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Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

businessinsider.com

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Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#171

Post by mountainb »

bit_logic wrote: post #68

Why does it seem like many parents are unaware that a hand me down iPhone can be heavily locked down with screen time settings? A list of things you can do: - allowed list of apps, can reduce it to just phone, imessage, and utilities like weather app - effectively permanent downtime, just set the end time less than start time such as 3:00 am to 2:59 am (technically 1 minute of non downtime). This blocks apps except f…

All of this is work, more work, admin work, things I would pay an assistant to do. Why would I want to be a system administrator when I can just not give my children systems that I need to administer?

This type of solution provides a simple system that requires very little administration and supervision. The problem with modern communications tech as it relates to children is that by default these systems provide access to every adult on planet earth to your child's inbox. That is not a feature that I need, but rather is a crippling design flaw much more likely to harm my kids than it is to help them.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#172

Post by VladVladikoff »

I got two DECT cordless phones for my house and tried to set up RustPBX on a raspberry pi. But I got snagged because it wasn’t playing nicely with flowroute, and I didn’t want to burden the project with my complaint. I guess I’ll end up using FreePBX but it sucks because RustPBX really looked promising.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#173

Post by b3lvedere »

Fun product, but not for me. We've given the kids old iPhones when they reached the age of 12 and they have been known we can check anything and everything on their phone. Each and every email is cc'ed to us and we log what we can (not that we actually do that much).

We have also told the kids we are not 24/7 actively monitoring them, because we woud like to trust them. Unless we think there's an issue they cannot, will not or are forced not to tell us, we will not intervene with their phone usually. They know we can track their phones anywhere on this planet and they don't care, because we are not acting as helicopter parents.

This has built trust between our kids and us parents. It forces us as parents to start trusting the kids and the kids get the freedom they want and need.

Is it 100% perfect? No, not by a long shot. It's a balance that may be scary for parents. We talk with them about stuff like doomscrolling, social media drama and privacy. They show us memes, tell us about their school life and usually do not care if we happen to see some private conversation on the corner of our eye.

Do the kids make mistakes? You bet. That's part of their life. Do we as parents make mistakes? Absolutely. None of the kids came with a manual. :)

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#174

Post by semi-extrinsic »

philips wrote: post #87
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #65

I "made" something like this 7-8 years ago for our first kid. When I say "made" I mean I bought a "fixed wireless terminal" for $40 on eBay, a classic landline phone for $30, and a cell phone subscription for kids ($5/month). Then I connected the parts, and voila, we had a landline for kids. Obvious benefits include low cost, full interop with all other phones, and having the kids learn our phone numbers by heart aft…

I made something using a VOIP phone and voip.ms. What provider has a $5/mo kids cell subscription!? voip.ms is about $1.30/mo with the cost of the phone number (DID) and "minutes". I have some more breadcrumbs on this thread if you are interested in details on my setup too.

My cellphone provider offers a limited kids cell subscription. Things like "can only call 5 different pre-approved numbers, no data traffic". I think the business model is that after a period of time, people bump into the limitations and upgrade to the $10/mo version.

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#175

Post by philips »

deltoidmaximus wrote: post #161
philips wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made something using a VOIP phone and voip.ms. What provider has a $5/mo kids cell subscription!? voip.ms is about $1.30/mo with the cost of the phone number (DID) and "minutes". I have some more breadcrumbs on this thread if you are interested in details on my setup too.

Regarding minutes, how many minutes? My kids basically hog my VoIP "landline" talking to their cousins 50% of the time they're home. (They're actually playing games together and using the phone as voice chat). I've been thinking of trying to get a second line for them to hog but didn't want anything with limited minutes.

It is pay as you go $0.008/min

https://voip.ms/pricing

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#176

Post by rd »

raldi wrote: post #160
mrweasel wrote: post #141

Off-topic, but I hate sites like this. All links in the article are for other pages on businessinsider.com, but there's no link to Tin Can, not that I can find at least. It's getting more and more normal that sites won't link out of their own "property".

Especially weird in this case since it’s such an over the top case of Submarine Marketing.

Submarine marketing?

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#178

Post by KaiserPro »

We have a voip system for the house, mainly because its one floor too tall to shout up and easily be heard.

Each of the kids has a really old cisco voip phone (I got 8 for £35).

There is a quick dial menu which connects too the loft, kid1, kid2, shed, living room. I also have an extension for my mobile.

That works for keeping everyone in touch and save a lot of "WHAT DID YOU SAY?".

Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

#179

Post by drewsonian »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #172

I got two DECT cordless phones for my house and tried to set up RustPBX on a raspberry pi. But I got snagged because it wasn’t playing nicely with flowroute, and I didn’t want to burden the project with my complaint. I guess I’ll end up using FreePBX but it sucks because RustPBX really looked promising.

Check out FusionPBX or FreeSWITCH. Great options, I like them better than anything Asterisk based right now.
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