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Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids

tincan.kids

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Re: Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids

#121

Post by freddie_mercury »

turnsout wrote: post #37
bja wrote: post #24

This just seems like another VOIP service wrapped in nostalgia. There are MANY cheaper and better options. I say this because I recently added a VOIP line for exactly this reason to give my kids a way to call their friends without a smart phone. Here are many good options https://www.ooma.com/blog/home-phone/best-voip-service-for-h...

Keep in mind, the main use case is allowing kids to call their friends and family and no one else. VoIP nerds out there, is there any simple PFSense equivalent for VoIP that would allow you to DIY this? Basically restrict inbound and outbound calls to a whitelist?

Why is preventing them from calling other people an important feature? The market for people who care about that sounds extremely tiny.

Re: Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids

#122

Post by schwartzworld »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #65

There's a cheaper alternative, if you don't mind some manual setup: - buy an ethernet -> phone adapter (Grandstream, Cisco, and Poly sell these) and a cheap analog phone. - get an inexpensive VoIP number[0] and set up the phone adapter to log into the service you set up. - set up a Google Voice[1] number if you haven't already. When you want to make an outgoing call, use the Google Voice app to initiate a call to you…

That was my thought. Magic Jack basically does the same thing but cheaper and better.

Re: Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids

#123

Post by TimTheTinker »

TMWNN wrote: post #117
TimTheTinker wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, people fall into all sorts of categories based on various individual characteristics. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. It sounds like maybe you don't like seeing ideas that aren't best for you? Let me encourage you to just keep scrolling if someone's idea doesn't fit you personally.

It'd be one thing if you offered a complete solution, even if cumbersome. Lots of open source projects require more steps than, and have various limitations compared to, their commercial counterparts; heck, for many of us, those extra steps are a feature, not a bug. But all you did was to mention Google Voice, not exactly an obscure VoIP product and which, again, does not provide a whitelist. A whitelist is fundament…

Dude, like I said - if my idea isn't your cup of tea, why the outrage? It took me time and effort to type it out that I could have spent elsewhere, but I wanted to help (some of) my HN community -- ok not you but why be upset at me?

It's a different idea from TA with a different set of ideal users. But it's a better idea for some who don't need all the features and want to pay less. The idea may not be perfect but it was free (but not for me).

Re: Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids

#124

Post by AstralStorm »

tiagod wrote: post #58
derwiki wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several comments in this thread give "Dropbox is just rsync" vibes. I'm curious how many of the commenters suggesting to DIY understand that having small children means essentially no free time to hack on something like that.

And it's mostly tech workers here. I would say most parents are not technically inclined. It would take the average Joe god knows how many hours to set something like this up. Even for a techie, and even if you value your time at only $10/h it would be worth it even if it took only a weekend of hacking something together, and you get something that was built specifically to your use-case.

DECT wireless phones and in router voip with a real phone number is rather simple and works. Oh wait, is that EU only or something?

Re: Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids

#125

Post by lozf »

turnsout wrote: post #37
bja wrote: post #24

This just seems like another VOIP service wrapped in nostalgia. There are MANY cheaper and better options. I say this because I recently added a VOIP line for exactly this reason to give my kids a way to call their friends without a smart phone. Here are many good options https://www.ooma.com/blog/home-phone/best-voip-service-for-h...

Keep in mind, the main use case is allowing kids to call their friends and family and no one else. VoIP nerds out there, is there any simple PFSense equivalent for VoIP that would allow you to DIY this? Basically restrict inbound and outbound calls to a whitelist?

You might like FreePBX[0] for a PFSense-style "PBX appliance" with easy WebUI. Just grab the ISO (or shell script to install on Debian). It's built on Asterisk, and more than adequate for the task. Whilst FreeSWITCH is awesome it's way more complex and overkill for this use case.

[0]: https://freepbx.org

Re: Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids

#126

Post by tiagod »

AstralStorm wrote: post #124
tiagod wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's mostly tech workers here. I would say most parents are not technically inclined. It would take the average Joe god knows how many hours to set something like this up. Even for a techie, and even if you value your time at only $10/h it would be worth it even if it took only a weekend of hacking something together, and you get something that was built specifically to your use-case.

DECT wireless phones and in router voip with a real phone number is rather simple and works. Oh wait, is that EU only or something?

What about the whitelist for the parents to approve callers? Is it real simple for you, or for most people?

Re: Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids

#127

Post by tiagod »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #118
tiagod wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Dropbox is just rsync. The value is in the app for the parents. I would pay $10 not to deal with shitty VoIP interfaces.

It really isn't. I got my login for dropbox, installed it on some machines, and it was just click upload or download from there. Crwating and using folders was much like on my desktop. For rsync, a person would have to study it to learn it. They might want to look for potential gotchas in how they configure it, too. The experts at Dropbox already did all that for us, though.

I wasn't serious. It's a reference to the comments in the initial Dropbox announcement saying it's the same as FTP+SVN+curlftpfs / rsync.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Re: Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids

#128

Post by turnsout »

lozf wrote: post #125
turnsout wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind, the main use case is allowing kids to call their friends and family and no one else. VoIP nerds out there, is there any simple PFSense equivalent for VoIP that would allow you to DIY this? Basically restrict inbound and outbound calls to a whitelist?

You might like FreePBX[0] for a PFSense-style "PBX appliance" with easy WebUI. Just grab the ISO (or shell script to install on Debian). It's built on Asterisk, and more than adequate for the task. Whilst FreeSWITCH is awesome it's way more complex and overkill for this use case. [0]: https://freepbx.org

Awesome, thanks! I'll check it out.

Re: Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids

#129

Post by turnsout »

mnutt wrote: post #112
turnsout wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, love this. Do you have any recommended resources if I wanted to try this out? Any comments about FreeSWITCH vs Asterisk, or BulkVS vs Signalwire for a simple setup like this?

I did a writeup of my own experiences using Asterisk for this exact use case: https://github.com/mnutt/rotary

This is exactly what I was looking for—thanks! So cool that you did this with a rotary phone.
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