WiPhone: An Open Source, modular VoIP phone for calls over WiFi | Hacker News Reader

WiPhone: An Open Source, modular VoIP phone for calls over WiFi

wiphone.io

26 pointstype016 comments

Wow, this can be a great foundation for open source bike and motorcycle communicator intercom [1]. Does this support mesh networking to extend the coverage?

[1]FreedConn:

https://en.fdcdz.com

1) Take any old Android phone which you probably have lying around

2) Install TwinMe https://twin.me/en/

3) Talk, text, HD video chat P2P over Wifi

All at zero cost. You're welcome.

You are missing the point, this is a hackable phone for those who like to tinker with electronics. The main feature is that it is ESP32 based and the battery time of course. You won't be installing a LoRa daughterboard on your Android anytime soon.

This is not a phone. It is built to look like a phone but it is really just a wi-fi terminal. For hacking with an ESP32, there are cheaper alternatives.

However, twinme does store on your device, and as a back-up on its servers, your profile attributes (names and images) as well as your contacts’.

No different than storing your VOIP address/phone number and the name of your contacts. In either case, it's not possible to positively identify you from this info.

Open Source is great. This device does not support 5 GHz Wi-Fi. In most urban areas 2.4 GHz is congested and subject to interference from drones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, cordless phones, Bluetooth, etc. A low duty cycle 5 GHz channel is much more conducive to good call quality.

As of now, it is now open source: https://www.wiphone.io/downloads.html

Firmware: Latest firmware is sent with your phone. Once we are done shipping all the pre-orders we will publish the firmware on the web. If you want to be notified when the firmware is publically released, we will send a notification to the mailing list, or feel free to check back periodically.

There's nothing about source code there.

The Wiphone folks have been notoriously evasive when people ask about source code. I'm pretty certain it will never see the light of day. I don't blame them for that decision; it's the only way to not get cloned out of existence. But I do blame them for not being forthright about it.

Sorry, there is a typo in my post! I meant not instead of now

And it is unfortunately. For me, It means I won't buy one.

To anybody considering ordering from these folks, be sure you read the kickstarter comments first:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2103809433/wiphone-a-ph...

There are people who paid over three years ago and still have not received their phone.

What protocol does this actually use for VoIP? I do VoIP over ham radio with various protocols, I'm curious what this uses behind the scenes and didn't see in the docs.

Took me some time to figure out how this works. The webpage is mostly about the hardware.

Here are some old screenshots (2018). You basically enter your own SIP account to call

https://www.wiphone.io/blog/2018-08-17_-_GUI_Screenshots.htm...

See the documentation. They are using a number of "free" SIP providers. You can get the details from them.

A 4G module would be way more practical.

Don't think there are any open source 4g modules though, the real mobile network is highly proprietary.

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