July 2026
Soter specifications
Current hardware, software, accessibility, integration, and service specifications for the Soter Doorstep Assistant.
Specifications reflect the current product and development plan and may change before commercial release.
Door unit
- Hardware
- 6.1" touch screen, microphone array, speaker, and 13 MP camera, with a choice of 80°, 120°, or 170° field of view. 100mm x 220mm x 35mm excluding detachable mount. 300g
- Environmental protection
- Built for year-round outdoor use — rain, wind, salt air, and direct sun. Target ingress protection: IP67. Full specifications will be published before launch.
- Power requirements
- Mains socket (110-240 V AC) within 2 m of the front door. Low-voltage DC power is fed to the outdoor unit through the door jamb using a thin connector. Includes remote power monitoring, warning system, and battery backup.
- Mounting
- Secure self-install mounting plate system with ±20° or ±40° horizontal and ±7° vertical adjustment, fixed with 3M double-sided tape or screws. Professional installation is available in certain locations.
- Connectivity
- Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with 5G cellular fallback.
- Controls
- On-screen Help, PIN, and Mute buttons. Doorbell-button mode can be scheduled from the occupant app.
- Visitor view
- Live transcription of the conversation, with selectable video view.
- Sensor support
- Support for Bluetooth Low Energy sensors. Supplied with a pre-configured door sensor.
Visitor interaction
- Live AI conversation
- Uses the door-unit microphone, speaker, and live model connection to hold natural spoken conversations with visitors and gather the visitor's name and purpose.
- Custom doorstep greeting
- A household setting allows the first spoken greeting to be customised.
- Voice and languages
- Choice of male or female voices. Understands and replies in more than 70 languages.
- User-interface language
- Currently English only. A multilingual interface is planned.
- Door sensor support
- Support for Bluetooth Low Energy sensors. Supplied with a pre-configured door sensor.
- Door-state tracking
- Tracks open and closed door states and can alert when the door remains open longer than a configured threshold. Door-sensor alerts can have Level 1 and Level 2 recipients, each with a configurable escalation delay.
People, identity, and naming
- People directory
- Stores occupants, family, carers, friends, neighbours, service providers, delivery contacts, and other named people.
- Person profile fields
- Supports display name, role, email, phone, notes, linked access account, and linked indoor-device occupant.
- Known visitor profile
- Known visitors can have their own identification method, PIN, greeting, purpose requirement, and default policy behaviour.
- Consent-based face ID
- Face recognition is tied to consented known visitors and stored as household-scoped face identities and embeddings.
- Greet by name
- Soter can greet recognised visitors by name when the person profile allows it.
- Speakable names
- Households can define names Soter may say aloud, separately from names used only for recognition or transcription.
- Unknown-face assignment
- Unmatched captures can be assigned to a known person, dismissed, or deleted as low quality.
Policy, verification, and decisions
- Policy matrix
- Household policy rows determine verification, action, recipients, response options, capture level, and retention.
- Known-individual policy
- Known visitors can have individual policy rows instead of relying only on general household defaults.
- Delivery policy
- Separate handling for deliveries that can be left and deliveries requiring a signature or additional decision support.
- Appointment visitor policy
- Unknown visitors with appointments can be handled differently from unknown visitors without appointments.
- Visitor verification
- Face ID and PIN when configured, with NFC planned for production hardware. Soter can request and record identification cards and automatically store unknown faces.
- Retention settings
- History-retention options include 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, manual deletion, and a pilot research policy. Events can also be forgotten manually.
- Scheduled policy overrides
- Policy or trigger behaviour can be overridden by day, start time, end time, and reason.
- Quiet stand-down
- Suppresses alerts while still recording appropriate activity in history. Door-sensor alerts are also suppressed.
- Privacy stand-down
- Stops interaction and recording during privacy-sensitive periods. Operating modes can have a configured return time.
Alerts, responses, and escalation
- Live decision alerts
- Occupants and contacts receive alerts when household policy requires a human decision.
- Alert context
- Alerts can show the visitor identity guess, visitor purpose, transcript or context, image or scene description, and policy decision state.
- Available responses
- Coming; Come in; Please wait; Not available; Leave package; Please leave; Unknown person; Notify someone else; and a custom message.
- Multi-device alerts
- Respond to or dismiss an alert from any connected device: web app, phone, indoor unit, or smart speaker.
- Level 1 and Level 2 escalation
- Alerts can escalate from first recipients to backup recipients after the configured delay.
- Stale-alert auto-dismiss
- Households can choose automatic alert dismissal after 15 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours, or 24 hours, or turn automatic dismissal off.
Occupant app
- Progressive web app
- Occupant interface through a web or phone app using secure authentication and push-notification infrastructure.
- Live alerts
- Shows live alerts, visitor summary, transcript or context, visual context, door state, response buttons, dismissal, and escalation state.
- Appointments
- Provides Today, calendar, and upcoming-appointment views.
- History
- Lists interactions and door events newest-first, with detail views for transcripts, images or scene descriptions, and decisions.
- Pilot feedback
- Supports pilot surveys, manual visit logging, weekly feedback, check-ins, and de-identified study responses.
- Household management
- Manages the household profile, people, access, known visitors, policies, operating modes, triggers, door sensors, indoor units, notifications, and display preferences.
Appointments, deliveries, and scheduling
- Appointment records
- Appointments store who is expected, why they are visiting, date and time, notes, and verification requirements.
- Recurring appointments
- Supports no recurrence, daily, weekly, fortnightly, and monthly recurrence.
- Appointment tracking
- Appointments can be tracked as completed or missed.
- Temporary appointment PIN
- One-off or scheduled visits can use a temporary PIN for verification.
- Package drop location
- The household can define where parcels should be left.
- Delivery recipient matching and signature handling
- Private recipient names support matching of delivery labels or spoken delivery information. Signature-required deliveries can use a different policy path from deliveries that may be left.
Security, privacy, and access control
- Immediate access revocation
- Removing a person from household access revokes their app access.
- Granular permissions
- Each person with a login can be given access to a subset of functions, from viewing alerts only through to full household administration.
- Research de-identification
- Pilot-study workflows are designed around de-identified feedback and research reporting.
Integrations and optional extras
- Soter indoor unit
- Optional 6.3" touch screen with microphone array, speaker, and integral stand. 108mm x 198m x 37mm excluding stand. 395g. Shows alerts, door information, large controls, and occupant-facing status. Each indoor unit can be linked to a specific occupant or carer.
- Indoor-unit alerting
- Supports silent, ping, and speak-title alert behaviours, with local volume control. It can provide a visual flashing alert and adjustable screen brightness.
- Indoor-unit power
- USB power supply included, with remote power monitoring, warning system, and battery backup.
- Relay to flashing-alert devices
- Optional Bluetooth Low Energy relay device to trigger flashing or accessibility equipment such as Bellman & Symfon. Requires a Soter indoor unit.
- Alexa smart-speaker integration
- Check Soter status, send occupant responses, and receive alerts and door-opening updates. Supports Echo Dot and Echo Show devices.
- Smart door-lock integration
- Lock or unlock compatible smart locks.
- Additional indoor sensors
- Optional indoor sensors provide activity context in addition to the supplied door sensor.
Admin console, fleet monitoring, and over-the-air updates
- Household dashboard
- Console supports household and device overview for deployment and support operations.
- Fleet health view
- Admin tooling can show device status, names, deployment metadata, map context, and health indicators.
- Policy administration
- Console can support policy and access-management workflows for households.
- Software updates and diagnostic capture
- Over-the-air tooling can update software and collect logs, process state, storage, thermal data, power-supply status, and network reachability.
Languages and localisation
- Expected spoken languages
- A household setting lists expected visitor languages. The app defaults to English.
- Visitor-by-visitor language switching
- Soter can converse in more than 70 languages, switching according to the visitor.
- Recognition region
- A region hint helps recognition handle local place names, accents, and delivery conventions.
- Local vocabulary
- The household can provide family names, property names, organisations, and other phrases to improve speech recognition and transcripts.
- Supported markets
- Current public material targets New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada for initial launch planning.
- Accessibility for low vision
- Supports standard, large, and extra-large text preferences per person and is tuned for screen readers.
Explore Soter
See how these capabilities work together when someone arrives at the door.
