully open.
• Contractor Job Board & Assignment — Feature. A live job board showing every open, assigned, and completed job. Create jobs, assign technicians, and move work through status without a group chat.
• Compliance Alerts & Required Filings — Feature. Seayora watches your properties for new violations and works out which recurring filings each building owes, turns both into a dated checklist, and emails you when something new appears. Live violation data for New York City; rule-based filing obligations across the NYC metro.
• Voice Notes in Messaging — Feature. Record and send voice notes in any Seayora conversation. Transcoded server-side so they play on iPhone, Android, and desktop alike, stored with the thread, and searchable as part of the property record.

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